Even shiny new vehicles eventually experience wear and tear, and the best way to keep them from conking out is to stick with a regular maintenance schedule. The same efforts apply to your business website, which sets the tone for your brand and inspires customers to take action.
That’s why website maintenance for small businesses is an absolute must. If you delay minor nuisances long enough, they can sputter into significant setbacks. The regrettable result? Investing more time and money into resolving these problems, or missing out on enough sales to cripple your bottom line.
Ensure a smooth ride by radiating a great first impression at every mile marker. We’ve compiled a handy checklist of tips to help you navigate creating a small business website maintenance plan, from essential content audits to amplifying conversion rates.
Show Some Love to Your Content
Perhaps your website’s content felt solid 5 years ago, but if you never drop by your own URL, you might not notice just how stagnant it’s become. Static sites don’t gain repeat visitors. Give your customers a reason to keep coming back with fresh offerings, ensuring there’s always something new and interesting to check out.
Hot-off-the-press products and services are wonderful additions, but if an updated catalog isn’t on the horizon, you can still gain traction with some enticing blog content. Tie your brand into helpful posts and add these to your content marketing schedule. Regular updates will also extend your SEO reach, so try to stick with it.
Check for Broken Images and Links
A website riddled with broken images and links to 404s might look like an abandoned tomb. Viewers will wonder if your business is defunct, and that’s never a good look. This problem is even more likely if you migrate your website to a new server, rearrange directories, or make other significant changes to your sitemap.
Look for images that refuse to load as expected, then search the image directory to see if those files exist. You might need to change the file paths on your page or re-upload images to the correct location. This process will differ if you use a website builder or content management system.
Broken links throughout your content can also drive down your site’s SEO. Fortunately, there are tools for uncovering these dead ends, such as Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker. Either reconnect broken links or use a URL redirect to get your viewers where they need to go.
Perform a Thorough Content Audit
If it’s been a few months since you’ve clicked through the pages on your website, consider performing a full content audit. This means ensuring everything displayed is still solid and relevant. You won’t win any points with readers if you’re caught peddling woefully outdated and inaccurate information.
Peruse through your content and evaluate the language used throughout. If it’s full of slang or jargon, make sure they match current trends within your audience and your industry. This matters because being behind the times may lead to losing credibility and desirability.
Is there anything you can add or improve to make your existing content more valuable to future audiences? Just because you publish something doesn’t mean there isn’t room for continuous improvement. Consider refreshing your website with updated images, videos, and text.
Update Your Deals and Sales Regularly
Have you ever come across an astounding deal directly on a shop’s website, only to find that it’s no longer valid? Yikes! What a way to enrage would-be customers. Providing timely information is essential to small business website maintenance.
While there’s little you can do about expired coupon codes on other websites, your own corner of the internet should only display current promotions. Remove sales from your shop or service site the moment they expire. Even better, let customers know the clock is ticking down ahead of time to encourage quicker decisions.
Incorporate Current SEO Best Practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) carries a lot of weight, and you can’t just set it and forget it. Best practices shift over time, especially whenever Google releases a major algorithm update. You also may have new competitors vying for the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), so don’t get too comfortable.
Auditing SEO goes hand-in-hand with your content updates. Follow high-authority SEO blogs and newsletters to remain in the know, and then look for opportunities to add more SEO juice to your business website.
Some tried-and-true best practices for SEO to keep in mind:
- Write high-quality, unique descriptions and content
- Optimize all your title tags and alt image text
- Seek additional opportunities for internal linking
- Implement keywords appropriately throughout your site
View Your Website Like A Customer
Who’s ready for a roleplaying game? Pretend you’re a customer visiting your business website for the first time. What are your impressions? Even better, ask others to help you perform some insightful user testing and analyze the feedback.
Website maintenance for small businesses requires dedication to gain more site visitors, but we think you’ll love the payoff. Try asking the following questions to eliminate unnecessary barriers between your customers and conversion.
