The Importance of Website Maintenance
3 Reasons to have a Maintenance Routine
Your website has launched, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. After development, it needs regular website maintenance. It’s a continuous process that keeps the site functioning at its most optimal level.
Realistically, a website is never truly complete. It’s more like a work in progress, sort of like a house. Your responsibilities don’t stop once you move in and unpack. You need to pay your rent or mortgage, clean up when things become dirty, and replace or repair items when they break. Neglect these tasks, and you run into bigger problems down the road.
The same is true for your website. Consistent website maintenance is an essential part of upkeep for any site. If left untouched, things fall into disrepair. But if taken care of after the website development process, your site can remain healthy without serious setbacks.
User Experience
Prioritizing Your Web Visitors
We’ve all visited a website littered with broken components. Images files are missing, parts of the website have visible code, and some pages yield errors. You don’t have to be a web expert to know this isn’t a good look. It makes the business appear unprofessional and unstable. And no user wants to be on a website that seems unsafe.
One of the goals of website maintenance is to ensure your users do not come across any of these issues. The health and functionality of your website are monitored with ongoing website maintenance. And if problems arise, like broken links or dead contact forms, they’re typically remedied before they ever impact your users.
You want to give website visitors a smooth experience with as little trouble as possible. That means things are loading quickly, design elements are in place, and interactive features are correctly functioning. Not only does this increase the likelihood of them returning to your site, but it also leaves a much better impression than a broken site.
SEO
Introducing New Content
Search engines want to deliver the most relevant, up-to-date content to users. In other words, they love fresh content like blog posts or new landing pages. The more often you update your website with valuable content, the more search engines need to crawl your site. Indexing this new content will cause Google to rank your site above websites that are stagnant.
On the flip side, search engines can lower your site’s ranking when left untouched. If your site hasn’t been updated in a while and your content is stale, search engines no longer have a reason to crawl your site. That means the site’s rankings can drop as their algorithm prioritizes fresher content.
Google constantly changes the way it evaluates and ranks websites. That means SEO techniques and best practices are continually evolving to keep up with the changing algorithm. Website maintenance keeps your site compatible with the latest technologies from Google and other search engines. We continuously update your site to ensure you’re not hindered by changing SEO standards.
