How To Maintain A Website

Just like an automobile, a website requires periodic maintenance to keep it running efficiently. When periodic maintenance is neglected, a website can become static and less important to search engines as time passes.

Most search engines deploy automated web search “spiders.” This automated and highly sophisticated “spider” crawls through servers on the entire web day and night looking for websites with fresh, quality information to provide to their users. If your website server continuously reports a lack of updating, finds broken links or other commonly neglected problems, search engines will schedule your website for not-so-frequent visits. This is the opposite of what’s needed and is just one way websites fall into the abyss beyond page 30 of the search results.

If your website is extremely popular, meaning it’s busy with visitors, search engines will come regardless. Since 98% of small business websites aren’t as busy as say Amazon.com, your website is less important in the eyes of search engines without periodic maintenance — certainly not ideal for a business website!

Types of Website Maintenance Needed

Content changes are the most common updates (including adding or removing products or services, moving or changing paragraphs, updating navigation, repairing links, swapping images, tweaking headings, adjusting prices, updating event schedules, adding newsletter posts into archives, etc.).

However the most important updates are those made to enhance your website as a result of monitoring your visitor statistics. Website statistics are absolutely essential to the survival of any business website and are included with every website 6×6 Design services, builds, or redesigns. Website visitor statistics show trend changes. These changes will require updating of content, therefore providing fresh content to keep both search engines and site visitors interested and coming back.

How to Maintain Your Own Website

If you know HTML/CSS language (HyperText Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets)and FTP (File Transfer Protocol), updating a website isn’t as difficult as it is time-consuming. However if you are like most business people, you’d rather not be bothered but want the maintenance done. There are two common ways to go about maintenance:

1. Install a Content Management System (CMS) onto your website to handle most of your own content updates at will. This is the default system we use for new websites and website redesigns.
2. Outsource the maintenance to a webmaster such as 6×6 Design.

The first option is the most common approach. A Content Management website allows the site owner to administer to virtually everything with ease, and fast. However if this task seems to daunting, 6×6 Design offers a pay-as-you-go service or a yearly maintenance plan. Ask for more details and fees.

The Next Step

6×6 Design will conduct an interview with you to learn more about your product or service and website goals. Then we’ll develop a design plan and estimate to build or enhance a low cost but highly effective marketing tool – your website – that will work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, locally, regionally, nationally, or world-wide. All consultations and estimates are FREE.

Have More Questions? Ready To Start?

We highly suggest reviewing our Planning Your Website checklist next. This list contains questions we commonly ask our clients to help us better understand your needs. When you’re ready, simply contact us for a free consultation and estimate here or call 585-861-7483.