WordPress is a content management system that works with thousands of themes, plug-ins, and widgets. Whether you manage your site or have a third party do it for you, it’s important to make regular updates. Why is WordPress maintenance important? Because it keeps your site running smoothly and reduces the risk of cyberattacks.
Why Is WordPress Maintenance Important?
WordPress uses MySQL, a database management system that must be updated regularly. If you don’t maintain your WordPress website, it’s likely to load slowly, frustrating users and costing you business. WordPress maintenance is also essential for making sure your plug-ins and themes work correctly.
Ensuring Security and Protecting Your Investment
All maintenance tasks are important, but one of the biggest reasons to update your WordPress site regularly is to protect it against online threats. In 2022, 43% of all data breaches involved small and mid-sized businesses, not large corporations. That means you need to protect your WordPress website against malware, phishing, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and other security concerns. A regular website maintenance service reduces the risk of a security breach and makes it easier to comply with laws related to data security.
Regularly Updating WordPress Core, Themes, and Plug-Ins
The WordPress core is the basic set of files that allows your site to function properly. Themes and plug-ins let you customize your website in many ways. For example, security plug-ins protect your site from hackers, while custom themes make it easy to change your site’s color scheme. It’s important to update these features regularly or you could experience a wide range of technical issues.
Implementing Secure Password Policies
As soon as you launch a WordPress website, it’s important to implement secure password policies. User passwords should include capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols to make them more difficult to guess. As a WordPress website owner, you should also advise employees against sharing passwords or writing them down so that other people can access them.
Monitoring and Defending Against Security Threats
Website security is an important consideration for any business. When you pay for a professional WordPress maintenance service, you can rest easy knowing someone is monitoring your website security and taking steps to prevent serious security issues. An expert will also advise you on which security updates you need.
Optimal Website Performance and User Experience
It’s important to deliver an excellent user experience. Otherwise, customers might leave your business in search of other options. WordPress maintenance services ensure your website always operates at peak performance, reducing page load times and preventing users from encountering annoying errors.
Keeping Site Speed and Performance at Their Peak
Google executives have confirmed that page speed has a major impact on your rankings. If you want potential customers to find you via search engines, you need to perform regular WordPress maintenance. Performance optimization services prevent errors and ensure the WordPress website core works properly. WordPress website maintenance may even help you improve your sales conversions.
Addressing and Resolving Technical Issues Quickly
Once you start working with a company that provides WordPress maintenance services, you won’t have to wait for weeks on end for someone to resolve technical issues. Paying for ongoing maintenance services also makes it easier to identify these issues, reducing downtime that prevents customers from using your WordPress website for its intended purpose.
Regularly Testing and Optimizing for Mobile Responsiveness
WordPress maintenance is also essential for optimizing your website for mobile devices. This is known as responsive web design. Since millions of people use smartphones and tablets to access their favorite sites, your WordPress website needs to display correctly on screens of all sizes. A professional WordPress maintenance service can help you meet the needs of mobile users without putting extra stress on your in-house IT employees.
Seamless Functionality and Compatibility
WordPress plug-ins and themes need to work seamlessly to ensure your website looks good and works as intended. Regular WordPress maintenance makes it easier to identify compatibility issues and address them before they hurt your ability to connect with potential customers and make sales.
Ensuring Cross-Browser Compatibility
Your WordPress site needs to work well, no matter which browser a customer uses. A good WordPress maintenance service can ensure cross-browser compatibility, giving users a consistent experience. Consistency is key for building your brand and making sure stakeholders focus on your products and services instead of on website errors.
Maintaining Compatibility With New and Updated Plug-Ins
A WordPress plug-in enhances your site’s functionality, making it easier to meet each customer’s needs. Any time you install a new plug-in, there’s a chance it could be incompatible with an existing plug-in, resulting in error messages and other problems. Your WordPress maintenance service can help you with plug-in updates, troubleshoot plug-in problems, and determine the best way to add new functions without any appreciable downtime.
Resolving Conflicts and Broken Features
It’s important to make regular plug-in and theme updates but don’t be surprised if you encounter a conflict from time to time. These conflicts occur when two plug-ins are incompatible or when a plug-in doesn’t work with your custom theme. If you work with a WordPress maintenance service, you don’t have to worry about resolving these conflicts on your own.
Search Engine Optimization and Visibility
Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, is a set of techniques used to make your site more visible to potential customers. If your WordPress website isn’t set up correctly, it can hurt your page rankings, making it more difficult for people to find your business. Regular WordPress maintenance is an important part of any company’s SEO strategy.
Regularly Submitting and Updating Sitemaps
Sitemaps make it easier for search engine robots to find your pages and index them, which may improve your page rankings. A WordPress maintenance service can help you create a sitemap, submit it to the search engines and update it as needed.
Optimizing On-Page SEO Elements
On-page SEO involves updating the pages on your WordPress website to make them more accessible to search engines and human visitors. Internal linking, external linking, title tags, keywords, and meta descriptions are just a few of the most important aspects of on-page SEO. If your page rankings aren’t where you want them to be, a WordPress maintenance service can help by optimizing each element of your website.
Identifying and Fixing Broken Links and 404 Errors
Broken links may seem like a minor problem, but they can hurt you when it comes to SEO. When a user encounters a broken link, they may leave your site, increasing your bounce rate. Broken links also give visitors the impression your site is outdated. To avoid these problems, work with a reputable maintenance service.
Consistent and Engaging Content Updates
As a website owner, you may have heard the phrase “Content is king.” That means content is one of the most important parts of your website. It’s what attracts potential customers and helps search engines determine where to rank each of your pages, so you can’t afford to ignore it. A good maintenance service can help you make consistent, engaging content updates, improving the user experience and boosting your site’s rankings.
Scheduling Regular Content Updates
Manual updates take the time that some website owners just don’t have. As a result, many sites are filled with outdated content that does a poor job of convincing visitors to make a purchase or contact the company for more information. A WordPress maintenance plan typically comes with regularly scheduled content updates, ensuring your site’s visitors always see up-to-date information.
Analyzing Content Performance and User Engagement
Good content should be engaging and relevant to the user. Analyzing content performance helps you better understand what type of content is most helpful to potential customers. It can even help you refine your marketing strategy and increase sales conversions.
Leveraging Social Media Integration for Improved Reach
Social media makes it easier to connect with potential customers without a substantial increase in your marketing costs. A company that provides WordPress maintenance services can help you integrate social media into your WordPress website, increasing your reach.
Reliable Backups and Disaster Recovery
No matter where you live, disaster can strike at any time. It’s important to do regular backups to ensure your business can keep operating even if you’re affected by a tornado, hurricane, wildfire, or other natural disasters.
Scheduling Automated Site Backups
If someone attacks your website, you may need to reinstall WordPress, wiping out your existing content, plug-ins, and themes. Automated site backups ensure you can restore the latest version of your site instead of having to recreate everything from scratch.
Ensuring Easy Restoration in Case of Data Loss
Because WordPress is a database management system, it’s possible for a database issue to wipe out some of your data. If this happens, you can work with your maintenance service to recover quickly from a data loss, promoting business as usual for your employees and customers.
Preparing for and Recovering From Hacking Attempts
Hackers can wreak havoc on a website, so it’s important to be prepared. Website maintenance services are essential for protecting your site against phishing, malware, and other types of threats. If a cybercriminal makes it past your defenses, your service provider can also help you recover quickly from a hacking attempt.
Staying Ahead of Your Competition
A WordPress maintenance service can even help you stay ahead of your competition by giving you insight into what your competitors are doing and ensuring your site has the most advanced functionality available.
Regularly Monitoring Competitor Websites
Monitoring competitor websites is a great way to stay one step ahead of other firms in your industry. It also gives you insight into what competitors are doing better than you and can help you find ways to improve your strategy.
Implementing Innovative Features and Functionality
One way to improve your bounce rate and make your site more useful is to introduce features and functions customers can’t find anywhere else. A WordPress maintenance service can help you choose new plug-ins or develop custom applications for your site, giving people a reason to buy from you instead of one of your competitors.
Adapting to Emerging Industry Trends and Best Practices
No matter what industry your business is in, the only constant is change. You need to stay on top of best practices and update your site according to emerging trends. Working with a WordPress maintenance service makes it easier to identify key trends and respond accordingly.
How WordPress SitePlan Can Give Peace of Mind and Time Savings to Business Owners
WP SitePlan offers a wide range of WordPress development and maintenance services, leaving you with more time to refine your business strategy and take care of your customers. Our team of WordPress experts handles everything from page speed optimization to theme migration, ensuring your site has the most innovative features. We also offer a Creative Service Suite, giving you access to web design, copywriting, and HubSpot support all in one place. To learn more about how we can help you save time, book a discovery call with one of our WordPress experts.
