We all know why it’s important to have a well-structured website. But just having the site up and running is not enough. It is crucial that you are regularly updating and maintaining your site to ensure that it is running at full capacity.
Just like your car, your website requires maintenance to operate properly. Look at maintaining your site like an oil change. If you change your oil regularly you remove the dirt and debris which can cause your engine to over-heat and run slower. Your website is no different. It needs regular attention to keep it running and performing at its best.
Properly maintaining your site helps to ensure the security of your website, increase the number of new visitors, boost returning traffic, and more. Here are 15 reasons why your website needs an oil change.
#1. It Boosts Site Traffic
Your visitors are the most important stakeholders when it comes to your website. In order to provide those visitors with the best quality content, search engines such as Google raise rankings for websites that are updated regularly. A higher ranking increases your site’s visibility, which increases the likelihood that your content appears when your target audiences search for relevant keywords. Updating your site with valuable information, fixing broken links, removing duplicate pages, and keeping your content updated will help drive both new and returning visitors.
#2. It Improves Security
Web security is important to keeping hackers and cyber-thieves from accessing sensitive information. Without a proactive security strategy, businesses risk the spread and escalation of malware, attacks on other websites, networks, and other IT infrastructures. You want to ensure that your site is keeping up with software patches and security updates. Failing to do so gives hackers the chance to steal data from your site.
#3. It Speeds Up Your Website
The faster your website\’s load time is, the happier your visitors will be. In other words, when you optimize the load time for your website, you can expect to see improvements in user experience, conversion rates, and ultimately, sales revenue. The first 5 seconds of page loading time have the highest effect on conversion rates. On average, if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, approximately 40% of your visits will abandon your site.
#4. It Creates An Optimal Visitor Experience
Keeping your site updated with engaging content such as upcoming events, image, and blogs gives your audience an idea about who you are and what you do. A well-maintained website helps promote your brand, work, and mission. Avoid looking stale and keep your site visually appealing and conduct a site audit to identify issues and errors on your site. This should be a regular task so that you can provide your visitors with the best possible user experience.
#5. It Keeps You Relevant and Up-To-Date
Over time, the expectations your audience has for a positive web experience change. Sometimes those expectations can change by the minute, and only regular maintenance can ensure that your online presence keeps up. Regular maintenance can remove any information that is out-of-date that would eliminate you from being a credible source. Ensure regular maintenance to continually update your content, and make sure your online presence stays current and accurate.
#6. It Grows Your Website Along With Your Business
Audience expectations aren’t the only thing that changes over time. As your business evolves, so should your website. You might add different products or services, staff or start to target a different audience. If your website doesn\’t grow with your business, you will run into problems that can result in lost conversions and lost revenue.
Website maintenance and management is important for all organizations, both big and small. Regular oil changes on your site will improve performance and provide a safe, secure and enjoyable environment for your visitors. Your website can be crucial to helping your business gain audience exposure and grow its revenue. Unfortunately, too many businesses assume that a great website can be accomplished with one major web design project, and little follow up. In reality, regular website maintenance is important and is one of the biggest steps to ensuring long-term success in marketing and growing your business digitally. It’s time to start looking after your website as well as you look after your car.
