Your website is like a vehicle that gets people from point A to point B. It has to be a well-oiled machine equipped to handle many people using it to get where they want to go on your site and other relevant places on the internet. And, just like any other type of machine, it requires maintenance.
Many businesses spend from $5 to upward of $1,000 per month to keep their site in tip-top shape. It’s important to know how to manage a website so you spend your time and money effectively.
In this article, we provide a quick and easy website maintenance checklist to keep your site running at optimal performance at all times.
1. Check for Broken Links Regularly
It may seem tedious to go through every link on your website to find the broken ones, and it is. Luckily, there are tools that will automate this task for you.
If you use WordPress, you can install plugins that will check your links and let you know which ones to pay attention to. Apps within Semrush and Ahrefs will also help if you use those tools.
2. Keep All of Your Plugins Updated
It’s crucial that you update your plugins regularly to keep your website safe. These days, developers are usually quick to fix loopholes that hackers find in their plugins to gain unauthorized access to websites, but those fixes can only help you if you download the update.
Be aware that the more plugins you have on your site, the more updates you have to keep up with. If one plugin becomes outdated, it can affect the performance of other plugins trying to work together and slow down your site.
3. Create Fresh and Engaging Content
Creating new content ideas can be expensive in terms of time, money, and mental bandwidth. However, it’s a large part of your customer experience you don’t want to ignore. You don’t have to put out a two-hour podcast every day, but just being a cut above your competitors can put you in a position to win.
Try to find some natural ways to connect with your audience authentically. Even if it’s just posting a funny weed meme on social media once per week, that’s more effective than posting a 5,000-word blog post once every six months.
4. Do Regular Audits of Your SEO
SEO is not just a buzzword — it’s a real strategy that should be the backbone of your website. It’s not just about stuffing keywords and hashtags on a webpage or Instagram post. It’s about making a website that search engine algorithms can effectively analyze and humans can easily engage with.
Auditing your website’s SEO is a whole article in itself, but it basically means your website is discussing topics that your target audience is currently searching for. If you know that a large portion of your audience is switching from Backwoods to Grabba Leaf, for example, update your content accordingly.
Hire a Professional for Website Management
If this website management checklist seems like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Keeping your site optimal at all times is a full-time commitment. This is especially true when your brand starts to explode and tons of new people try to access your site simultaneously.
When it’s more important to focus on building your brand than editing HTML and CSS code, it may be time to hire a professional. Highopes can take your cannabis brand to the next level by providing expert-level maintenance and optimizing your current pages’ SEO. Contact us today to see how we can help.
