Web Maintenance - A TO DO List For the Designated Web Master

Web maintenance is an ongoing activity that is necessary in website management.  These are tasks that ensure the website does its job of keeping you visible online (ranking high on SERPs) and that all plugins, forms and images appear and function properly. The following is an enumeration of what tasks are involved with web maintenance.  Remember that the list is very fundamental, and is just a portion of what web maintenance service providers do.

1.       Monitor the website daily. This is time consuming but necessary. Check your website for broken links, plugins, widgets, completed forms and potential hacking.

2.       Update blogs and edit them when you can.  Write at least an article per week to keep it interesting. Monitor, reply, approve and delete comments, the activity from the comments help site visibility and generate traffic. This better done daily and best not to go a whole week without updating.

3.       Review how your site is doing statistically.  You may use tools like Google Analytics to help you make improvements on your site. Do this every three months or per season, especially if your products and service is seasonal.

4.       Review your local search visibility in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.  If you are a local business, it is much more important to rank higher in local searches.

5.       Check the browser compatibility of your website.  Browsers are constantly revamped and updated ones in a while and every now and then new ones are launched, so you have to keep up with the changes for the sake of your viewers and potential clients.

6.       Review your site for consistency, especially regarding content. Pages that advertise promotions and discounts and those that have date references need to be checked.

7.       Check your copyright and licenses as well as domain name registrations need to be checked yearly and at a timely manner. 

8.       Email accounts linked to the website must also be monitored, inactive ones need to be deleted and the website updated along with the changes.

Some of these tasks such as daily monitoring and blogging take most of the time of the designated web master. Some are better outsourced but that does not mean you are brought out of the loop.  Allocating the job to web maintenance services just means your job gets simpler so you can focus on what you do best.