Originally Posted on Niche Pursuits by Jennifer Leach
If you run a website and are considering setting up a website maintenance plan to keep it running smoothly, this is a smart choice.
Website maintenance plans are helpful for every website owner. Whether you run a small or large website, a website maintenance plan will help prevent you from losing traffic, site ranking, customers, and revenue.
In this article, you’ll learn how a website maintenance plan works, including:
- Why you need a website maintenance plan
- How to create a website maintenance plan
- Examples.
Let’s get into it!
What Is A Website Maintenance Plan?
A website maintenance plan is a set of procedures for keeping your website running smoothly and up to date.
It includes tasks like:
- Software updates
- Backup
- Security monitoring
- Website speed monitoring
- Performance monitoring
- Fixing broken links.
Keeping up with your website maintenance plan regularly will prevent issues from arising and keep it running at optimal levels.
For example, on my personal blog, I forgot to update one of my WordPress plugins and it ended up slowing down my entire website.
Once I identified the issue, the website speed problem was resolved, but if I had this maintenance task on a website maintenance plan, I could have caught this problem before any speed issues arose.
One of the main benefits of having a website maintenance plan is that it can help you avoid any potential security issues. Hackers are constantly on the hunt for site vulnerabilities, and if your site is not maintained, it puts it at risk.
You can enjoy other benefits, like:
- Improved security
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Performance optimization
- Continuous improvement
- Browser testing
- Content updates.
Regular maintenance of your website can lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and an improved customer experience.
If you think about it, as a customer, browsing a slow site is going to impact your experience, maybe frustrate you, and ultimately potentially contribute to your leaving the site.
Then, when you think back on the site, you’ll think about how slow it runs, which could prevent you from returning to it.
With attention spans shrinking, site owners need to retain customers for as long as possible.
Maintaining your website regularly with a website maintenance plan behind you can help you do that.
By keeping your site up-to-date and well-maintained, you can help it be more secure, function well, and provide a high-value experience to website visitors.
Why Do You Need A Website Maintenance Plan?
It’s a smart idea to have a website maintenance strategy in place for many of the reasons shared above, like improved security.
Let’s take a closer look at why a website maintenance plan is valuable for your site:
Security
Website security is a critical aspect of website maintenance. Cybercriminals can hack your website, take it over, and steal sensitive information.
They can also install malware or viruses on your website, which can slow down website speed and put your website visitors at risk.
For security, a website maintenance plan can ensure software is up-to-date, apply security fixes, and do regular website backups to help prevent security breaches.
User Experience
User experience is crucial to the online success of your website and business.
A well-maintained website keeps user experience in mind, ensuring visitors can easily navigate the site and find the information they’re looking for.
To improve user experience, you can use a website maintenance plan to include tasks such as:
- Testing your website’s functionality
- Website speed optimization
- Fixing broken links.
SEO
SEO helps improve your website’s visibility in the search engines.
A well-maintained website ensures that it is optimized for search engines, which can help increase traffic and grow revenue.
For SEO-related tasks in your website maintenance plan, it can include:
- Updating your website’s content
- Optimizing your website’s metadata and
- Fixing crawl errors.
What Is Usually Included In Website Maintenance?
Your website maintenance tasks can vary depending on its complexity. Sites with complex business needs, for example, may have more website maintenance tasks than a simple hobby blog.
Here are some common website maintenance tasks to include in your plan:
- Updating software, plugins, and themes
- Backing up website files and databases
- Monitoring website security
- Applying security patches
- Website functionality testing
- Fixing errors
- Website speed optimization
- Performance testing and optimization
- Fixing broken links and 404 errors
- Updating website content and metadata
- Analyzing website traffic, user behavior, and other metrics.
So now that we’ve covered that – let’s look at how to create your own website maintenance plan…
How Do You Create a Website Maintenance Plan?
Here are some key steps to create your own website maintenance plan:
1. Identify Your Goals
Before you start, it’s important to identify your goals.
What do you want to achieve with your website?
Do you want to increase traffic, improve user experience, or grow your revenue?
You’ll answer questions like these to help you reach a point where you have goals in mind that you want to accomplish.
Once you have a clearer picture of your goals, the next step will be creating the website maintenance plan to align with those goals.
2. Assess Your Website
In this step, you will assess your website.
This is your starting point. You’ll look at website performance, security, and your content. Then, identify any issues that need to be addressed and prioritize them based on importance.
For example, you may prioritize plugin updates over updating your website content since outdated plugins can quite literally break your site, leave it open to vulnerabilities, and slow its speed.
3. Create a Schedule
Once you have figured out what issues need to be addressed, you’ll create a schedule and map out a plan to address them.
Consider how often you need to perform maintenance tasks and schedule them accordingly.
For example, you may need to perform backups and updates every week, while content updates may be done monthly.
4. Assign Responsibilities
In this step, you’ll assign responsibilities to your maintenance tasks.
If you have a team, you’ll determine which team member is responsible for performing each task. If you’re a solopreneur or do all the maintenance yourself, you can stick to your schedule and address each task according to priority.
Make sure you and your team have all the tools and resources available to complete the task, then document it.
5. Document Your Plan
Finally, document your website maintenance plan. This will help everyone involved understand their responsibilities, schedule, and priority list. It’s a good reference to have for future maintenance tasks, too.
By following these steps, you can create a website maintenance plan that will help you keep your website running smoothly and achieve your goals. Remember to review and update your plan regularly to keep up with your site’s maintenance.
Website Maintenance Plan Examples
Maintaining a website is important. It requires your attention to ensure the site remains up-to-date and error-free.
You learned why it’s important and how to create your own website maintenance plan.
Here are some examples of website maintenance plans to further illustrate the process. You can use these as a guide when creating your own website maintenance plan, too.
Check it out.
Basic Website Maintenance Plan
A basic website maintenance plan includes routine tasks, such as:
- Updating software
- Monitoring website speed
- Performing backups
- Checking for broken links
- Testing forms
- Checking page load speed and performance.
This plan is good for small businesses who have a basic website with limited traffic.
Advanced Website Maintenance Package
An advanced website maintenance plan includes all the tasks in the basic plan and additional services that will meet larger websites’ needs.
- Content updates
- SEO optimization
- Security monitoring
- Performance analysis
- A/B testing.
This plan is good for larger businesses with more website traffic.
E-commerce Website Maintenance Package
An e-commerce website maintenance plan is for eCommerce businesses selling products or services online.
All the tasks in the advanced website maintenance plan can be included, plus:
- Product updates
- Inventory management
- Payment gateway testing
- Security audits
- PCI compliance checks
- Customer support.
Custom Website Maintenance Package
A custom website maintenance plan is tailored to the specific needs of a business. It includes all the tasks required to maintain and improve the website’s performance, security, and functionality.
These examples should give you a good idea of what goes into a website maintenance plan based on the business type.
Create a solid plan that fits the needs of your business the best.
Website Maintenance Tools
Using the right tools goes a long way when it comes to site maintenance. It can save you a ton of money, too.
Consider using software or a tool to manage your e-commerce store’s inventory yourself rather than hiring an inventory management specialist!
There can be huge savings doing it yourself with the help of a tool.
There are certain times when an expert is just needed, though, like tweak your web design and add coding for special features, but, many times, you can DIY your site maintenance yourself without hiring a website maintenance service.
Here are some of the best tools to consider:
Sucuri
Sucuri is a website security, protection, and monitoring tool.
It can do things like:
- Perform a website security scan
- Monitoring and detection
- Website backups
- Website firewall.
It can be your all-in-one website security tool!
Updraft Plus
Updraft Plus is for WordPress backups. You can backup, restore, and migrate your WordPress site.
They offer several features, but for your ongoing monthly website maintenance, the backup option is what you’ll be using.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO tool to help with the search engine optimization of your website.
You can do things like:
- Research keywords
- Check search engine page ranking
- Competitor research.
You can check in on your SEO with regular updates to see your site performance, ensuring your rankings are holding strong and your traffic growth continues.
Some of the other things you can do with Ahrefs:
- Site audit
- Backlink analysis
- Keyword monitoring
- Content analysis.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is for website analytics. You can track website performance, see top-performing website pages, website traffic, audience behavior, and demographics.
It’s one of the most widely used analytics tools for websites.
It’s also free!
How To Use Google Analytics For Website Maintenance?
Check out traffic reports, bounce rate, and other metrics to review website performance. This can uncover patterns and trends, such as if customers spend less time on your site.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps you review and monitor your site’s performance and search traffic.
You can see the number of impressions and clicks your site gets for keywords, review clickthrough rate, and a lot more.
This is another free tool you can use, and it is a valuable asset for website maintenance.
Final Word on Website Maintenance Plans
Website maintenance is a crucial aspect of managing a successful online presence. The process can feel overwhelming, as it involves a wide array of tasks to help keep your site secure and up and running as a smooth operation.
Regularly performing website maintenance is elemental in helping you avoid site errors, downtime, and a poor customer experience. Use tools, software, and don’t be afraid to hire professionals, like a website maintenance service to help.
If you’re a site owner, start this process now. You’ll be happy you made the decision to!
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The post 5 Easy Steps To Create a Simple Website Maintenance Plan And Save Your Site appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
