Website Maintenance and Why it is Vital
By Craig Lawson, Founder & CEO of ClickReady Marketing. Craig has led SEO and Google Ads campaigns for service businesses since 2010 and heads one of the top 3% of Google Partner agencies nationwide.
Why is Website Maintenance vital?
There are numerous reasons why you should always keep your business site regularly maintained with the most important reasons being health and performance. Keeping your website up-to-date will help keep the site secure and functioning properly. Doing these things help avoid security breaches, bug fixes and improve user experience.
The Benefits of Website Maintenance Include:
1. Security: A website that is not regularly maintained can be vulnerable to security threats such as malware, hacking, and phishing attacks. Regular website maintenance includes updates to software, security patches, and backups, all of which help to keep the site secure.
Making sure your site is secure will also help maintaining your business’ reputation. A security breach on your website could damage your business's reputation, as users may lose trust in your company's ability to keep their information secure. This could result in a loss of customers, revenue, and potentially even legal action.
2. Performance & User Experience: These two things kind of go hand in hand. Regular website maintenance can help to optimize the performance of the site, which can improve the user experience. Website visitors expect fast-loading pages and responsive designs. Poor website performance can result in a frustrating user experience, which may cause visitors to leave your site and seek out alternatives. Good performance, on the other hand, can lead to higher user engagement, longer site visits, and increased conversions.
3. Search engine optimization (SEO): Search engines like Google consider how well-maintained a website is when determining its search engine ranking. Professional SEO management can help ensure that a site's content is up-to-date and that it is free from broken links and other issues that can hurt its ranking which also contributes to a good user experience.
4. Reputation: A well-maintained website can help establish credibility and trust with visitors. On the other hand, a poorly maintained website can give the impression that the business or organization behind it is unprofessional or unreliable. Especially with eCommerce sites it is imperative the user trust the company they are looking to make a purchase from.
What Does Web Maintenance Involve?
Regular web maintenance normally includes software updates, backing up the site, security patches and site audits looking for errors and checking the sites speed. It also helps in keeping the content relative and giving the opportunity to make corrections when things change within the business.
What Happens to Neglected Websites?
Neglecting website maintenance can lead to many problems including broken links, slow page load times and outdated content and plug-ins. All of these things can create a bad user experience and can negatively affect rankings and encourage visitors to leave the site creating a high bounce rate.
When Should You Hire a Professional for Web Maintenance?
There is a lot to learn when working on the backend of a website. If you have doubts or not comfortable then you should hire a professional.
In short, website maintenance is vital to the health of your website because it helps to ensure its security, performance, user experience and SEO. For more information regarding website maintenance or SEO pricing, give us a call. ClickReady is considered one of the most trusted SEO marketing companies in the metro Atlanta area.
About the Author
Craig Lawson is the founder and CEO of ClickReady Marketing, an Atlanta-area SEO, PPC, and AI search optimization agency he launched in 2010 with co-founder Debbie. Before ClickReady, Craig spent years on the other side of the table, in B2B sales at G&K Services and JW Outfitters, running his own consulting firm, and building and selling two coffee shops and a retail business in North Georgia. That operator background shapes how he approaches marketing: leads and revenue over vanity metrics. Today ClickReady is a Google Premier Partner (top 3% of Google Partner agencies), a BBB A+ Accredited Business, and Georgia Business Journal's Best of Georgia digital marketing winner. Craig hosts ClickReady's Live SEO Sessions, where clients watch optimization work happen in real time.
