In order to have a website that runs smoothly and attracts visitors, you need to make sure you have a WordPress maintenance plan in order to keep your website maintained. After all, who wants to visit a website with broken links, outdated information, and a slow connection? That’s as fast of a way as any to drive potential customers away and to never look back.
About WordPress
WordPress is a very popular website hosting platform due to its easy-to-use and easy-to-set-up processes. WordPress allows users the option to customize their websites, add plugins and themes, all for a low cost and through a relatively easy process.
Why is a WordPress Maintenance Plan Necessary?
Even though WordPress is a great, easy-to-use platform to host your website on, that doesn’t mean you will be free of problems, bugs, and updates. This is where your maintenance plan comes into play. Since WordPress is used all over the web and is a popular website, it’s vulnerable to hackers and viruses. In fact, it was reported that in 2018, WordPress accounted for about 90 percent of all hacked content management systems. This is not meant to drive you away from WordPress, but rather to show you just how crucial maintaining your WordPress website is.
These hacks can be easily avoided with a simple maintenance plan. W You just need someone to be there maintaining the website to make sure the updates and required plugins are properly installed.
Do it For Your Audience
Chances are when creating a website, you want users of your website to have a positive experience and keep coming back. In order to ensure that, you need to make sure your website is properly maintained. When visitors come to your website and experience broken links, slow loading items, and an overall unprofessional and unsafe feeling, they will not only be likely to never return, but they will feel like your business can’t be trusted. A WordPress maintenance plan is a surefire way to ensure your customers and visitors have a positive experience on your website and that they leave the site with what they were looking for and with a good feeling about your business.
Don’t Wait for an Emergency
You wouldn’t wait to get your car’s oil changed until you’re broken down on the side of the highway, right? Treat your website maintenance the same way. If you think you can ignore the website until there’s a major problem or attack, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Waiting until you are attacked to start treating the problem is entirely too late and a great way to lose data and business. Just like with your vehicle and your health, preventative maintenance on your WordPress website is the key to defending your business from any surprises or attacks and keeping the user experience smooth. It should also give you some peace of mind knowing that your site is secure, safe, up to date, and properly maintained.
Benefits of Maintaining Your Website
- Reliable updates to the website and plugins will keep your website safe and secure
- Maintenance will prevent downtime of your website. Backing up your information will prevent a disaster in the event that data is deleted or lost forever.
- Monitoring allows you to test the website for speed, stability, and compatibility as well as the ability to catch unexpected activity on the website that will prevent downtime.
Maintaining your website properly can even improve SEO. A website that is optimized and running smoothly is an important factor in ranking higher on Google. In fact, page speed is one of the vital factors that Google uses to rank websites.
Should I Hire a Professional to Maintain my Website?
The answer to this question depends on your specific business and website. Some businesses have web teams of people entirely dedicated to web maintenance, which is what is the best practice. If you are unable to find someone at your business to dedicate themselves to the website and maintaining it, it may be a good idea to outsource and hire a professional.
A professional website maintenance tech will allow you to spend less time putting out fires online and more time growing your business. They will also bring maintenance experience with them and will have no problem getting started on the basics and then some of keeping your website maintained and up-to-date. It’s an effective way to protect your investment.
Don’t forget to ensure that your maintenance plan is forward-thinking. You want to recognize and anticipate any problems that may arise in the future and know how to best handle them promptly.
With your WordPress maintenance plan in tow, you are doing yourself, your business, and your customers a huge favor by ensuring that your website and all plugins have the latest security patches. This will reduce your risk of hacks.