Complete Website Maintenance Checklist for Beginners

Our website maintenance checklist for beginners will help unlock your website’s optimum performance, capture valuable leads, and improve your SEO ranking.

You have finally launched the website and are happy with how it turned out. But your job does not end there. For it to work well, perform regular website maintenance.

Think of it like how you take care of your brand-new car. If you fail to keep the engine and other parts checked regularly, you will have troubles along the way. It is the same for your website.

Web maintenance is essential to keep your site updated. It helps ensure your website provides a flawless user experience, is well optimized for SEO purposes, and has improved security. Here is a simple but complete website maintenance checklist that even beginners can follow.

Fix Broken Links

Broken links are among the most common issues you will find after performing a site audit. They occur when a page gets moved, deleted, or redirected, negatively affecting the user experience. They also damage your SEO rankings as they prevent the juice from flowing from one link to another.

Fortunately, solving this issue is not rocket science. You can use free tools like Screaming Frog or purchase its license if you need to crawl over 500 URLs. Other than using Google Search Console to check for pages that were successfully indexed and otherwise, use it to check for broken links. But besides knowing which tools to use, understanding the 4xx page and 5xx server errors are just as vital.

4XX Page Errors

- A 400 Bad Request Error happens when the website server receiving your request is corrupt or incorrect.
- A 401 Unauthorized Error appears when your request cannot be authenticated due to wrong or rejected credentials.
- A 403 Forbidden Error occurs when the page you try to access is available only to certain users.
- A 404 Not Found Error indicates that the URL you are accessing is incorrect, unavailable, or the page has been poorly redirected.

5XX Server Errors

- A 500 Internal Server Error informs you of a general server problem that is commonly caused by an incorrect permission, a PHP timeout, or an incorrectly configured application.
- A 503 Service Unavailable Error appears when the server is temporarily down for maintenance or when it overloads and can no longer handle the large traffic volume.
- A 504 Gateway Timeout Error occurs when the server fails to receive a prompt response from the upstream server to complete your request.

Besides fixing broken internal links, remember to address broken external links, too. Having inbound links is beneficial to your reputation and rankings. And when these links no longer lead to the correct page on your site, contact the webmaster of the external site or set up a 301 redirect to the original page.

Test & Improve Website Speed

Based on studies, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load within two seconds, and 40% of people leave a website that takes over three seconds to load. Your site’s speed is responsible for your website’s success, traffic growth, and SEO ranking. It explains proving your website’s speed at least once a month is crucial.

You can use tools like GTMetrix or Google’s PageSpeed Insights to view your site’s performance metrics, which help determine your actions. Each website requires different steps, but here are two proven ways to speed up your website, besides optimizing redirects, enabling browser caching, and updating scripts.

Optimize Images

Optimizing your images can significantly improve site speed. You would be surprised how a heavy image slows a page’s loading time. It explains why resizing and compressing your images are two simple but wise steps. There are many free tools that let you resize and compress images, so find one that best fits your taste and begin to see your pages load much faster.

Remove Unnecessary Plugins

Adding free plugins to your site can be tempting, but having several running in unison results in a slower website. If you suspect the plugins to be the culprit, identify the plugins that you no longer need and disable them. Then run a test using GTMetrix to check for any speed improvements. If the results show a site speed increase, those disabled plugins are better left deactivated.

Backup Your Website

Performing a website backup every week is recommended. Doing it ensures you will never lose any data or changes made should an unfortunate event happen, like a plugin leaves everything in disarray or a hacker successfully messes up your site.

You can back up your website manually using your hosting provider or rely on a website backup system that performs automated daily or weekly backups.

Test Your Web Forms

Forms are great for capturing leads and driving conversions. It explains why having them on your website and ensuring they function well are crucial.

To guarantee that your forms do their duties correctly, always perform web form testing and review the submission process. Fill out the form and check the entire flow using all the browsers and devices your target visitors use or will likely use. At the same time, check if your Google Recaptcha works properly.

Remember that you could miss out on potential leads and conversions if you leave your web forms unmaintained.

Keep Your Sitemap Up-to-Date

Think of your sitemap as your website’s master list. It contains all the web pages published under your domain and serves as the basis for search engines to determine which pages are most important.

All new websites must submit a sitemap to Google and other search engines, but this task does not end here. You should regularly update your sitemap to ensure your website is properly indexed. This step includes correcting broken links and uploading a new sitemap, including new pages or structural changes.

Check For Mobile Responsiveness Errors

Gone are the days when all you need to be concerned about is how your website looks on a desktop or laptop. As the number of mobile users continues to increase, having a mobile responsive website is a must, not a luxury. And it explains why most websites these days use an adaptive design. Unfortunately, some webmasters have not or do not read the memo.

A mobile responsive website means resizing, scrolling, zooming, and panning are on point. All the elements and features must appear to function correctly and provide a great user experience. To ensure your website checks all those boxes, use tools to test for mobile responsiveness, such as BrowserStack and Emulators, or use Google Chrome’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Purge the Cache

Cache purging helps keep your website content fresh and updated for the users to consume. This step is most useful for websites like e-commerce or news sites that constantly make changes or additions to their pages. When you purge the cache, you quickly update your site or page’s content, but the time it takes to update will depend on the content delivery network (CDN) you use.

Monitor Your SSL Certificate’s Expiry Date

Never let your SSL certificate expire if you do not want browsers to warn users and discourage them from accessing your site. Renew SSL certificates every two years to ensure your website has up-to-date encryption. Besides regularly checking your SSL expiry date, set a reminder on your calendar to renew the certificate 30 days before it expires.

Need help in maintaining your website? Lumenvo’s team of competent developers is your best bet. We have helped businesses from various industries unlock their website’s optimum performance while securing valuable leads and improving their SEO ranking. You can count on us for daily, weekly, or monthly website maintenance. Let us talk about how we can tap your website’s full potential.