The beginning of a new year is a great time to check in and do some website updates and maintenance. Below we’ve compiled a handy list on what you need to be checking in on so your website is safe and functioning properly.
Website Updates and Maintenance to Improve SEO and Security
Two of the most important things you can do to ensure your website is performing at its best is optimize your content for SEO and make sure it remains secure.
Below are three things you can easily do as part of your website updates and maintenance to ensure better SEO and site security.
- Naming and sizing images
People often overlook the power of images on their websites. Naming and sizing your images with SEO in mind can improve your overall SER (search engine ranking) and having quality, properly sized images assists with your website’s functioning and appearance. You can learn about the details of optimizing your images below.
- Removing outdated plugins
Outdated plugins can slow your website’s load time. So checking in on your plugins and removing any that are outdated is pretty important. No one likes a slow loading website. Removing outdated plugins is a simple way to prevent this.
- Updating plugins
Updating plugins is super easy to do and can prevent security issues with your site. Like removing outdated plugins, updating plugins if an update is available is an important part of regular website updates and maintenance that’s as easy as clicking the “Update” button.
Website Maintenance is Key to Optimal Performance and Visitor Experience
When your website sits untouched for a while, some things besides plugins probably need attention too. A few of the common ones are listed below. We also want to add that you should do a check for spelling and grammatical errors in your website copy and your blog posts. You’d be surprised at the things that get overlooked in the moment. So while you’re doing your website updates and maintenance, you may as well check for those things too! Grammarly is a great tool for catching pesky spelling and grammar issues. It’s offers a free version version and is easy to use too.
- Make sure there are no broken links
Going through and testing all of your links is always a good idea. Sometimes a destination web page has moved or no longer exists. Or maybe an invalid URL was entered when creating the link (see our note above about grammatical and spelling errors). Either way, this means your link won’t link back to anything but an error message. So checking for broken links prevents this frustrating issue.
- Test forms to make sure they still work
Another important thing to do is to test your forms to make sure they work. If a website visitor is trying to contact you through your contact form or sign up for your blog and those forms aren’t working, you’re losing a potential client, subscriber or super fan. Keep in mind, things break for no good reason, so remember to make this part of your maintenance checklist even if you’ve checked it before.
Updating Your Website to Keep Things Fresh
Part of your regular website updates and maintenance goals includes keeping things fresh! This means anything from tracking traffic to better see what is resonating with your audience (or what can be improved) to updating content and keywords for better SEO. It can also include adding new incentives for subscribers.
- Tracking traffic
There are a few ways you can track your website traffic to get insight into everything from which content is performing well to what sources your referrals came from. For instance, your social sites and other sources. It also reveals your most viewed content, which can be super helpful in determining your future content! We recommend Google Site Kit which also checks your page speed load time for mobile and desktop (another important thing to keep track of).
- Updating your opt-in or reader magnet
If you’ve been giving away your same freebie for signing up for your blog or newsletter for a while now, it may be time to consider a fresh, new opt-in or reader magnet. Not all of your giveaway material is evergreen.
- Updating Keywords
Staying on top of your keywords and checking their relevance is also a smart move. If you want to give your SEO a bit of a boost, your site could likely benefit from updating the keywords within your website content. Having a master list of keywords and phrases is super helpful, but they could all use a little tweaking sometimes.
That just about wraps up the essential (and simple) website updates and maintenance you’ll need to start the new year off on the right foot. Good luck! And let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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