With everything being online these days, having a good online presence can be very important for businesses and organisations alike.
But still, you need to understand that just having a fantastic-looking website is not enough to keep your digital advantage.
You need to feed your website a constant stream of content to make sure that it stays relevant.
Besides, the upkeep and maintenance of the website are just as important too.
DID YOU KNOW?
There are 1.13 billion websites in the world as of February 2023 of which 82% were deactivated, which means around 200 million websites are active.
But why do you actually need to maintain and update your website?
Well, there are a ton of reasons why you need to maintain and update a website.
User Experience
You know, your website’s landing page is oftentimes the first thing your audience sees when they land on your website.
Having a webpage that looks like it’s from the 90s can make your visitors leave your site, not to mention if it’s slow to load on top of that too.
If you maintain your site well, your brand image will improve, and you’ll see a constant stream of visitors, some of whom might just become your customers too.
But, improving your site on your own can be a lot of work.
In such cases, you can also check out a website maintenance plan from a professional management service.
They will take care of the regular upkeep and content updates on your site and you can focus on running your business.
Search Engine Optimization
It is basically a way to make your website more visible to search engines.
For any website to survive today, it needs to have good content that is SEO optimized to the max.
This means that your content needs to rank higher on search engines.
Regularly updating your site’s content shows search engines that your site is active and needs to be indexed more frequently.
All this can have a very positive effect on your site and it will get more organic visitors as well.
Faster and More Accessible Site
Speed and accessibility are probably another one of the reasons why you should have your website maintained and updated regularly.
When a website is slow and broken, users will simply leave your site altogether.
After all, nobody likes a slow website.
On the flip side, if your website is well-maintained, it will take your online presence to the next level.
Smoother, faster page loads improve the user experience and increase conversions.
Good navigation enhancements and responsive designs will make visiting your site more engaging and effortless for your customers.
Besides, you can also try optimizing and refining your site by minimizing the page sizes by compressing and caching them.
You can also improve speeds even more by using next-generation image and video file extensions like WebM for videos and webp and svg for images.
You should also optimize and refine site speed by minimizing page sizes through compression and caching
Better Website Security
Keeping your site secure is another reason why you need to keep it updated.
Things on the internet can be pretty complex.
Cyberthreats are becoming more advanced and websites are the most common targets.
Updating can help you keep online threats like hackers, viruses, and malware at bay and it also improves the overall experience for your audience too.
Priceless Insights on Your Site
Did you know that updating your site can also give you a look into how it’s actually performing?
You can easily see things like which pages are popular, how long visitors are staying and on which page, as well as the keywords that are bringing in the most traffic.
All this information can come in pretty handy when you’re updating the site.
It can tell you which parts you need to work on.
How Often Do You Need To Update?
You can see the benefits of updating your site regularly.
But the question remains.
How often do you need to update your site to keep it running smoothly?
Speaking from experience, it can depend on many things, like the size of your site and the amount of traffic it gets each month.
But still, websites are usually updated on a monthly basis.
It can include anything from new blog posts, updated product information or even adding new design elements.
Just keep in mind that your website maintenance is a regular thing and should be treated the same.
More than 89% of consumers will go to your competitor if your site has poor user experience or is slow to load.
Conclusion
Keeping your sites maintained and updated is very important if you want to keep your online presence alive.
Besides, updating can bring many benefits, like a faster and more snappy site experience.
From keeping your designs updated to uploading new content to keeping the site safe and secure, there are so many benefits to maintaining your site.
But you also need to keep in mind that you need to do it regularly.
On a side note, you can also hire a professional website maintenance service to do all these things for you.