Website Maintenance Checklist
Implementing a proper maintenance schedule ensures your site will continue to work for your as one of your most valuable marketing tools. We’ve developed a checklist of tasks to keep your site working great for website visitors and to keep you ahead of the competition.
Before you begin:
- Install Google Analytics
- Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and confirm your site
- Set up a backup service and set daily database backups and at least weekly full site backups. Store these on a separate web server. For backup services we recommend BackupBuddy and for remote server’s we recommend Amazon S3 (or Dropbox or Google Drive).
- Use a third-party SMTP service to send emails from your web server. We recommend Mandrill or Sendgrid.
- Monitor website security with automatic scanning. We highly recommend Sucuri.
- Monitor website uptime. We recommend Uptime Robot and Pingdom Tools.
Weekly Website Checks
- All pages on the front end of the website are loading without errors
- Backups are performed daily and stored off site
- Update Content Management System software and plugins
- Check all forms to ensure they are working properly
- Review and resolve any issues with emails sent from the web server
- Check and remove spam comments, form submissions and user accounts
- Check for any broken links
- Check for 404 errors and resolve these by fixing links or redirecting
- Marketing: write one blog post and share it with your networks
Monthly Website Checks
- Check website loading speed. If more than 3 seconds then consult with your web developer to improve speed
- Review security scans and resolve any issues
- Review website statistics. What is your most popular content? What is your least popular? Where are visitors coming from? What is your best conversion source? Tweak your content to suit
- Review your local search visibility
- Marketing: send an update to your email list
Quarterly Website Checks
- Review website – what could be improved?
- Web Graphics and photos – are these up to date? Could they be improved to be more current?
- Check your website content – what is dated and what could be improved?
- Review and tweak meta title and meta description tags
- Test and tweak forms and automated messages to improve conversion rates. Ensure this automatically integrates with your CRM and email marketing system
- Improve automation: What tasks do you have to perform regularly? Could these be automated?
- Test the website to ensure that it looks and displays properly on the most popular browsers and mobile devices
- Validate your site. (CSS/HTML, Accessibility, Mobile-friendly)
- Review and adjust website advertising campaigns
- Check backup health by restoring the most recent backup to a separate web server
- Check the uptime logs. If uptime is less than 99.9% then consult with web host. Consider alternative web host if they can’t provide a solution
Yearly Website Checks
- Update the copyright date in your website footer and in any other references
- Review each page of the site for content accuracy
- Renew your website domains name(s)
- Review your website strategy to align with your business goals
- Consider updating the website design
Disclaimer: Some of the links contained in this article are affiliate links. We only ever link to sites and services that we have tested ourselves and would recommend to our grandmothers.
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