Marketing Digest

Help with Maintaining Your Website

Annette Washington-Goff

Is Website Maintenance On Your To-Do-List?

I speak to many business owners about maintaining their website.  It’s surprising that after getting a new website, business owners never look at their website again.

They also believe that their website will take care of itself so they don’t do anything to take care of their website. This practice is not advisable and can cost you money and headache in the end.

You probably think that only the big guys get hacked.  That’s because it’s what you see in the news so often.  Fact is thousands of small business websites get hacked every day and yours is just as vulnerable (if not more) if you never take the time to maintain your website.

Your website can be hacked.  Especially if your website is on a WordPress platform.  Don’t get me wrong- EVERY type of website is at risk.

But because of the popularity of WordPress, and the fact the smallest business owners are negligent when it comes to web maintenance, it’s a prime target for hackers to “cut their teeth” on. And you invite them when you just let your website take care of itself. I’ve seen the damage, and it can be ugly AND costly.

An article posted last year on CNBC states that 14 million US businesses are at risk of a hacker threat.  If you search, you will find hundreds of similar articles stating why you should take this important step.

I am not trying to scare you, I just want to place some real emphasis on helping you avoid the issues I’ve seen on a neglected website.

Here is an article from Process Street with some tips on maintaining your website: https://www.process.st/web-maintenance/

They provide handy weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly checklists which also include renewing your domain name (another thing that small business owners forget about until their site goes down). We work in website development, maintenance, and support.  So I see the damage almost daily.

Do yourself a favor and add website maintenance to your monthly to-do list. Your website is an important investment in your business and should not be ignored.

To keep your website out of danger:

  • Use the checklists that are available for download.
  • Add it to your monthly to-do list
  • You can hire someone to get the job done- it doesn’t take long
  • Make sure you add Website Security to help prevent malicious activity
 I hope that you will take this advice and make the move to protect your investment.  These days, you can’t be too careful and it’s best to be proactive.

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