What Does Website Maintenance Include & Do I Need It?
Are you a small to medium-sized business owner who has been considering website maintenance?
Website maintenance services are a smart move for any business owner who is concerned with cyber-security and doesn’t have the time or expertise to regularly handle updates and check for hackers or malware.
Taking a proactive approach to professional website maintenance services will ensure that your site is as safe as possible, backed up, and updated regularly.
It is useful in keeping your search engine visibility and improving overall website performance.
In this article, we will discuss what website maintenance includes, the different types of website maintenance tasks, and how you can keep your website functioning properly with almost zero effort.
Why Website Maintenance is Essential
Unfortunately, too many business owners believe that once they have a website, it will operate forever, as long as they pay for their website hosting service!
Imagine running a car on a racetrack. Gas is your website hosting provider. You’ll have gas, oh yes, but how long do you think the car will run without tyres, an oil change, or new belts?
Let’s not forget that if the car gets slow enough, someone can jump in and take off with it!
Website maintenance is similar in many ways. Your site may have blazing speed at first, but without maintenance, it will get bogged down with broken links, spam, malware, and hijacked contact forms or URL redirects.
A well-maintained website will not only reduce security threats but also improve the site speed.
The cost of website maintenance is much lower than you might think!
A Positive Website User Experience is Everything!
Potential customers will quickly get annoyed with broken links or error messages. Forget about anyone waiting on a slow website! Users want to get the information and move on!
SEO relies on several factors, but a positive user experience is one of them! Yes, performance optimisation helps, but a well-maintained website doesn’t get either without regular website maintenance, such as the kind provided by Website Helpers Perth.
Website Maintenance is Time-Consuming
One of the facts about website maintenance tasks is that THEY TAKE TIME.
Of course, if you have expertise in this area, you won’t have much of an issue, but most website owners don’t have hours every month to check links, update themes and plugins, and ensure that the updates work.
If the updates didn’t work or if the update caused issues, do you have a recent clean backup of your site?
So you see, website maintenance involves regularly checking for irregularities and ensuring your website is prepared to handle threats.
Let’s take a quick look at the types of website maintenance services that you can consider.
Types of Website Maintenance Services
Your typical website maintenance services list will generally include the following:
- Regular content updates (referring to the content management system you use to manage digital content)
- Security updates
- Daily backup and recovery services
- Software updates, theme updates, and plugin updates
- Error checks
- Broken link checks
- Responsiveness to mobile devices
- Optimisation of loading time
- SEO maintenance
- Monitoring and analytics
Most website maintenance plans provide all the above, but Website Helpers Perth can offer much more than just the basic (and often for the same price!)
Keeping your website up-to-date, with current website content, is one of the best ways to prevent hackers, reduce security threats, and improve the overall user experience.
Please keep reading to find out more about our services!
Top 10 Signs Your Website Needs Maintenance NOW!
There are numerous signs that your website needs attention, but some of them aren’t so obvious to the non-technical expert. The top 10 signs most people will recognise are:
- Slow loading times– Did you know that if your page takes more than 3 seconds to load, Google will rank you lower on SEO? Not to mention that most customers won’t wait more than 2 or 3 seconds!
- Security warnings– In the address bar, if you see that your SSL certificate has expired or your WordPress site hasn’t been updated, or worse if it reads “site not secure”, you have major security vulnerabilities!
- 404 error messages or broken links– When users click a link and get a redirect to an unauthorised site or a 404 error message, you’re losing potential customers and reducing your search engine optimisation!
- No recent backups– Ideally you should back up your website daily or at least weekly. If your site gets hacked or goes down, how will you restore it?
- Crashes or error messages– If your site crashes or takes a long time to load, or users get that dreaded 500 error code, your site has probably been hacked and needs immediate attention!
- Lower SEO rankings– If your site used to be higher in search engine rankings but has suddenly dropped for no known reason, it probably needs updates and fresh content.
- Outdated content– Many people create a website and then forget about it, leaving it with outdated content or old designs. These can make your site look abandoned or untrustworthy.
- High bounce rate– If analytics show that customers leave your site quicker than rats on a sinking ship, something is wrong!
- Features and forms don’t work– If your contact form has been compromised, it might send spam emails to your customers, which they won’t appreciate.
- Cell phone responsiveness problems– As more people depend on their mobile phones to look for what they want, your site needs to display well on a phone or on a laptop.
In short, if anything on your site is not functioning properly or you think there may have been security breaches, you need website maintenance TODAY, not tomorrow!
What Our Website Maintenance Packages Include:
When you hire Website Helpers Perth, you’ll enjoy affordable and professional website maintenance services, including:
- Weekly Plugin Updates
- Weekly Theme Updates
- Daily Backups of Your Website
- Broken Link Checks (to improve your search engine rankings and enhance positive user experience)
- 24/7 Daily Security Monitoring (to avoid hackers or malware)
- Manual QA Site Review after Updates (to secure website data and ensure that all features and contact forms work properly)
- Weekly Contact Form Checks (to prevent lost leads)
- Contact Form Protection (to avoid spam emails)
- Monthly Reporting
- 2 Hours Free each month for Website Repair (this alone is a $378 value!)
- Discounted Pricing for Developer Hours (if required)
- Cancel Any Time!
Read that last one again: You can cancel at any time! We don’t lock you into lengthy contracts. It’s free and easy to cancel anytime if you aren’t happy, but we’ve never had anyone do that!
Still, it’s good to know that your website maintenance services are month-to-month basis.
Do I Really NEED Website Maintenance?
In short, YES, you need website maintenance, if you want:
- to keep your website speed in the optimal range so you don’t lose SEO ranking
- your site visitors to have a pleasant experience
- an outstanding website performance
- to keep your site up-to-date and avoid hackers
- to avoid malware, hackers, denial of service, phishing attempts, redirects, and data breaches
Regular maintenance will give you a secure website that is user-friendly and up-to-date. Software updates and current website content are time-consuming tasks that are better left to the professionals.
Can’t I Do Website Maintenance Myself?
Some people have the time and expertise to handle regular website maintenance. Unfortunately, most people don’t.
You probably excel at your business, but do you have the time to handle regular website maintenance tasks, assuming that you have the technical expertise to do it?
True website maintenance tasks should be done daily, such as daily backups and security checks.
Other tasks can be done weekly or even monthly, but again, do you have several hours every month to update your themes, and plugins, check links, and run malware checks?
Most website owners know that keeping their site up-to-date, maintaining website speed, and search engine optimisation with fresh website content is easy once you hire Website Helpers Perth.
Your time is valuable and probably better spent focusing on your business than updating and monitoring your website.
Website maintenance costs are minimal, considering that they are an essential part of doing business.
Web maintenance makes sense when you consider that:
- the reputation of your business is on the line
- search engines will penalise you if your website’s performance isn’t at its best
- a hacking incident can cost you valuable time and resources
Why is a Website Maintenance Plan so Important?
50 years ago, everyone wanted a splashy, eye-catching ad for the Yellow Pages. One businessman, whose name was Theodore, said that he named his business AAA Woodworking because the words Theodore and Woodworking come close to last in the alphabet!
In those days, having a presence in the phonebook was vital because that’s where most people looked for what they wanted or needed.
While phonebooks are a thing of the past, people still have needs and wants. Where do you go when you want a product or service? A search engine, of course, and Google is the largest and most visible.
Website owners should be concerned with their site’s performance and analytics, as well as keeping their website up-to-date with checks on a weekly or monthly basis.
Without a website, how will you attract new customers? How will people know where to find you or how to contact you?
You spent money building a website, make sure it was money well-spent.
Don’t let your website go to waste by neglecting website maintenance!
A monthly maintenance plan is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to keep your site up-to-date and secure.
You will be surprised at how little it costs to be free from doing website maintenance yourself.
A simple website maintenance package from Website Helpers Perth can give you the peace of mind that your website’s performance is optimal and future customers will easily find you via search engines.
The monthly maintenance cost is minimal when you consider that without it, your website could suffer from security breaches and lose ranking on search engine results pages.
Isn’t the Webmaster In Charge of Maintenance?
Yes, they are, but for most small businesses, the webmaster is YOU!
Of course, you can hire someone to be the webmaster and let them handle site maintenance, but that will cost far more than a maintenance service provider will.
Website maintenance isn’t a nice thought or an “I wish I could afford that” item, it’s an absolute necessity in today’s world.
Don’t be left behind by neglecting important security updates and other website maintenance tasks.
Protect yourself and your clients from hackers, malware, and phishing attempts.
Website maintenance costs are minimal when you consider the consequences.
It’s time to get serious about choosing a website maintenance service provider, such as Website Helpers Perth.
Consequences of Outdated Website? What Do You Mean?
The number one concern for any business owner with a website is security. When your site is outdated (themes, plugins, WordPress), this screams EASY ACCESS to hackers. They can see that you don’t care and are quick to grab your site for their purposes.
In addition, poor website performance metrics and slow loading times result in poor user experience. This will hurt your business, and search engines, especially Google, will penalise you. Lower SEO rankings are bad for your business!
Other items that will hurt your SEO ranking are broken links, outdated content, and critical forms (such as contact forms that don’t work).
Yes, these items can be repaired, but the longer you wait, the more expensive it will be to fix, far more expensive than website maintenance costs!
You can avoid all the above problems by performing regular maintenance tasks or hiring website maintenance professionals.
How Website Helpers Perth Can Help
If some of the things mentioned above scare you, they should. We aren’t fear-mongering, but think about how many companies have been sued for data breaches. Yikes!
A maintenance plan is one of the easiest ways to prevent hackers and protect your business reputation!
When you hire Website Helpers Perth, you can rest easy and focus on growing your business, without worrying or spending time updating, backing up, and wondering if hackers have accessed your data!
We offer the following website maintenance services:
- Weekly Plugin Updates (for website security)
- Weekly Theme Updates (prevent hackers from gaining access and improve website performance)
- Daily Backups (This allows us to restore your site in case there is a problem.)
- Broken Link Check (This improves user experience and improves your SEO.)
- 24/7 Daily Security Monitoring (This prevents most malware and hacking attempts. If a hacker does gain access, we will know right away and can remove/repair any damage quickly.)
- Manual Quality Assurance Site Review (After updates, we ensure that the updates were successful and didn’t cause any issues, such as broken links, etc.)
- Weekly Contact Form Checks (This prevents lost leads.)
- Contact Form Protection (This blocks spam emails to your clients.)
- Monthly Reporting (so you know what we did each month)
- 2 Hours Free Monthly Website Fixes (This is a $378 value!)
- Discounted Pricing for Developer Hours if required (If repairs take longer than 2 hours per month, we offer a discount for any additional hours that might be necessary.)
- No Long-Term Contracts!
Unlike many other website maintenance services, we don’t lock you into lengthy one or two-year contracts. We offer month-to-month pricing that is an affordable option.
We are Aussies!
Our expert team consists of lifelong Perth residents. We understand that sometimes, profit margins are thin and you don’t want to spend a fortune on maintenance costs.
We do frequent SEO checks to ensure that you have fresh content and updated, current themes to improve your SEO strategy.
You can ask us about SEO content for your business.
Whether you have a small to medium-sized business with a brick-and-mortar store, an e-commerce site, a vlog, or a blog, we can help you with website maintenance you can count on!
Don’t let an outdated or un-updated website, or hackers accessing sensitive data, ruin your business! Keep your reputation in good standing by letting Website Helpers Perth do your routine website maintenance and repairs.
Get Started Today!
Contact us today! Whether you need repairs, think your site is compromised, or have concerns about web maintenance and the maintenance cost, we are happy to discuss every detail with you.
Worried that you won’t understand the lingo? Not a problem! You are an expert at your business, and we understand that not everyone is tech-savvy!
We promise to explain things to you in a common language that you will easily understand.
Contact Website Helpers Perth!
We want to be your website maintenance service provider! We will do whatever it takes to get your business and show you how easy web maintenance can be when you hire Website Helpers Perth.
Contact our experts today for a customised website maintenance plan that will fit your budget! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!