Website Maintenance Recommendations

The best defense to protect your website is regular maintenance. You do not need to pay for a service to do this, you can manage your own website – set up a task list and check it off each month.

1. Site Submissions to search engines: as long as your site is not stagnant, the search engines will visit monthly. If you are not updating your site regularly – then manually submit your site once a month to Google (via webmaster tools) and Yahoo/Bing.
2. Test your form submissions – if you have forms on your website you should send in a test form every month to verify that the forms are working, and that you are receiving the forms. Many mail providers (especially AOL & Yahoo) block form submissions as junk. You many need to get a Gmail to make sure you are receiving your forms.
3. Check your site on multiple devices each month. Make sure your site is displaying properly on desktop, mobile and tablet. If you are managing your own site you should be checking it each month for load time (how fast does your site come up) and proper display
4. Security for your website: If you have a wordpress site security is as simple as installing a good security plug in. Paid plugins like iThemes Security are a great option to protect your site from hack attempts. If you do not have security installed, you should test your site for hacks each month, check Google Webmaster tools for alerts and test on www.isithacked.com

Managing your own web maintenance monthly can save you an expense, but you need to be diligent with your task list each month to make sure your website is operating properly. Questions? Call Darcy: 518-366-1707