Your website is one of your most important business assets, working around the clock to attract customers, showcase your services, and generate leads. Like any valuable asset, it requires regular maintenance to perform at its best. Neglecting website maintenance can lead to security vulnerabilities, poor search engine rankings, frustrated customers, and lost business opportunities.
The good news? Most website maintenance tasks are straightforward and can be completed in a few hours each month. This comprehensive checklist will help you keep your small business website running smoothly, securely, and effectively.
Security and Backups: Protecting Your Digital Assets
Update All Software Components Start each month by updating your website’s core software, themes, and plugins. Outdated software is one of the primary ways hackers gain access to websites. Most content management systems like WordPress will show available updates in your dashboard. If you use a fully-hosted solution like SquareSpace, these tasks may be taken care of for you.
Create a schedule for checking updates, ideally during low-traffic periods. Always backup your website before installing major updates, especially for plugins that significantly affect functionality.
Verify Backup Systems Your website backup system should run automatically, but monthly verification ensures it’s actually working. Download a recent backup and spot-check that it contains your latest content and database information. I’m a big fan of having backups of your backups. There’s no harm in a little redundancy in your website maintenance checklist.
Test your backup restoration process at least once every few months. Knowing how to restore your website quickly can mean the difference between minor downtime and a major business disruption.
Review User Accounts Audit user accounts with access to your website admin area. Remove accounts for former employees, contractors, or anyone who no longer needs access. For remaining accounts, ensure each person has only the level of access they need for their role.
Update passwords for administrative accounts quarterly and ensure all users are following strong password practices.
Check SSL Certificate Status Verify that your SSL certificate is current and properly configured. Most browsers will show a warning if your certificate is expired or misconfigured, which can significantly hurt customer trust and search engine rankings.
Performance Optimization: Keeping Your Site Fast
Monitor Loading Speed Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to check your website’s loading speed from different locations. Page speed affects both user experience and search engine rankings, so slow pages directly impact your business.
Document your baseline speeds and track improvements or declines over time. If you notice significant slowdowns, investigate recent changes that might be causing issues.
Optimize Images Review recently added images for file size and optimization opportunities. Large image files are often the biggest culprit in slow-loading websites. Most images can be compressed significantly without noticeable quality loss.
Consider implementing lazy loading for images, which loads images only as users scroll to them, improving initial page load times.
In WordPress, I like the following plugins for image optimization: TinyPNG, Imagify, Shortpixel, or EWWW Image Optimizer.
Clean Up Unused Files Remove old files, unused plugins, and outdated themes that might be consuming server space or creating security vulnerabilities. Even deactivated plugins can sometimes cause conflicts or provide entry points for hackers.
Database Maintenance If you’re using WordPress or another database-driven system, monthly database optimization can improve performance. Remove spam comments, delete post revisions you don’t need, and clear out unnecessary data that accumulates over time.
Database maintenance is often added in as a feature in caching plugins like WP Rocket. Make sure you check those settings and turn those features on.
Content Review and Updates: Keeping Information Fresh
Verify Contact Information Double-check that all contact information throughout your website is current and accurate. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, and business hours. Outdated contact information costs you customers and hurts local search rankings.
Pay special attention to location information in footers, contact pages, and local business schema markup.
Review Business Information Update service descriptions, pricing information, team member profiles, and any other business details that may have changed. Stale information makes your business appear unprofessional or inactive. Cross check that with your Google Business Listing (and Yelp, etc).
Check that your business hours, especially seasonal changes or holiday schedules, are reflected accurately across all pages.
Update Testimonials and Reviews Add recent customer testimonials and positive reviews to keep social proof current. Fresh testimonials signal that your business is actively serving customers and delivering results.
Remove or update any testimonials that reference outdated services or information.
Check for Broken Links Use tools like Broken Link Checker or manually review important pages for broken internal and external links. Broken links frustrate users and can negatively impact search engine rankings.
This is especially important for resource pages, blog posts with external references, and any pages linking to partner websites or social media profiles.
Analytics and Performance Tracking
Review Website Analytics Examine your Google Analytics data to understand how visitors are finding and using your website. Look for trends in traffic sources, popular content, and conversion paths.
Identify your top-performing pages and consider how to leverage their success across other areas of your site. Also, investigate pages with high bounce rates or low engagement to understand potential improvement opportunities.
Monitor Search Engine Rankings Check your rankings for important keywords related to your business. While rankings fluctuate naturally, significant drops might indicate technical issues or increased competition that requires attention.
Use tools like Google Search Console to monitor how search engines are crawling and indexing your website.
Assess Goal Conversions Review how well your website is meeting its primary goals, whether that’s generating phone calls, email inquiries, online purchases, or appointment bookings.
If conversion rates are declining, investigate potential causes like broken contact forms, confusing navigation, or outdated calls-to-action.
Check Contact Form Functionality Test all contact forms, booking systems, and other interactive elements to ensure they’re working properly. A broken contact form can cost you significant business without you realizing there’s a problem. You may never know it’s not working unless you periodically test it.
Send test submissions through each form and verify that you receive the messages as expected.
Search Engine Optimization Maintenance
Review Meta Descriptions and Titles Ensure important pages have compelling, current meta descriptions and title tags. These elements significantly impact click-through rates from search engine results pages.
Update meta descriptions for seasonal services or any content that’s changed significantly since you last optimized it.
Update Local SEO Information For location-based businesses, verify that your Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) information is consistent across your website and matches your Google My Business listing.
Check that location-specific pages accurately reflect your service areas and include relevant local keywords naturally in the content.
Content Freshness Search engines favor websites with regularly updated content. Add new blog posts, update existing pages with current information, or expand service descriptions with more detail.
Even small updates to existing pages can signal to search engines that your content remains relevant and current.
Technical Health Checks
Test Website on Multiple Devices View your website on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones to ensure it displays properly across different screen sizes. Mobile traffic often exceeds desktop traffic for local businesses, making mobile optimization crucial.
Check that all interactive elements work properly on touch devices and that text remains readable at smaller screen sizes.
Monitor Error Messages Review your website’s error logs for recurring issues or problems that might be affecting user experience. Common issues include missing files, plugin conflicts, or server configuration problems.
Address any 404 errors by either fixing broken links or setting up appropriate redirects.
Check Email Functionality If your website sends emails (contact form notifications, appointment confirmations, etc.), verify that these emails are being delivered properly and not ending up in spam folders.
Creating Your Maintenance Schedule
Start by implementing this checklist monthly, then adjust the frequency based on your website’s complexity and your business needs. Some tasks, like security updates, might need more frequent attention, while others can be performed quarterly.
Document your maintenance activities and any issues you discover. This record helps track your website’s health over time and can be valuable information for web developers or hosting providers if problems arise.
Consider setting calendar reminders for maintenance tasks or dedicating specific days each month to website upkeep. Regular maintenance is far more effective and less time-consuming than dealing with problems after they’ve affected your business.
Remember, consistent website maintenance isn’t just about preventing problems—it’s about ensuring your website continues to serve as an effective marketing and customer service tool for your growing business.
Additionally, you can hire us to take care of a lot of this for you. Check out our support plans.
Amy Masson
Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.