5 Reasons Why Website Maintenance Is So Important

Most business owners understand the importance of establishing a website, but often they simply create a site, launch it, and never look at it again or ignoring website maintenance entirely.

The chances you are losing potential or existing customers are going to climb if your site isn’t properly maintained, and that’s going to impact your business’s profit.

In fact, maintaining your website is like maintaining your car. You have to do regular oil changes and other safety regular checks.

Without maintenance, your car wouldn’t be able to drive for a long time.

The same thing applies to website maintenance, regular support is essential to keep your business’s visibility to grow and amplify.

Here are the top 5 main reasons why regular website maintenance is important for your business.

1. Speed up Your Website

Time is money.

According to a research by Kissmetrics, most of us don’t even wait two seconds for website content to pop up!

If a website takes almost hundred years to load, visitors will think that the site is unsecure, unsafe or not trustworthy.

Therefore, you need regular website maintenance improves your website performance and makes it more efficient. When your website performance increase, it will also increase your conversion rate and site results. 

Besides, page loading time is becoming a more important factor when it comes to search engine rankings.

According to Search Engine Journal, page speed is a confirmed ranking factor for Google’s search results. It means that if you want to rank your website higher on Google search engine result page, you need to speed up your website.

But how do you check your website speed?

Google has developed a tool called PageSpeed Insights for measuring loading time. If you need any help to improve your website speed, feel free to contact us today.

2. Enhance Your Security

We all know the proverb “better safe than sorry”.

It’s the same when it comes to the security of your website.

Launching a website without regular maintenance shall put your website in danger – getting hacked.

Well, some people might think it can’t happen to them since their site is too small – why on earth would anyone hack my site?

Besides, some people will feel that as long as their site is using SSL certificate (or HTTPs), they’re good to go.

However, your site could still get hacked like Blackhat SEO spam campaigns, or other malware attacks. Some articles also show that there is still a chance that HTTPS website can still be attacked by malware.  

A research from Expert Insights shows that an estimated 12.8 million websites are infected with malware worldwide. In 2022, the total damage by cyberattacks reached $6 trillion. Here are some recent statistics about cybersecurity:

So how do you prevent your website from being hacked? 

While there are many details in securing your website, one of the easiest ways is to install security plugins such as Wordfence.

Another important way is to keep your website software updated to latest versions. Remember to also install any available security patches. These updates will help you to remove any infection or threat if your website gets affected.

Here are a few more tips for you:

• Using strong and secure passwords
• Backup your files (If you’re using WordPress and wants a free but reliable backup plugin, try UpdraftPlus)
• Remove old plugins or other applications
• Remove any sensitive temporary files on your site

3. Enhance User Experience

I bet nobody likes to see website like this:

Everyone likes to see this 😀:

See the difference?

When websites aren’t maintained, their theme and template files may not display properly on new versions of web browsers and mobile devices. Additionally, Google has mentioned that mobile responsiveness is one of the ranking factors on April 21, 2015.

Besides, no user wants to go to a website only to find the page they were looking for is broken and therefore can’t present the information they need.

Therefore, it is crucial that you regularly updating your site. This also keep attracting your visitors to return to your website. You can always update the following details on your website:

• Announce upcoming events
• Add new images, graphics, or videos to showcase your product or service
• Remove old, thin content
• Perform A/B testing to see the popup design that get the most click
• Create high quality content to enhance the volume of website visitors

4. Boost Brand Reputation

Many business owners do not really see the necessity for website maintenance or the importance of hiring a maintenance team to oversee it.

In fact, how users perceive and judge your business image is influenced by your website’s performance.

Imagine you don’t maintain your website regular, you website might becomes very slow, broken or even hacked.

How would your customer see your brand?

Most likely as a weak, unstable, untrustworthy brand 👎

This situation become worse if you get bad reviews from your customers or visitors.

A research from Bright Local found that more consumers are reading online reviews than ever before. In 2021, 77% ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ read them when browsing for local businesses!

Hence, keeping your website content up to date helps build trust between you and your customers. It also helps promote your brand, work, and mission. Don’t forget that customers rely on your site for useful information on whatever market you are in.

Therefore, if your website is not up-to-date with the latest trends in your field, visitors will definitely question the quality of the services you are offering.

On the other hand, visitors will love your content and trust your company for integrity and accountability if you consistently review and keep your website fresh.

5. Improve Your Website SEO

Do you know your website rankings on Google for your main keywords?

Well, most of the website owners don’t.

Here comes another reason why website maintenance is important: It’s because it boosts your SEO efforts.

When you’re always update your website by publishing fresh and high-quality content, ensure all links are well-functioned and business details are up to date, Google and other major search engines will notice and reward your website by increase your site ranking.

When your website is ranked higher on Google, you will receive more clicks compare to those on other pages. Research shows that the page ranks on position 1 has a click through rate of 43.32% compare to 3.11% on position 10.

Image Source: Clicta Digital

Similarly, your site’s search ranking can become lower if you’re not maintaining your site. This will cause your website to receive less site traffic, and encounter less sales.

But how to enhance your website from SEO perspective?

There are three major categories when it comes to SEO, which are

• Technical SEO
• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO

If you want to know more about this, you can read this comprehensive SEO checklist (with a FREE downloadable pdf checklist!) to know more on how to perform SEO for your website.

Conclusion

Keeping site properly maintained and updated is more important than you think.

Regular website maintenance makes sure that your site attracts, educates as well as expands your client base.  It also helps improve customer satisfaction.

However, website maintenance can be tedious especially if you’re new to digital marketing and web technologies. Whether you’re looking for a monthly, hourly, or after-hours website maintenance plan, VeecoTech provides the experience and expertise your company demands.

Contact us online or chat with an experienced strategist from our website maintenance team about keeping your website in tip-top shape around the clock.