5 Benefits of Website Maintenance And Support Services
Website maintenance and support services are all updates and care your site needs after its launch. If you built it on WordPress, make sure you know the right ways to do that, or have a professional WordPress agency handle it for you.
WordPress powers 43% of websites globally as of 2022 due to its variety of designs, extentions, storage space and user-friendliness.
The look and functionality of your website corresponds directly to the scalability of your business and leads that engage with it. Thus, if it loses its glamour and is prone to security issues, you essentially pass on sales opportunities.
In this article, we will walk you through the benefits that come with WordPress website maintenance and support. Also, we will explore some crucial steps to max out the performance and stability of your site.
What Are Website Maintenance and Support Services and Why Are They So Important?
WordPress maintenance and support services cover revisions of the code, updates of the WordPress core, plugins, themes, security checks, but also content, conversions, SEO, and more. It is important to keep an eye on them and monitor regularly to make sure your website is on point.
Failing to maintain your website may result in all the hard work that you/ your web developer team have invested in going to waste. Negative consequences could be: broken links not redirected, broken functionality, getting hacked and losing sensitive data, low loading speed, Google penalty, failed functionality on different devices etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of website owners feel capable of doing all this work by themselves. Indeed, if they have the necessary knowledge and skills in WordPress development and UX design, there is no worry there. However, provided that is not the case, it’s better to partner up with a team of WordPress developers and inbound marketing specialists. They can help with the successful maintenance of your site.
Benefits of Professional Website Maintenance
Enhanced Security
Having a secure website is crucial to make it hacker-proof and unharmed. A professional WordPress agency will make sure that the plugins you have on your dashboard are properly coded and protected.
Better SEO performance
As mentioned above, a lot of website owners are trying to just wing it. However, that could have detrimental consequences on their site’s rankings on search engines. A website with proper SEO would be at the top search results on the particular terms it has been optimized for. As a result, you get to keep and increase Google search hits on your blog. Thus, a good website maintenance professional would work closely with your SEO team. This is to make sure you keep the latest Google algorithms into account regarding content, images and other on-page elements, and maintain a steady stream of authority backlinks.
More Room for Business Focus
Once you delegate the technical stuff in the safe hands of a professional team, you can fully focus on growing your business. As entrepreneurs, people often get carried away trying to wear different hats in the same way and try to do it all. That’s not efficient nor effective.
Improved UX
A website that is not optimized for user experience is bound to drive visitors away.Therefore, you need to make sure UX design is taken care of and maintained professionally. Consistency in web design is very important. It facilitates users’ navigation across different pages and sections of your site. The more people end up staying on your website and clicking through, the more conversions for your business.
Uninterrupted Conversions Flow and Traffic
Website maintenance professionals would make sure they do all the necessary changes that make your site more appealing to visitors and search engines. As a result, there won’t be any spikes in your conversion rates and traffic. Instead, you will have a steady on-going flow to your business.
Steps to Maintain And Support A WordPress Website Regularly
WordPress is an amazing platform but once you launch your website, regular maintenance is fundamental for good performance. Here are a few core steps to keep you site safe and secure:
Visit Your Key Pages Weekly
The easiest way to spot discrepancies within a website is by browsing through it. Click around, test buttons and links at random. Keep your eyes open for any empty spots that could be better off filled with some design work or maybe a contact form to make a better use of space.
SEO
Optimizing for search engines is a key service WordPress maintenance professionals provide. It is vital for the success of your online presence. PageSpeed is a major ranking factor so your website needs to be on top of its SEO game!
Password Protection
Your website admins need to update passwords frequently – the longer and hard-to-guess, the better. Also, make use of 2-FA Authentication.
Make Backups Regularly
Backups of your WordPress website are key for keeping your data safe. If you have a blog, weekly backups are preferable. If your site has a static build, you may get away with a monthly backup.
Moderate Blog Comments
Although there are plugins like Akismet that detect spammy comments, you need to run a check on them anyway to make sure no useful comments get deleted.
File Updates
Your website maintenance and support team would make sure they always update WordPress core to the latest version, as well as plugins and themes. Otherwise, they may stop functioning.
Security Logs
Review your site’s access and error locks to catch unusual entries before it’s too late.
Audit for Broken Links and 404 Errors
Broken links and 404 pages are very bad for user experience. They stand in the way of users finding the information they are looking for. In this case, your WordPress maintenance team will look into fixing these by either 301 redirects, placing some relevant content on the error page so it is not broken anymore, and find alternatives to landing pages broken links used to go to.
Contact Form Tests
Sometimes there may be misconfiguration in your hosting or email provider that may cause contact forms to stop getting through your email inbox. Regular tests on all contact forms on a website are essential. They are key points for lead generation and conversions.
Final Thoughts
Unless you are a web development professional, getting help from a WordPress maintenance and support agency is a must for the success of your WordPress site. They will take care of the technical side of your online presence such as SEO, UX design, security and monitoring As a result, you will be able to focus on the growth of your business and revenue.
