In the rapidly evolving digital world, a website is more than just a virtual storefront; it’s a reflection of your brand, a tool for engaging with customers, and a significant part of your overall business strategy.
For WordPress websites, which are among the most popular due to their flexibility and user-friendly interface, regular maintenance is crucial. Whether you’re handling it in-house or through a professional website design company, keeping your website updated and secure is essential for many reasons.
Today, our web design agency in Melbourne will explain some of the fundamentals of WordPress website maintenance: what it is, what website maintenance includes, and why website maintenance is important.
Why Website Maintenance is important for WordPress Websites
WordPress is a powerful platform that offers endless customisation options and a vast library of plugins and themes. However, this versatility comes with its own set of challenges.
Regular maintenance ensures that your website remains functional, secure, and relevant. Some key reasons why maintaining your WordPress website is important are:
1. Website maintenance is key for security
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet, making it a prime target for hackers. According to research conducted by Astra:
- 90,000 WordPress hacks are attempted every minute
- 61% of hacked websites were outdated
- 52% of vulnerabilities arise from outdated plugins
Regular updates and maintenance protect your site from vulnerabilities by applying security patches and updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins.
2. Maintenance optimises your website for performance
Over time, websites can become sluggish due to various reasons like:
- Outdated plugins
- Excessive use of media
- Poorly optimised files
- Bloated databases
Regular maintenance helps in optimizing performance by cleaning up unnecessary files, optimising databases, and ensuring that your website loads quickly and efficiently.
3. WordPress website maintenance can improve SEO and Traffic Retention
With approximately half of all web traffic originating from search engines, SEO is crucial for generating traffic and leads. Fortunately, many website maintenance tasks also happen to be good for SEO.
Search engines favour websites that are regularly updated with fresh content and are well-maintained. Regular maintenance helps in keeping your SEO strategies up-to-date, helping your website rank higher in search engine results, driving more organic traffic.
For example, one benefit of WordPress website maintenance is improving load times and performance. This doesn’t just improve website performance – search engines prefer it too, and are more likely to display webpages that load quickly in search results.
4. User Experience
Website maintenance services aren’t just about making sure the site works well from a technical standpoint – it also means looking at the user experience as well.
A well-maintained website helps ensure a seamless user experience. Broken links, outdated content, or a slow-loading website can frustrate visitors and increase bounce rates. Unless they’re fixed, users are likely to get frustrated by these issues and leave your website without making a purchase or converting into leads.
Auditing each of these factors as part of your WordPress website maintenance plan helps identify and fix these issues promptly.
The Risks of Not Undertaking Website Maintenance
At MOO we often say that you wouldn’t buy a new car and never have it serviced – eventually it will break.
Websites are the same. Neglecting website maintenance can lead to several risks:
- Security Breaches: Without regular updates and security measures, your website becomes vulnerable to hacking attempts, malware, and other security threats. And that in turn can result in data loss, theft of sensitive information, and damage to your reputation.
- Poor Performance: An unmaintained website can become slow and unresponsive, leading to a poor user experience. This can result in lower engagement, and loss of potential customers.
- Compatibility Issues: As technology evolves, older versions of WordPress, themes, and plugins may become incompatible with new browsers and devices. Regular updates ensure compatibility and prevent functionality issues.
- Compatibility Issues: As technology evolves, older versions of WordPress, themes, and plugins may become incompatible with new browsers and devices. Regular updates ensure compatibility and prevent functionality issues.
How long does website maintenance include, and what does website maintenance include?
WordPress website maintenance involves several tasks that need to be performed regularly. Exact tasks (and therefore, how long website maintenance takes) will depend on the website, how complicated it is, and the scope of your maintenance plan.
Some common website maintenance services include but are not limited to:
Regular backups
Making backups of a website is a routine part of website maintenance. In fact, it’s often the very first step of any website maintenance plan.
Make sure that your website is backed up regularly as part of website maintenance. This ensures a previous version of the website can be quickly restored in case of any data loss or hacking incident. It also allows you to easily restore historical content such as old products or services if needed.
Updating WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins
Keeping your WordPress installation, themes, and plugins up-to-date is crucial for security and functionality. Regular updates ensure your website keeps up with bug fixes, and security patches.
It also provides new features, as many plugin developers will add more features to their plugins over time.
Security monitoring
Implement security measures like firewalls, malware scans, and security plugins as part of your monthly website maintenance. This means regularly monitoring your website for any suspicious activity or vulnerabilities.
Website maintenance can also include a security audit, which can include deleting defunct admin accounts, regularly updating passwords, and updating security plugins.
Database optimisation and clean-up
Over time, your website’s database can become cluttered with unnecessary data. This can negatively impact performance including website stability, loading times, and user experience, among other things.
Regular optimisation is vital for maintaining your website’s database, helping improve website performance and speed.
Broken link checking and backlink audits
Incorrectly-entered URLs or links to defunct webpages can negatively impact the experience of navigating a website, making it hard for users to find what they’re looking for. Broken links can also negatively impact your SEO, with “bad” URLs affecting your website’s credibility and generating traffic from unwanted users.
Regular checking for and fixing broken links enhances SEO and user experience. Performing a backlink audit allows organisations to identify unwanted or toxic links from external sites. From there, these links can be disavowed or attempts can be made to get offending links removed.
WordPress website maintenance services are crucial for your business
Regular website maintenance isn’t really an option; it’s a necessity. Whether you manage it yourself or hire a professional website design company, keeping your WordPress website updated, secure, and optimised ensures that it continues to serve your business effectively. By prioritising website maintenance, you safeguard your investment, enhance user experience, and maintain a strong online presence, which ultimately drives your business’s success.
As a leading website design company covering all aspects of website design, development and maintenance, MOO is here to help. We are a range of digital marketing services in Melbourne and beyond, including WordPress website maintenance services for all of our web design clients.
This is just one part of our marketing agency’s suite of services – we also offer:
If you’re looking for a website maintenance service or wanting to design and develop a new website, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you.