Wordpress Maintenance Guide for Beginners

I’m a SEO expert and strategic website designer with 14 years of experience. Take it from me, the cost of not maintaining your WordPress website can include lost sales, lost data, damage to your reputation, and a lower return on investment. It’s essential to keep your website up-to-date, secure, and optimized to ensure that it continues to meet your business needs and goals. Use this checklist to maintain your site.

Maintaining your strategic website design on WordPress doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s our Beginner’s Guide to help you keep your website running smoothly and optimized.

Read through the 9 website maintenance tasks for WordPress websites, as well as our detailed website maintenance list on how to keep your website in the best shape.

Wordpress Page Speed and Loading Time

Page speed and loading time are essential considerations for any website—especially those built with Wordpress. Ensuring your site loads quickly and efficiently is key to providing a great user experience and improving your rankings on search engines.

A slow-loading site can be incredibly frustrating for visitors, leading to high bounce rates and a decrease in conversions. Fortunately, with the right website maintenance packages, you can improve these metrics significantly.

A good maintenance plan should be centered around optimizing page speed and loading time. This means ensuring the server is properly configured and that the code powering the website is optimized for performance. Additionally, images, videos, and other large files should be compressed so they load quickly.

It’s also important to ensure that the content on your website is up-to-date and that any plugins or themes you’re using are the most current versions. Outdated content and plugins can slow down your website, and they can also create security issues.

Finally, caching plugins and CDNs (content delivery networks) should be used to ensure that your content is served up quickly and efficiently. Caching plugins store a version of your content on the server, so it doesn’t have to be generated every time a visitor requests a page. CDNs allow your website to be served from multiple data centers around the world, so visitors from different locations can access your content quickly.

With the right website maintenance plan, you can ensure that your website loads quickly and efficiently—which is essential for providing a great user experience and improving your search engine rankings.

Update WordPress Plugins and Themes

When it comes to website maintenance, keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is essential. Updates to the WordPress core, plugins, and themes are important for website security and performance.

Updating WordPress plugins and themes can help protect your site from malicious attacks by hackers. With each new update, developers provide fixes for any security vulnerabilities. Additionally, updating plugins and themes can help to improve the overall performance of your website.

In the WordPress dashboard, you will be able to see when a plugin or theme needs to be updated. This is a good reminder to ensure that all plugins and themes are up to date. It is important to note, however, that updating plugins and themes can sometimes lead to compatibility issues. It’s important to check for any compatibility issues before updating.

If you do not have the time to manually update your WordPress plugins and themes, you can opt for a website maintenance package that will do it for you. With a website maintenance package, you can have the peace of mind that your website is secure and up to date.

No matter what website maintenance plan you choose, updating WordPress plugins and themes is essential for website security and performance. It is important to regularly check for updates and ensure that all plugins and themes are up to date.

Monitor Your Site’s Security

Maintaining site security for custom built WordPress sites is essential for website maintenance. As WordPress is an open-source platform, it can be vulnerable to malicious attacks, such as malware or viruses. If your WordPress site is not properly monitored and maintained, it could become compromised and damaged, leading to poor user experience and damaging your reputation.

Monitoring site security is an important part of any website maintenance package. It involves regularly checking your site for any signs of malicious activity, and taking steps to prevent them. This can include scanning your site for malicious code, updating plugins and themes, and checking for any unauthorized logins. By monitoring site security, you can ensure that your WordPress site is secure and running smoothly.

It is also important to have a backup of your WordPress site in case of any unexpected issues. If your site is compromised, it is much easier to restore it to a previous version if you have a backup. This is why having regular backups of your WordPress site is an essential part of website maintenance.

Monitoring site security for WordPress sites is a critical aspect of website maintenance. It helps ensure that your site is safe and secure, and that your users have a positive experience. By taking the necessary steps to protect your WordPress site, you can ensure that your site remains secure and running smoothly for years to come.

Daily Backup

For any WordPress website owner, daily backups are an essential part of website maintenance. Backups provide the safety net that you need to protect your website from any potential harm. Without daily backups, you risk losing valuable data, information, and content if something were to happen to your site.

Having daily backups means that if something were to happen to your website, you wouldn’t have to start from scratch. You can easily restore your website to the state it was in the day before anything happened, quickly and with minimal effort.

Daily backups also provide peace of mind. Knowing that your website is backed up every day can help you rest easy, knowing that you won’t have to worry about the potential of losing your website’s data.

At our hosting service, we offer daily backups as part of our maintenance package. Our backup system is designed to be automatic and efficient. We back up your site every day, so you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself. We also store your backups securely, so you don’t have to worry about them being lost or compromised.

Daily backups are an important part of website maintenance. They provide the safety net that you need to protect your website, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing your data is secure. With our hosting service, you can rest easy knowing that your website’s data is backed up and stored securely each day.

Clean Up Trash and Other Media Junk Files

Keeping your Wordpress website up and running is essential for your online presence. That’s why regular maintenance and cleanup of your website is essential. A key part of maintenance is cleaning up trash and other media junk files.

Trash and other media junk files can accumulate over time, slowing down your website and compromising its performance. These files can include cached data, orphaned files, and temporary files. If left unchecked, they can take up storage space and cause errors on the website. To ensure your website continues to run smoothly, it’s important to periodically clean up these files.

Fortunately, there are automated tools available to help clean up and remove these files. These tools can help you quickly and easily identify and delete any trash and other media junk files. Additionally, they can help you detect and repair any broken links, as well as identify any other potential issues which may be causing your website to slow down.

Regularly cleaning up trash and other media junk files is essential for website maintenance. Doing so will help ensure your website continues to run smoothly and that your online presence remains intact. Fortunately, the process doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. With the right tools, you can easily and quickly clean up and remove these files, allowing your website to perform optimally.

Review Your Site’s On-page SEO Elements

Maintaining your website’s on-page SEO elements is essential for any Wordpress site. It can help your website reach the right audience, ensure it shows up in search results, and make sure it remains visible and relevant.

Reviewing and updating the on-page SEO elements of a Wordpress site involves analyzing the content, making sure that the meta titles and descriptions are optimized, and optimizing all other aspects of the site such as images and videos. This helps increase the visibility of your site as well as helping it to rank higher in search engine results.

Using an experienced website maintenance provider can help you ensure that your on-page SEO elements are up to date and optimized for the best results. They can review, update and make sure that the content is relevant and optimized for the keywords you want to target. They can also optimize images, videos, and other elements that search engines use to determine rankings.

By taking the time to review and optimize the on-page SEO elements of a Wordpress site, you can ensure that your website remains visible and relevant. This will result in more potential customers and an increased chance of success.

Find and Fix All Broken Links

Broken links and 404 errors can be a major nuisance for Wordpress sites. They can negatively impact user experience and cause a website to appear unprofessional. That’s why it’s essential for website maintenance to include fixing broken links and 404 errors.

These errors occur when a link points to a page or resource that no longer exists, or when the link itself is incorrect. It’s important to identify and fix broken links on a regular basis to ensure visitors have a positive experience on your website.

At our company, we utilize a thorough process to identify and fix broken links on Wordpress sites. Our team of experienced professionals understands how important it is to keep your website functioning properly and is committed to ensuring your site is running smoothly.

We understand how frustrating it can be to have broken links on your website. That’s why we make it a priority to fix these errors quickly and efficiently.

Your website is integral to your business and keeping it maintained is essential. Contact us today to learn more about our website maintenance packages and how we can help you keep your Wordpress site running smoothly.

Optimize Site’s Images

Optimizing your site’s images is essential for website maintenance and success. Images can take a long time to load, and if not optimized, they can slow down your website and impact your search engine rankings. Un-optimized images can also take up a lot of storage space, resulting in increased hosting costs.

By optimizing images, you will decrease the time it takes for them to load when a user visits your website. This will provide a better user experience and help you rank higher in search engine results. Additionally, optimized images will require less storage space and save you money.

To optimize images, you can resize them, compress them, and use the correct file format. These steps can reduce the size of the image without compromising its quality. By taking the time to optimize your images, you can ensure that your website visitors have a positive experience and your website remains well-maintained.

Check Your Site’s Download and Affiliate Links

Maintaining the accuracy and functionality of your website forms, download links and affiliate links is an essential part of website maintenance for Wordpress sites. A website form that doesn’t work properly or a broken link can lead to a bad user experience, lost customers and lost sales. Additionally, if a website form is incorrect, it can cause confusion for your customers and lead to inaccurate data being collected.

Regularly checking forms, download links, and affiliate links to ensure they are functioning properly and accurately is a critical part of website maintenance. Doing so can help ensure a positive user experience, leading to more conversions and increased sales.

Performing regular checks on your website forms, download links, and affiliate links is also important for your website’s security. If a link is broken or a form is not functioning properly, it may be an indication that your website has been hacked or compromised. Regular checks can help detect these security issues early so they can be addressed quickly.

Ultimately, checking your website’s forms, download links, and affiliate links is a critical part of website maintenance for Wordpress sites. Doing so can help ensure a positive user experience, more conversions and increased sales, as well as enhanced website security.

Website Maintenance Summary

It’s important to perform these WordPress website maintenance tasks to keep your website running and performing optimally. But there are some other routine tasks that you should also do to ensure that it works well across all platforms and devices. Make sure to take care of these tasks immediately to get the best out of your site.

These tasks may take some time, but it’s worth it in the end. With regular maintenance, your website will be able to operate at peak performance and provide a great user experience. Plus, you’ll be able to avoid any potential problems or disasters that could arise from neglecting to take care of your website.

So don’t wait – make sure to take care of these tasks regularly to keep your website in a healthy state. This will help you keep your website running smoothly and ensure that it’s always delivering the best performance.

Detailed Website Maintenance Schedule

Initial Wordpress Website Maintenance Tasks

Change All Your WordPress Passwords

Regularly changing your passwords ensures that any malicious actors that may have gained access to your accounts won’t be able to stay for long. It also helps protect against brute force attacks and other malicious activities. Moreover, it helps maintain website security and integrity, as any unauthorized changes made to the website can be easily tracked.

For all these reasons, it’s essential to use highly secure passwords, and to regularly change them. This will help keep your WordPress website protected, and ensure that your website remains safe and secure.

The downside to complex passwords is that it can be difficult to remember them. To make life easier, we suggest downloading a password manager app, like LastPass. This will securely store your passwords and allow you to fill them in without having to type them out.

For more information, be sure to read our guide on the best ways to manage WordPress passwords.

Create a Complete Backup of Your Website

Having a reliable backup guarantees that your WordPress website is safe and sound.

Plus, it’s also important to keep in mind that performing regular backups can save you a lot of time and stress in the event of a hack or a website crash. Without a backup in place, you may end up having to start from scratch and rebuild the entire website.

Our hosting services include free daily backups, so you can rest assured your website is secure. Backing up is a critical part of website maintenance, so make sure to do it regularly.

Check and Update All WordPress Files, Plugins, and Themes

Regular updates to WordPress Files, Plugins, and Themes are essential for the ongoing maintenance of any WordPress site. Ensuring a website is updated with the latest version of WordPress, Plugins, and Themes helps it to run smoothly whilst reducing the risk of any potential security issues.

By checking for updates regularly, site owners can stay on top of any security risks, as well as ensuring their website remains compatible with the latest versions of plugins and themes. Failure to keep WordPress files, plugins, and themes updated can result in the website being vulnerable to malware, slowing down, or even becoming completely inaccessible.

Regular updates not only help to keep the site secure and running optimally, but they can also ensure the user has access to the latest features available. Updates are quick and easy to install and can be managed with a few clicks. Keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is a crucial part of website maintenance.

Check and Delete Spam Comments

Moderating comments on your website is essential for website maintenance and security. It not only ensures that your content remains relevant and engaging, but it also shields your website from risks associated with malicious commenters. To ensure that your comments remain safe and that your website is secure, it’s important to moderate comments regularly.

Enabling Comments vs Disabling Comments

Enabling comments on websites is a great way to get feedback and engagement from your readers. However, it can also become a breeding ground for spam. Spammers typically leave comments on websites to promote their own products, services, or websites. They may even include malicious links, which can be detrimental to your site’s reputation and security.

If you don’t post regularly or your content strategy isn’t focused on on-page engagement, you may want to consider disabling comments entirely. This will help you maintain control over the quality of your website’s content and avoid any potential spam issues. You can also choose to moderate comments in order to manually approve or deny them, ensuring that you maintain a spam-free environment.

Comment Plugins

Native WordPress comments are a straightforward way to add comments to WordPress posts and pages. They are integrated into the WordPress system, making them familiar to WordPress users and easy to install.

Facebook comments plugin offers the advantage of allowing users to comment with their Facebook profile. Additionally, comments are shared with the user’s Facebook network, potentially leading to more engagement with the post or page. Facebook comments are newer and more dynamic, with features such as sharing with the user’s Facebook network, but they come with the overhead of needing to set up a Facebook app and managing user comments in the Facebook environment.

The choice between native WordPress comments and Facebook comments depends on the specific needs of the website. If the goal is maximum engagement, Facebook comments may be the way to go. If reliability and ease of use are the priority, native WordPress comments may be the best solution.

There are several ways to moderate comments, including native WordPress comments, Facebook comments. It’s important to moderate comments at least once a week, or more frequently if you have a high volume of comments. Not only will this ensure that all comments are addressed, but it will also help you catch any malicious comments quickly.

By moderating comments regularly, you can ensure that your website remains secure and that the conversation between you and your followers remains engaging. In addition, it will help your website maintain its integrity, as any malicious comments can be filtered out. Don’t let malicious comments go unchecked – start moderating your comments today.

We understand the importance of spam comment management and offer our SPAM-proof Comment Hack Freebie to help. This free download is easy to use and provides an extra layer of protection for your website.

Test All Your WordPress Forms

Plugins like Elementor Pro & WPForms makes it a breeze to create stunning forms on your website.

Unfortunately, misconfigurations on your WordPress hosting server or email service provider can cause these forms to stop sending emails. You wouldn’t want to miss a lead.

Be sure to check all your forms to make sure they’re working as expected. If any of them aren’t, our guide to fixing the WordPress not sending email issue is here to help.

Daily WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks

Regular maintenance doesn’t usually take place on this level, but your daily tasks do involve some of the most important aspects of website management. If your site isn’t active with content publishing and user engagement, you can even do some of these tasks weekly, instead of daily.

This makes your website upkeep easy, efficient, and straightforward. It’s a great way to make sure your website runs smoothly and is always up-to-date. Plus, you can save time and effort if you don’t have to do these tasks daily.

These maintenance tasks are essential for the success of your website. Whether you do them daily or weekly, it’s important to get them done. Not only will your website look and run better, but you’ll also have peace of mind knowing that your website is secure and running properly.

Check Your Website’s Uptime

Websites are assets that should always be up and running, so it’s important to check on them regularly.

UptimeRobot, ManageWP and Pingdom are great plugins that can help you keep track of your website’s performance. UptimeRobot comes with both a free and a paid plan that monitors your website with 5-minute checks (or 1-minute for the Pro plan). Plus, it saves all your data to a log. ManageWP offers uptime monitoring as a premium service and other great features. Pingdom, on the other hand, offers end-user experience monitoring, plus page speed and transaction analysis.

Sometimes, a website goes offline for harmless reasons. It could be due to server maintenance or coding issues. Other times, it could be a sign of a compromised website security. No matter the cause, it’s essential to determine the source of downtime and take action quickly. With the help of these plugins, you can keep a close eye on your website’s uptime and make sure it’s always running smoothly.

Check Any Security Events

When it comes to WordPress, there are tons of amazing security plugins you can use, but I prefer to use the security that integrates with Hosting.

Here are some of the features of Siteground’s security:

Server-level security: Siteground employs a variety of security measures at the server level, such as firewalls, account isolation, and malware scanning to prevent attacks.
SSL certificate: Siteground provides a free SSL certificate, which encrypts the connection between the user’s browser and the server, keeping sensitive data secure.
Automatic updates: Siteground automatically updates the core of WordPress, Joomla, and other popular applications, to ensure they are up to date with the latest security patches.
Brute-force protection: Siteground’s systems detect and block brute-force attacks by limiting login attempts and blocking IP addresses that try to breach the login page.
Malware scanning: Siteground provides regular malware scanning for all sites hosted on their servers, and if any malware is found, it is automatically removed.
Customized security solutions: Siteground provides customized security solutions, such as advanced backup and restore features, to help users secure their websites.
Datacenter security: Siteground’s datacenters are equipped with advanced security systems, including 24/7 security staff, biometric access control, and video surveillance.
Customer support: Siteground’s customer support team is available 24/7 to assist with security-related issues, and they are trained to help users identify and fix security vulnerabilities.

No matter which plugin you choose, it’s important to make sure you keep it updated and regularly check for any security issues. Additionally, you should keep your WordPress version up to date and use strong passwords to protect your site. With the right security measures in place, you can keep your website and its visitors safe.

Create a Backup of Your Website

Creating a backup of your website is one of those things that you might be able to move over to the weekly maintenance task list. If changes to your site don’t happen every day — if you don’t post a lot of content, or you don’t get lots of comments — you can easily backup your website once a week, plus every time you make a change to the core files and plugins.

Your hosting provider might offer regular website backups. Depending on your plan, they can occur monthly, weekly, or daily. Whatever they are, you shouldn’t rely on them entirely and should always perform your backups as well.

Moderate the Comments

Enabling Comments vs Disabling Comments

Comment Plugins

Weekly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks

Weekly WordPress website maintenance tasks are essential for keeping sites running smoothly and securely. Ensuring website maintenance is a key part of website ownership and should not be overlooked.

Weekly tasks include running updates, optimizing databases, creating backups, checking for broken links, and reviewing security settings. Updates are important for ensuring plugins, themes, and WordPress core are up to date and functioning correctly. Optimizing databases is necessary to keep sites running quickly and efficiently. Backups are essential for restoring a site back to a working state, should any issues arise. Checking for broken links keeps users from landing on error pages, which can create a negative user experience. Lastly, security settings should be reviewed to make sure the site is protected from malicious attacks.

Taking the time to run these weekly maintenance tasks will help ensure a website is secure, efficient, and working correctly. Performing regular maintenance is an important part of website ownership and should not be neglected.

Ensure Analytics Are Working

Analytics are a crucial part of running any website, and ensuring they are working properly every week is a must. Through analytics, we can measure the performance of our website and make necessary improvements for optimal performance. Not checking analytics regularly can lead to missed opportunities for growth and risk not having the data to inform decisions.

Without analytics, an operator would be flying blind, not knowing how the website is performing or how visitors are engaging with it. This could mean missing out on vital insight into user behavior, trends, and weak areas, which can affect customer retention, conversion rates and ultimately, the website’s success.

Regularly checking analytics provides an essential platform for assessing website performance and devising strategies to ensure maximum customer engagement and satisfaction. Ensuring your analytics are installed and working properly also helps when you’re ready to run ads with retargeting.

Both our Elementor & Showit websites, typically, include the following analytics:

Google Analytics
Facebook Pixel
Pinterest Tag

If you don’t want to look through code for tracking, utilize the following Chrome extensions:

Pageview tracking measures the number of times a page is viewed, while user behavior tracking tracks how users interact with a website. Conversion tracking shows when users take a desired action, such as making a purchase. Heatmaps provide a visual representation of how users interact with a website, highlighting areas of interest and potential issues.

Analytics can provide powerful insights into website performance and user behavior. They can be used to identify areas for improvement and to measure success. With analytics, businesses can track the performance of their website, understand their users, and make data-driven decisions.

Update the Files, Plugins, and Themes

Perform a Malware Scan

Regularly performing malware scans on websites is essential to ensuring website security and maintenance. By scanning for malicious code, website owners can identify any potential security breaches and take the necessary measures to protect their website. Not doing so can lead to compromised sites, data theft, and even financial losses.

Keeping the active theme and plugins up to date, and deleting any unused ones, can help protect websites. In addition to this, regularly performing malware scans will keep websites safe and secure. These scans can help detect malicious code and suspicious activities, allowing website owners to take the necessary steps to protect their site.

Overall, malware scans are an important part of website maintenance and should be performed regularly. Website owners should be aware of the risks associated with not performing these scans and take the necessary measures to protect their sites.

Run Performance Tests

Performance tests and page load speed are essential for website maintenance. Slow loading pages can result in reduced user satisfaction, lower search engine rankings, and lost sales. Ensuring your website runs as quickly as possible is key to maximizing user engagement and satisfaction.

Large images, complex coding, and excess plugins are common culprits of slow page speeds. Optimizing images and scripts, limiting plugins, and running regular performance tests can help ensure your website visitors get the best experience. Additionally, caching and minifying code can reduce page loading times.

Regular performance tests can help identify issues that slow down page speed, and make sure your website is running at peak performance. Investing in website performance is essential for success. Not optimizing your website could lead to lost customers, reduced search engine rankings, and a damaged reputation.

Do a Visual Check

As a website administrator, it is essential to do a visual check of your website regularly. Not only does it help to ensure that your website is functioning properly, but it also allows you to catch any errors before your visitors see them.

Viewing a website in “preview” mode on the backend is not always reliable and can lead to many issues. Website caching can prevent you from seeing the changes you make immediately and may cause you to miss any errors that have been introduced. It is best practice to clear your cache and view the website in an Incognito window to confirm any changes. This will ensure that you are seeing the latest version of the website, rather than a cached version.

Regular visual checks can help to prevent any issues from affecting your visitors. It is important to look at the website as both a visitor and administrator to make sure everything is running as it should. Remember to clear your cache and view your website in an Incognito window to confirm changes. Doing this will help to guarantee a smooth and enjoyable experience for your visitors.

Monthly to Quarterly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks

Regular website maintenance is essential for any business or organization. It helps ensure websites are up-to-date, secure, and performing at their best. Doing quarterly maintenance tasks can help identify and fix any issues that can arise. This can include updating plugins, checking for broken links, or reviewing security protocols.

Quarterly website maintenance is an important step in keeping websites secure and operational. It helps businesses maintain their online presence and ensure their customers are getting the best experience when visiting their website. By taking the necessary steps to review and update websites, businesses can protect their data and their customers.

Clean Up and Optimize the Database

Maintaining a WordPress website is essential for its long-term success and one integral part of maintenance is cleaning and optimizing the database. This should be done on a quarterly basis as WordPress databases can get cluttered over time and this clutter can slow down your website and cause errors. If a website runs slow, it can negatively affect user experience and potentially cause visitors to leave the website altogether.

Failing to clean and optimize your database can also lead to security issues. Unused data can be a risk for vulnerabilities, malware and hacker attacks. Keeping your database clean helps to ensure that your website is running as efficiently and securely as possible.

Cleaning and optimizing your database is a simple process, but it’s an important part of website maintenance. Regularly performing this task will help to keep your website running smoothly and protect your website from potential security threats.

Remove Unnecessary Plugins

Maintaining a website is essential for any business or individual to ensure their website is functioning optimally. Part of this maintenance is removing unnecessary plugins. Unused plugins can cause conflicts with other plugins, making the website slow and prone to errors. They can also contain security vulnerabilities, leaving the website open to malicious attacks.

Removing unnecessary plugins can also help improve the overall performance of the website. This can help improve the user experience and make the website easier to navigate. It can also reduce the amount of data stored on the website, which can help with website speed and loading times.

In summary, removing unnecessary plugins is an important step for website maintenance. Not doing so can lead to performance issues, security vulnerabilities, and other problems that can have a negative impact on the website. Regularly removing plugins and other data can help keep the website optimized and secure.

Update the Theme

Regularly updating the theme of your WordPress site is essential for website maintenance. Keeping your theme up to date prevents your website from becoming vulnerable to security risks, as older versions of themes are often more prone to malicious attacks. In addition, updated themes are more likely to be compatible with newer versions of WordPress, allowing your website to take advantage of the latest features and functionalities.

Failure to update your site’s theme can have serious consequences. It can lead to your website becoming slow and unresponsive, as well as being vulnerable to hackers. Furthermore, outdated themes may not be able to support other software and plugins, significantly reducing the functionality of your website.

It is important to keep your WordPress theme up to date so your website remains secure and fully functional. Doing this will also ensure your website is able to take advantage of the latest features and technologies available, helping you stay one step ahead of the competition.

Check for Broken Links

The importance of regularly checking for broken links and 404 errors on your WordPress site cannot be overstated. Broken links can lead to user dissatisfaction and can even damage your website’s SEO ranking. Keeping your website in working order is essential for website maintenance and SEO.

Failing to check your site for broken links and 404 errors can also have a negative impact on your website’s performance. If a user stumbles upon a broken link or a 404 error, they may become frustrated and leave your website. This could result in a drop in traffic and a decrease in your search engine rankings.

Therefore, it’s important to regularly check your WordPress website for broken links and 404 errors. This way, you can prevent user dissatisfaction and ensure that your website is running as smoothly as possible. Taking the time to check your website can also give you peace of mind knowing that your website is running optimally.

Check in With Google

Regularly checking Google Search Console & Google Analytics is an essential part of website maintenance and SEO. Keeping track of these metrics helps to identify any issues or problems as quickly as possible, allowing for faster and more effective resolution. Not monitoring these metrics can lead to undetected issues that can result in a decrease in website performance and organic traffic.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics provide invaluable insights into how users interact with your website, allowing you to identify any issues and optimize for maximum visibility in organic search. Google Search Console also provides visibility of any technical errors that may prevent the website from being crawled, indexed and ranked.

Including SEO monitoring in your website maintenance package is a great way to ensure that your website is performing optimally and is visible to potential customers. Identifying and resolving issues quickly is essential to ensure that your website remains at the top of organic search rankings.

We understand the importance of website maintenance and SEO, and that’s why we include SEO monitoring as part of our website maintenance packages. Our team of experts will ensure that your website remains at the top of organic search rankings and that any potential issues are identified and resolved swiftly.

Perform a Content Audit

Regular content audits are essential for website maintenance and SEO optimization. They allow us to assess content for outdated statistics, words, numbers, and phrases that date the content, evaluate broken links, and outline UX/UI improvements.

Failing to keep content up to date and optimized can lead to a variety of problems including a decrease in website visibility, traffic, and customer engagement. It can also lead to an increase in errors and difficulty for search engines to properly index your website.

Content audits also help identify areas for improvement and provide actionable insights. This can range from optimizing content for keywords, to removing irrelevant or duplicate content, and even improving user experience.

Regular content audits are a part of most of our website maintenance packages, and are essential for staying ahead of the competition and gaining visibility in the search engine result pages.

Yearly WordPress Website Maintenance Tasks

Yearly WordPress website maintenance tasks are essential for website performance, SEO, and security. Neglecting these tasks can lead to decreased page loading speed, outdated plugins, and security vulnerabilities.

Maintaining your WordPress website is key to keeping it running optimally and efficiently. Updating plugins and themes ensures any security risks or bugs are addressed, as well as any compatibility issues. Additionally, updating your content regularly ensures your website is up-to-date and relevant.

Failing to maintain your WordPress website can have serious consequences. It can leave you vulnerable to malicious attacks, resulting in data loss, website downtime, and other security breaches. Updating your website also helps maintain its search engine ranking, ensuring it is easily discoverable by potential customers.

Yearly WordPress website maintenance is essential for keeping your website secure, up-to-date, and optimized for SEO. Regular maintenance is the best way to ensure your website continues to perform and remain competitive.

Review Your Web Host

Evaluating your web hosting annually is essential for the success of your business. It provides you with an opportunity to assess the performance of your current hosting provider and allows you to make well-informed decisions about what is best for your website. By regularly reviewing your hosting plan, you can identify any areas where performance could be improved, as well as any potential cost savings.

It’s also important to consider any new features or services that your hosting provider offers. Keeping up to date with the latest web hosting technologies ensures that your website is running at peak performance and is able to take advantage of any new opportunities.

Finally, evaluating your web hosting can help you ensure your website is secure. Regularly checking that your hosting provider is offering the latest security protocols, such as secure socket layers (SSL), can give you peace of mind that your website is safe and secure.

By evaluating your web hosting every year, you can ensure that your website is performing optimally, and that you are taking advantage of the best web hosting services available.

Review the Theme

Evaluating your web theme is an important step to ensure your website is performing optimally. It should be done on an annual basis, or more often if needed. To help you assess your theme, consider these questions:

Is it compatible with the latest version of your CMS?
Does it have a valid code structure?
Is it mobile-friendly?
Does it include the latest plugins and support?

Your website should be easy to use, engaging, and secure. Evaluating your web theme regularly will help ensure your website remains up-to-date with the latest web standards. It will also help to ensure your website is secure, efficient, and provides a great user experience.

Evaluating your web theme is a valuable and necessary step to ensure your website is successful. Take the time to ask yourself the important questions and make sure your theme is the best it can be.

Review the Plugins and Third-Party Services

Regularly evaluating your website plugins and third-party services is essential for a successful website. Doing so every year ensures that your website is secure, up to date and running smoothly. When assessing your website, consider the following questions:

Are the plugins and third-party services still needed?
Are the plugins and third-party services compatible with the current version of WordPress?
Are the plugins and third-party services up to date and secure?
Are the plugins and third-party services providing an optimal user experience?
Are the plugins and third-party services optimized for mobile?

Evaluating your website plugins and third-party services every year will help you identify any potential issues, allowing you to make the necessary changes to keep your website secure and running optimally. This will ensure that your website visitors have a great experience and that your website is safe from cyber-attacks.

Bonus: Troubleshoot Maintenance Tasks

Troubleshooting WordPress website maintenance tasks on a live site can be a risky endeavor.

Common issues that can arise include incompatible plugins, broken links, and slow page loading. To prevent these problems, all website maintenance packages should include a staging site.

Staging sites are a copy of your live site that can be used to safely test changes before they are implemented on the live site. This provides a safe environment to test any changes before pushing them live, minimizing the risks associated with website maintenance.

The most successful way to troubleshoot WordPress issues is to first test on a staging site. This allows you to make changes without affecting the current website and also allows you to identify any issues that may arise. Once any problems have been identified, it can be easier to find solutions before pushing the changes live.

To protect against downtime and other risks, our website maintenance packages include staging sites. If you are looking for a reliable website hosting plan, make sure it includes a staging site. This will ensure the longevity and stability of your website, making it easier to troubleshoot any WordPress maintenance tasks.

If you decide to perform an update on a live site, it is important to use Google Analytics to determine when your site traffic is the lowest before doing the update. This will minimize the risk of the update adversely affecting the user experience.