Just like a home, your website needs a good thorough cleaning – a freshening up – a Spring cleaning. It’s always a good idea to take the time (whether it’s Spring or Fall) to perform some regular maintenance on your site.
With my son back at school, I am taking some of my time to perform maintenance on JerseyGirlWebs. So if things seem to be out-of-place or missing, just bear with me.
But you can benefit from my “Spring Cleaning”. I’m going to share my checklists! I have two: Functionality and Content/SEO.
Let’s start with the Website Functionality Maintenance Checklist.
- Download a copy of your website and back it up. onto a CD Rom or DVD. Take a few minutes now and schedule to regularly download and backup a copy of your website throughout the new year. Schedule monthly or quarterly backups if you make regular changes and additions to your site, or, at the very least, bi-annual or annual backups. Having an archived copy of your website on hand is essential if you ever need to replace or reinstall your website and it gives you an on-going business archive of your website and the changes made to it throughout the year.
- Review and update any copyright dates and/or time references throughout your website. Do a “find and replace” for last year’s date on your site, or better yet, spend a few extra minutes now to program your website to update all dates and time references automatically so that you won’t need to manually update them in the future.
- Review your domain names. What domain names do you currently own and when do they expire? Is the registration information for your domain name up to date and correct? By keeping your domain name registration contact information up to date and correct (especially all email contacts), you will be sure to receive timely notices, announcements, and renewals and you will be better able to manage and maintain your domain name effectively and efficiently.
- Review all company contact information on your website. All names, addresses, telephone #s and extensions, and email address should all be double checked to ensure they are up to date and correct. Double check that all email addresses listed on your website route to the correct person at your company.
- Check the links (both internal and external) on your website. Broken links are a sure sign of a neglected and out of date website. They can also be a tremendous source of frustration to your visitors and make a (very!) bad impression. Check and double check all links, both on and off your website, to ensure all are working and up to date.
- Test your website forms. Pretend you are a customer (or potential customer) on your website and complete and submit each form on your website. Ensure that the data submitted is received properly and is forwarded to the correct email address at your company. If your forms include automatic replies, check that the replies are up to date and contain correct information. If your site contains a shopping cart, test your cart functionality and all checkout forms.
- Check Your Site’s Search Feature. Do you know if old content that you thought had been removed from your website is showing up in your search results? Or, if all your recent updates are showing up? I f you are not sure of the answers to these questions, you’ll want to test your website’s search feature to make sure it is functioning effectively and that it includes the right content.
- Check 404 error pages. These indicate missing pages or pages removed due to changes. Visitors seeking such pages should be presented with a way to take action on the site. Correct 301 redirects or custom 404 pages help achieve this.
- Check Sitemaps. Check the sitemap page to ensure that it is upto date and not having links legacy pages or broken links. Also ensure that it links to newly added and important pages. Also this also means that the sitemap.xml file should be updated and resubmitted to search engines as well.
- Test Your Social Sharing Buttons. Does the right thing happen when you press the “like”/Tweet/share/+1 button? Is your RSS working properly? Act like a new visitor and fill out contact forms, email subscription forms, and any other bit of third-party functionality just to make sure it’s functioning as it is intended to function.Also, make sure the messaging is on point (e.g. does the notification someone gets when they are a new subscriber to your email newsletter need to be updated?)
- Test Your Cross-Browser Compatibility. View your site in IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, etc. Check your website statistics to identify which browsers your visitors are using, and use that information to determine how much effort to invest in making your site compatible with each.
- Check your page load speed. Something strange happening on your site that is running up your page load time? Uh oh. Page speed is becoming increasingly important to Google’s algorithm (mostly because it’s becoming more and more important to Google users – the humans who get frustrated with slow-loading websites). Use Google’s Page Speed tool to gauge how quickly (or slowly) your site is loading. Speed counts.
Any malfunction on your website can be just as damaging to your business as a brake failure would be to your car. Ideally, you should set aside one day each month to undertake a major site review. It’ll keep your business online running as smoothly as a well-oiled engine.
