So you’ve built a professional website that runs well, but should you bother investing in website maintenance services? Learn why the ‘set it and forget it’ approach simply doesn’t work.
Your website is one of your most powerful marketing tools, serving as a credibility booster, an educational portal, an outreach tool, and a sales funnel all in one. It’s often the first point of contact between your brand and your audience, so it must be beautiful and functional in equal parts.
Building a website is a significant investment, so we understand the temptation to scrimp on website management services – especially if things are running seamlessly! But with ever-changing technologies, you can’t afford to ignore website repair, hosting, and maintenance.
Between essential security updates, broken link checking, and SEO efforts, you must update often to keep your site running like a well-oiled machine.
But what is site maintenance?
Learn all about website design and maintenance, including the cost of maintaining a website ready to serve your audience well and extend your ROI.
What is Website Maintenance?
Maintaining a website refers to all the tasks required to keep your site updated so it runs efficiently and securely. It includes back-end maintenance to install security or performance-enhancing updates to your servers by skilled developers.
What is included in website maintenance?
Site maintenance also includes front-end updates, which is everything you can see visually when you visit your site. Keeping site content fresh and updated, fixing broken links, and general refreshes of your site or navigational structure all fall under the maintenance umbrella!
Why Do Web Maintenance Services Matter?
Reason #1: Managing Security Risks
Users trust you to take care of their digital safety when visiting your site. That means protecting any sensitive information they give you from scammers and ensuring hackers don’t exploit any vulnerabilities in your site code.
Unfortunately, new code vulnerabilities are found constantly, so you must continuously update and patch the code to make it as hard as possible for someone to exploit it. When a lack of website upkeep causes a breach, you break customer trust in your brand. Sometimes, the damage is irreparable.
Reason #2: Better User Experiences
Imagine heading to a website that looks like it’s ten years old. It’s not the end of the world to have a dated site design, but it’s also not impressive. Old-looking websites tend to be harder to navigate because they’re built by old standards, which can also convey you don’t care enough to invest in improvements that will ultimately make for a more enjoyable user experience.
With a solid web management and site maintenance plan, your website works harder for your visitors. It looks good and feels good, keeping visitors around for longer so you can increase your chances of converting.
Reason #3: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Improvements
SEO makes or breaks your organic traffic results and site success. If you can’t use SEO to attract users through Google and other search engines, you’ll have to work harder or lean on paid ads to build your audience.
Google wants to deliver the best search results possible to users. That means they’ll prioritize websites with updated, valuable content, straightforward navigation, working links, and quick loading speeds.
Your website should be built using SEO best practices, but you’ll still need to publish content regularly to compete and improve your search engine rankings. Whether you DIY your efforts or use website management packages, site maintenance plays an integral role in SEO for everything from fresh content releases to site improvements that helps get your brand seen.
Reason #4: Becoming a Thought Leader
When you invest in website content management, you ensure you’re delivering up-to-date, relevant information to users that slowly builds credibility. High-quality content, including blog posts, product updates, and more, establishes you as an industry authority that naturally brings users back to your website again and again. When you prove that you have in-depth industry knowledge, customers trust you and become more willing to invest their money in your products or services.
What Are the Tasks in Website Maintenance?
There are several aspects of monthly website maintenance that build on each other to deliver to your customers.
If you pay for a reputable website maintenance company to manage your site, they can manage every element of your website for you or simply take care of the site’s internal structure so you can create and release your own content in-house.
What Should be Included in a Website Maintenance Plan?
Whether you invest in maintenance services or DIY
- Technical Updates. Since websites are all built on core software, that software requires regular updates to keep running smoothly. You’ll need to fix bugs and maintain compatibility as web standards shift.
- Security Updates. Hackers move quickly, so it’s essential to fix security vulnerabilities as soon as possible to keep your site data and visitors safe. You’ll need to implement SSL certificates, security patches, firewall protection, and regularly back up your site data in case it all comes crashing down.
- Content Management. Fresh content boosts your SEO, but content-management systems can make it much easier to create, edit, and archive your content accordingly. Many WordPress maintenance services will help you keep your information up-to-date.
- Optimized Performance. Your site’s UX should continually improve, including server response time, navigation, page load speed, and more.
How Much Should I Pay Someone to Maintain My Website?
If you hire an agency to take care of website hosting and maintenance services, you might pay for website maintenance costs per hour, month, or package – it all depends on how they break pricing down.
Prices are relatively reasonable, with the average website maintenance cost falling between $400 to several thousand per year. Fortunately, your maintenance costs tend to grow as your business does, so you’ll never get stuck paying for more than you can afford. Since the investment tends to protect your initial site investment and maximize your ability to convert, it’s a cost well worth its price!
How do You Maintain an Online Website?
Ready to protect your site investment? Our digital agency offers some of the best website maintenance services in Hamilton and the GTA. We offer everything from site design and SEO content services to WordPress maintenance plans that will help your brand stand out.
Contact us to learn more and get a free cost estimate.
