As an online site maintenance company, we regularly see instances where smaller businesses owners insist their online investment is complete once they’ve had their business website designed, developed, and pushed live. In fact, those are just the first steps in establishing and growing an online business.

With regard to search engine ranking positions, online marketing, increased conversions, and positive visitor experiences, website content must be maintained and kept fresh on a regular basis.

It is important. But BOY is it time consuming.

Though this idea is simple and even though it’s possible for site owners to promise themselves that maintaining their websites is a top priority… we watch as nine times out of ten website maintenance drops off our clients’ radars.  Life happens. Kids get sick. It had been your gross annual vacation time.  Your relatives are staying following the holidays.  A member of family becomes ill.  It’s an extra-busy month at the job.

By the end of your day, your bills need to be paid, your children need to be fed, and you will need to serve your customers.  For anyone who is not able to set aside time to maintain your website today, almost always there is tomorrow. And the very next day. And the day after that…

Common website maintenance services

Website maintenance tasks can be quite time consuming. A few of the key tasks an internet maintenance company can perform for you include:

• Ensuring your product (or service) descriptions and prices remain accurate
• Reviewing your website statistics to find out if any serious problems have developed (broken links, reduced browsing times, reduced conversions)
• Keeping your site updated with relevant, fresh articles
• Responding to blog comments
• Updating your company’s latest news, press releases, success stories, testimonials, case studies, events calendar, and portfolio entries
• Adding new products (e.g.,  adding new rental homes for a lodging company website)
• Inserting new photography
• Promoting new specials, deals, or sales
• Posting company newsletters
• Archiving content as it becomes older (moving it to some other section of the web site)
• Devising a highly effective website visitor and comments from customers plan
• Maximizing your search engine positioning (Search engine optimization, link building, key word research)
• Website copywriting
• Checking for and fixing any broken links

A good web maintenance company can help you develop the plan that fits your needs, resources, and budget. Do keep in mind though, that lots of reputable maintenance company will demand an ongoing, monthly relationship and won’t be able to do one-off changes for you affordably.

Selecting a web maintenance company that is right for you

Choose a reputable company to maintain your site using the next guidelines. To avoid wasting time or money, ensure that:

• You know how the business’s website maintenance pricing
• You are obvious on just what services they’ll provide.
• They’ll help you create a clear and straightforward website maintenance plan that you understand.
• The company has years of experience providing timely and regular expert maintenance for business websites.
• The people performing the net maintenance are seasoned professionals with years of experience.
• The company reputation is sound. They may have plenty of happy clients and can offer client testimonials or references for you to take a look at prior to making your decision.