Routine website maintenance

Building a website and then implementing it on the Internet is just the first stage in managing your Internet presence.  A lot of people seem to think that this is the end of the job and that they can now sit back and watch the visitors flood in.  These people will be sorely disappointed.

Google, and other search engines, love sites that contain good quality, unique and fresh content that is updated regularly.  If you want to appear high in Google’s listing over the long term you must adopt the attitude that your site is going to be the place to go for somebody requiring information on [whatever your website is about].

Build it into your regular schedule an amount of time to work on your website.  How much time you spend ‘per session’ and how often you allocate these sessions depends on the size and complexity of your site.  The important thing is to ’schedule it in’ to get yourself into the routine.

Routine tasks

Depending on the sort of site you are running, you need to perform the following regular tasks:

  • Review existing pages (monthly)

    You may write a page that contains fantastic content and gets good placement in search engine listings.  You will find that, over time, the pages placement starts to deteriorate.  This is because as time goes on, Google (etc) consider the relevance of the content diminishes.

    To maintain your standing in the listings, you should not let a page go more than about 90 days without being updated.  Read through the text of the page;

    • Can you improve the current wording or punctuation in any way?
    • Is there anything you can add to the content as it stands?
    • Is there anything that is no longer relevant that can be removed?
    • Are there any relevant links you can add to point to related pages or other websites?
    • Is there anything you can write a new blog post on and then link to it on your page or are there any existing blog entries or pages that you could link to?

    The intention is to change something.  The next time search engine spiders visit they will realise the page has been updated and raise your standing accordingly.

  • Page Structure (monthly)

    Review the structure of fixed pages on your site.  Does the structure still give a logical hierarchy of the pages on your site?  Are any pages obsolete or are any new pages required?

    Removing pages should be avoided wherever possible; if search engines are pointing at them for specific terms and then you delete them then visitors will get a broken link message if they click on them.  This will leave a bad impression with the visitor and will have a negative effect on your standing with search engines.

  • Links (monthly)

    You should review any links you have to other sites regularly.

    • Does the link still exist?   The Internet is a transient place, sites come and go and things get moved around.  If you are linking to somewhere that doesn’t exist either remove the link or, if you can locate where the link has moved to, change your link accordingly.
    • Does the link still contain the information as when you originally linked to it?  If not, consider removing the link.
    • If you agreed a mutual link with another site then are they still linking to you? (NB: Mutual links are not very beneficial from a SEO point of view but can attract additional traffic if the agreement is with a site with related subject matter to your own.

  • SEO (weekly)

    Search Engine Optimisation is what will bring visitors to your site from search engine free pages.  Time spent on perfecting your SEO is time well spent.  Get in the habit of regularly reviewing the way your site is optimised.  In particular, you should check each page for the following:

    • Meta keywords – are they relevant to the page?
    • Review search phrases that have been used to arrive at your site.  Can you optimise pages better to exploit similar phrases?
    • Review rivals’ activity.  What keywords are they using?
    • Review keyword density of meta keywords in relation to the text on the page.

  • Pictures (monthly)

    Make sure you have at least one picture or graphic on each page of your site.  Not only do pictures give visual interest to pages but they can be used for additional SEO by making the image name the same as a keyphrase for the page it is on and by adding keyphrases to sing the ALT text.

  • Blog items (weekly – more frequently if possible)

    Running a blog is a great way to enhance your search engine standings.  As I keep saying, search engines love fresh content and adding your own thoughts and opinions are an excellent way of producing it.