The Importance of Website Maintenance

By Purplebox Digital


Your website is an important part of your business. Not only does it bring you traffic but it also represents your company.

But just like a dog is for life and not just Christmas, so is a website.

Retail shops update their shop windows all the time with the latest offers and newest products. Even though you might not own a physical store, the same concept still applies to your website.

Keeping your website well maintained is essential if you want to leave the right impression for new visitors. Not only does it leave the right impression, but it also gives visitors a reason to return in the future. If they know new content or products will be added at a later date; then they’ll be back to have a look at the updates. This is exactly what you want.

So how can you update your website without spending too much time and money? There are plenty of tweaks you can be doing to keep your website fresh and up to date, with some only taking a few minutes, it’s definitely worth your time. Before we jump into how to keep your website up to date, let’s explore why it’s so important to keep your website well maintained.

Why Should you Update Your Website?

There are so many countless reasons why you should be continuously updating your website. From grabbing the attention of initial visitors to improving your search engine rankings, constant website updates might seem needless, but they are far from it.

Leaves the Right Impression for New Visitors

The first reason why maintaining your website is so important is that it leaves a good impression on new visitors. After all, the website represents your business and is how many customers will view you.

If you owned a high-street retail store, then you’d want to make sure your windows are clean, and your display is up to date. If your shop had the same window display for a year with dirty windows and paint peeling off, you can imagine what potential new customers would think.

The same applies to your website.

When a user lands on your website you only have a few seconds to capture their trust. The best way to do this is to make sure your website is neat and tidy while more importantly, up to date.

Gives People a Reason to Come Back

Another great reason why you should keep your website well maintained is that it gives previous visitors a reason to come back. If you happen to have a blog or news feed on your site that is regularly updated with new content, then visitors will have a reason to return.

Many users will bookmark useful resources and will check now and then for updates. If you regularly provide your visitors with new content, then can easily generate recurring visits.

Improve your SEO and Rankings

SEO Improvement
Another benefit of adding new content to your website is that it can significantly help improve your search engine rankings. Search engines such as Google love new content. Whenever you update your site with new content, search engines will crawl your site and boost your rankings.

If updating your website and adding new content leads to better search engine rankings and more visitors, then it’s really a no-brainer.

How Can you Maintain Your Own Website?

Now you know the benefits of keeping your website well maintained, how exactly can you go about doing this yourself?

Blog Maintenance

Website Under Maintenance
As mentioned previously, visitors and search engines love fresh content. The easiest way to benefit from increased search engine rankings and returning visitors is to update your blog. If you don’t have a blog on your website already, then you should seriously get one.

A blog is an excellent way to keep visitors up to date with what is going on in the business. In addition to this, it can also be used as a platform to promote and share original content. If you can regularly give customers original content that they can’t find anywhere else, then this is a sure way to get recurring visitors.

Deleting Spam Comments

Delete WordPress Spam Comments
If you already have a blog on your website, then the chances are you are already familiar with spam comments. The comments section on your blog is a great way for visitors to share their views and ideas on your content. But sometimes this feature can be misused.

There are many spam robots out there that crawl people’s website looking for blog posts to comment on. These robots post comments on your blog in a bid to try and attract more visitors to their website. The easiest way to solve this problem is to disable comments, but you don’t want to do that!

Comments are important for many reasons, not only do they leave a good impression on your site but they also help show you what people are interested in. To make sure your website is well maintained, you should regularly check your blog for any spam comments and delete any inappropriate ones.

As we said before, first impressions always count. If a new visitor sees hundreds of spam comments on your website, then they’ll think your website is not trustworthy and leave. It might sound bizarre that they would leave over a few comments, but the spam comments will significantly drag your businesses reputation down.

Website Updates

Wordpress Update
Aside from your blog, the rest of your site should also be updated. Think of it as a monthly chore where you go through your website and check all your pages to make sure they are up to date.

If you’re an e-commerce store, then you’ll want to check your products are up to date with the right pictures and descriptions. Any new stock or products should also be added regularly to show to your customers.

Finally, as a general rule, you should always check for content management system (CMS) and plugin updates every month. No matter if you built your website yourself or paid someone else to do it, the chances are it will use a CMS such as WordPress. The developers of the software regularly update it to add new features and fixes.

Not only do they make your website more secure but they can also significantly improve the speed of your website. Although the updates aren’t very frequent, it’s best to check for these updates around once a month.

Don’t Have the Time?

If you really don’t have the time to spare to keep your website updated, then it’s better to get someone else to do it than no one at all.

Here at Purplebox Digital we offer a range of website maintenance packages that ensure your website is kept up to date. Whether you need new items adding to your website or existing ones being changed, we’re here to help. To find out more about our website maintenance packages, contact us for a free consultation.

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