Websites need maintenance
So, you’ve got yourself a content managed, mobile friendly website and can look after it all very nicely by yourself, without the need for spending any more money on a costly website design company? After all, that’s the whole point of having a CMS site isn’t it? You can forget it and get on with running your business now. Right?
Well, actually, no, it isn’t right.
Such an approach could be the road to disaster and lead to a lot of unplanned expense.
Just as running your car without any regular maintenance and hoping that all will be well can lead to myriad problems with reliability, efficiency and expense, so taking a similarly casual attitude with your website can lead to unwanted problems.
Website security
There are plenty of people out there looking to break through website security systems, whether for malicious reasons, commercial gain or simply the fun of beating the system.
Once in, hackers can create havoc. Some problems may be immediately obvious and easily rectified, whilst others can cause considerable damage, embarrassment and expense.
Website efficiency
Whatever CMS your site is based on, it is almost certain that there will be periodic updates to the software in order to enhance performance and keep up with technological change. If you fail to take advantage of these updates, your site could become slower or incompatible with new technologies. At best this may mean that things don’t run as you would like, but at worst the entire functionality of your website could be affected.
Search engine optimisation
Search engines are constantly changing the algorithms they use to determine a website’s position in search results. Some of Google’s updates (Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, etc.) have seen high-ranking websites fall from the first page to virtual obscurity without a word on the website being changed.
Keeping content updated
With the internet reaching maturity more and more content is becoming out-of-date. Keeping content current and topical means readers will keep coming back and you will keep reaching new audiences. Search engines also determine if a site is being regularly updated so keeping content fresh helps to maintain and improve rankings.
So, what do you do?
Just as with a car, a little regular maintenance of your website will avoid these potential problems and keep everything running smoothly. If you have a little technical understanding you can do this yourself or, if you want to get on with what you are best at, running your business, a modest regular monthly fee should cover all that needs doing.
In addition to keeping things up to date and preventing any problems, maintenance contracts might also include regular monitoring and reporting of visitor data, search engine rankings and extra SEO activity, further freeing you to concentrate on the jobs that you are best at.
To find out more why not give us a call.