The Ultimate Guide to Website Maintenance in 2023 for small businesses

You’ve finally built an ideal website for your small business, and it’s starting to generate valuable traffic. But an efficient, high-converting website isn't a once-off project. Regular maintenance is necessary to keep your site running smoothly.

As a small business owner, you must stay on top of your website maintenance to keep visitors happy and your site ranking high. Where you appear on the search engine results page (SERP) isn't just about on-page SEO, it's also about properly configuring, securing, and updating the backend of your website.

Let's explore whatwebsite maintenanceentails, why it's important for your business's success, and the costs of keeping your website at top performance.

What is website maintenance?

Website maintenance is the process of regularly updating and managing a website to ensure it remains secure, fast, user-friendly, and free from errors. It involves refreshing and optimizing content, ensuring features are functional, monitoring security settings, performing necessary software updates, and optimizing site speed.

A deeper look into website maintenance

It’s possible for you to do your own website maintenance, but it often requires specific technical knowledge that may be outside of your skillset.Finding an experienced web developeror trained expert to handle your website maintenance can save you valuable time, money, and energy.

However, you must perform website maintenance regularly to ensure uninterrupted operation. Not doing so can affect your entire sales pipeline, from first impressions down to final bookings or cart checkouts.

Maintaining accessibility and functionality will create a seamless customer journey. Contentsquare’s2023 Digital Experience Benchmark reportshows the average time spent on a page is around 54 seconds. That leaves just under one minute to capture visitors' attention.

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What types of tasks are involved in website maintenance?

网站维护的瀑布into three categories:

• Technical maintenance:Involves regularly backing up your site data, checking for broken links, updating plugins and software,testing site securityand functionality across different browsers.

• Cosmetic maintenance:Involves keeping your website visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing, adjusting the layout of specific pages, updating various images and graphics, or ensuring the color scheme is optimized for user engagement.

• Content maintenance:Involves regularly updating and adding new content to your site to keep your website relevant and engaging for your audience, updating product information, adding blog posts, and ensuring the content on your pages isoptimized for SEO.

Why is website maintenance important for my small business?

There are a number of reasons website maintenance is important for your small business, including:

• Ensuring that your website is compliant with the latest technologies

• Reducing downtime, improving website performance and speed

• Creating a secure environment for your customers

"Regular website maintenance helped us monitor potential issues that could harm our website's performance,” says Ivan Lobo, Co-Owner & Real Estate Consultant atMade in CA.“By regularly updating our website's content, fixing broken links, and optimizing our website for search engines, we've been able to improve our website's traffic, user engagement, and overall online presence."

Here are more reasons to take website maintenance seriously.

Builds a good reputation

Nothing hurts a brand’s online image like a broken, faulty website. When a site loads too slowly or is inaccessible, people leave (likely never to return).

Ongoing website maintenance saves you from these issues and delivers a great first impression. So if your website is outdated or unappealing, you’ll lose potential customers before they engage with your business.

Then there’s your evolution to consider—your business will change over time. Regular website maintenance will ensure it stays aligned with your brand's core values, aesthetics, and latest offering.

Ensures your site is indexed

As of February 2023, Google heldalmost 90%of the market share of search engines. By optimizing your site for performance (and search engines), you can increase your ranking to attract the large volume of active searchers. This way, potential customers are more likely to find and engage with your website.

An Ahrefs study shows74.5% of the 2 million+ linksthey studied are considered lost, meaning the website is no longer available in the SERP - another reason to keep regular website maintenance a high priority.

Improves your site speed and ranking potential

Website visitors have high expectations and low levels of patience, especially when browsing the web. So having a fast-loading site isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must. Not only does a faster-loading website improve the visitor experience, it can also decrease the chance of customers abandoning pages during browsing, searches, or cart checkouts.For e-commerce sites, this is even more critical, since any delay, specially during checkout lead to a bounce and decrease sales.

A comprehensive study on nearly 12 million Google Search results shows the average loading speed for a site on page 1 of the SERP is1.65 seconds. While Google won't necessarily reward you for a fast load time, it’ll downrank your site for below-average loading speeds.

Protects your customers’ security

Not performing regular website maintenance can give hackers easier access to your site and your customers’ data. With theGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)now enforced and theePrivacy Regulation (ePR)coming into effect, any business found neglecting their customers’ data security will face hefty fines.

You can stay on top of any new security risks and ensure safety of your customer's data with proper site maintenance. Note that customers are hesitant to purchase from sites with malfunctioning or outdated payment gateways, so don’t lose out on significant sales due to a lack of trust, reliability, or accessibility.

Appeals to mobile users

Nearly60% of all website trafficcomes from mobile users. That’s a lot of potential visitors and conversations you’re missing out on if your site isn’t optimized for tablets and smartphones.

Mobile traffic has increased by over 20% in the last 8 years and has grown steadily year-on-year since 2015. So, odds are, they’ll continue to rise, making it non-negotiable to create responsive web design that caters to users no matter what device they’re on.

And since devices are always updating, you need to ensure you do the same for your site. Otherwise, you risk prospective customers taking their business elsewhere.

Stay relevant to Google and searchers

If your website is neglected, content can become outdated and irrelevant, resulting in customers leaving your page with unanswered questions.

Refreshing your content can boost your SEO ranking and ensure you’re providing updated information. For example, you can update facts, discuss relevant topics, and add new products.Writing evergreen contentis great to keep your site relevant long-term, but don’t forget to revisit it to ensure it still holds value.

Types of website maintenance services

Managing your own website can be time-consuming and overwhelming. But it’s a necessary task which you can thankfully delegate to someone skilled in website maintenance. We compiled a website maintenance services list so you can create a website maintenance plan anddelegate the tasks to an expert freelancer.

Here are the most common tasks in a website maintenance plan:

Domain and Hosting Essentials

Your website's foundation rests on its domain and hosting. The domain name is your site's address, while hosting is its backbone. Timely domain renewals are vital to prevent losing your unique address. Equally, effective hosting management ensures your site runs smoothly, from monitoring bandwidth to managing server space. In your website maintenance strategy, never underestimate the importance of these foundational elements.

CMS and plugin updates

CMS(内容管理系统)是软件building and managing your website content, design, and functionality. An outdated CMS can be a security risk and cause unexpected errors. Website maintenance services include regular updates for your website's CMS, scripts, plugins, and other software components to stay secure and up to date.

Website security

All websites should have basic security measures to safeguard against malicious attacks. This is possible through adding firewalls, performing malware scans, and ensuring your domain has an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is used to make sure that communication between a website and its visitors stays private and secure. It ensures data exchanged is encrypted and protected from hackers.

Website maintenance packagesshould include security monitoringand regular scans to ensure your site is safe from attacks.

Security patches and website hardening are also important measures, which involve periodicallyupdating the codeand ensuring regularly backing up your site to restore it to an earlier version if it’s hacked

File versioning and backups

The importance ofbacking up your websitecannot be overstated. Backups should be done regularly and stored off-site in case of a disaster. File versioning can restore previous versions of your website, keep changes or updates in check, and prevent irreversible damage.

Uptime management and monitoring

Every second your website is down is potential business lost. It can happen at any time and last for hours before you realize something’s wrong. This isn’t a problem when you have someone overseeing your site’s performance.

网站维护服务包括实施preventative measures to maximize uptime so when something happens, you’re immediately alerted to address the threat.

Database logs and analytics tracking

Maintaining and monitoring your website also includes tracking analytics, database logs, and user data. This reveals how visitors use your site, how manybounce awaywhere they come from, andhow many convert. Then, you can use this information to optimize your website for the best user experience.

For example, if you see a lot of people bouncing away from a specific page, you may find that it has an error code or leads to the wrong URL.

Performance and mobile experience optimization

Worried a new template will disrupt mobile performance or slow down site speed? Having an expert to manage this will ensure your designs and features are always user-friendly.

Website speed optimizationkeeps your site running smoothly by optimizing the page's code, images, and other elements to reduce load time for all devices.

Accessibility maintenance

Poor eyesight, physical limitations, and hearing impairment can make it hard for some people to use your website. But not if you think ahead and make your site accessible.

How? By ensuring all content is accessible on screen readers and other assistive technologies and that all images have descriptive alt text. Having a website maintenance pro will ensure your site meetsWCAG 2.2 standards.

Themes and templates optimization

主题和模板帮助您构建的网站fast. However, they need regular maintenance. Make sure your themes or templates are up-to-date and compatible with the latest version of your CMS. Also, regularly check for errors or bugs in your themes to prevent malfunctions.

Technical SEO

SEO is important, but optimization doesn’t end there.Technical SEOdives deeper into your site’s performance by optimizing:

• 301 redirects

• robots.txt files

• canonical tags

• meta tags

• meta descriptions

• meta titles for each page on your site

技术搜索引擎优化服务提供者将设置和update these properly to ensure search engines properly index your website. An SEO audit is the first step, since it reveals existing technical SEO issues.

Keeping your site relevant with Google's updates

Google releases algorithm changes regularly to keep its search results helpful to its users. It can happen out of the blue, which means you have to watch for content update announcements from Google and then, move quickly to ensure your site meets the new guidelines (which are oftentimes vague) so you don’t lose your rankings.

As we reach the end of the list, it may seem daunting to even think about learning and doing it all. Fortunately, you don’t have to do either.Outsourcing your website maintenancetasks to a Fiverr expert will save you from wasting time and making costly mistakes.

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How often do I need to perform website maintenance?

Each task is different, but website maintenance is often looked at on an annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly basis.

• Annual maintenance: Site-wide optimization, content audits, and backup strategies

• Quarterly maintenance: Security updates and tracking user behavior

• Monthly maintenance: Code optimization, image and video optimization, content updates, and link monitoring

• Weekly maintenance: Check for page errors and update content

The scope and complexity will determine how often to perform these tasks.

"In my opinion, the most important aspects of website maintenance include regularly updating content, fixing any technical issues, optimizing the website for search engines, and ensuring that the website is secure and protected against any potential cyber threats,” says Lobo. “That means having our WordPress plugins updated on a daily basis."

How long does website maintenance take?

For smaller websites, completing all necessary tasks may take an hour or two each month. However, larger sites with more complex features may need up to 10 hours a month. Note that website maintenance services can be broken down into smaller tasks and spread over a month or two.

This makes workload management easier and keeps your website functioning optimally without burning out yourself (or your budget). You can alsohire a freelance website managerto handle all of your maintenance needs.

What to consider when choosing a website maintenance service

There are hundreds of website maintenance services available—which should you choose? Here are some key points to consider in your decision:

Website maintenance cost

Everyone likes a good deal, but don’t let this sacrifice quality. Look for a service that offers both valueandaffordability.

Website maintenance can cost anywhere from$400 to $60,000 annuallyfor domain name renewal, web hosting, keeping your SSL certificate current, ensuring optimal e-commerce functionality if you sell products, and updating your CMS.

Pro Tip: Include website maintenance in your small business budget so there are no surprises or panic when it’s time to perform maintenance.

Expertise

Check the credentials of any website maintenance service you're considering. You want experts who understand your CMS and have experience with the type of website you have.

Flexibility

Look for a website maintenance service that’s flexible and meets your business objectives. Check if the service offers customization options and scalability if your maintenance needs increase or decrease in the future.

Reputation

Research and read reviews to determine the reputation of the website maintenance service you're considering. Does positive customer feedback outweigh the negatives? If so, this can be a sign they offer a quality service.

Communication

How quickly do they respond to inquiries? Are they available outside of regular business hours? Choose a provider that can communicate effectively with your team and address their questions or concerns.

How to find website maintenance services

Somehosting servicesoffer website maintenance packages, but they’re often not customizable to your business's unique needs. A large customer base often means waiting days or weeks for technical assistance.

If you’re looking for a web hosting plan,we recommend Hostinger.

Whichever host you choose, Fiverr's freelance marketplace offers top-quality expertise at cost-effective rates for SMB owners. Simply click on thewebsite maintenance category, and you'll find an array of specialists in:

• Customization

• Speed Optimization

• Bug Fixes

• Backup and Migration

• Theme and Plugin Installation

• Security

• Hosting

• Analytics

If you’re not sure where to begin or what services you need, you can speak with Fiverr'swebsite maintenance consultants.

Fiverr simplifies finding, hiring and managing a team of freelance experts. We have an integrated chat, project management, and payment systems so you can handle everything from one place.

Ready to get started?Sign up to Fiverrto keep your website ready for whatever the future holds.