Some sort of online presence is extremely important in the modern world of business. Many small businesses choose to take their services partly or entirely online, and they therefore need to build themselves a website. WordPress is the world’s premier website building platform, and is used by small business owners and web designers throughout the world to create their own sites.
However, as a business owner, you will probably have limited time to spend maintaining and updating your website. It is therefore very important to make sure that you try and create a low maintenance website which isn’t going to require hours of work a week to stay up and running. Our top tips for maintaining your WordPress site efficiently include:
Limit Your Plugins:
Plugins are great. The allow you to do things which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to, they can simplify otherwise complicated actions, and they can streamline your website and make it more user friendly. However, plugins can also cause your site to run slower, and they can require regular maintenance as you update your website. Limiting your plugins to those that you really need will help reduce the amount of website maintenance you have to perform.
Make Sure That You Backup Your Site Regularly:
Everything on your website is usually stored on the servers of your hosting provider. Your written content, images, videos, and other files are stored in a database. If your database is corrupted, lost, or damaged, then you may lost some of your files.
However, if you backup your website regularly – usually using a premium plugin – you will be able to easily restore corrupted or damaged files. This can make maintenance significantly easier, and can reduce maintenance time by orders of magnitude.
Monitor Your Site Speed:
If you notice your website slowing down, then you should do something about it. Slow sites will be penalised by search engine crawler bots, and new visitors or potential clients will leave if your site takes more than a couple of seconds to load. Monitor your load speed, and make sure that it remains fast. If it slows down, figure out why, and fix the problems before it gets too large.
Make Sure That Your Content Remains Up To Date:
There is absolutely no point having outdated, useless content on your website. One of the easiest ways to get around this problem is to write content which is timeless, and which won’t go out of date easily. Alternatively, you can return to certain pages regularly, updating them and making sure that they contain correct information. Pay attention to your links, especially on older pages, as broken links can cause significant problems when it comes to search engine rankings and user experience.
Final Word:
If you are thinking about building, or have recently built your own small business website, then you need to consider how much time you have to spend on maintenance. Streamlining your website and making it maintenance friendly can significantly reduce the amount of time you have to spend to keep it up and running, giving you more time to spend on more important things.