Many business owners choose to rely on themselves or an assistant (brother-in-law, friend, neighbor’s tech-savvy daughter) for WordPress support and maintenance. Your company’s website plays a big role in your business’s success. So regular WordPress maintenance is imperative to keeping your site secure and running smoothly. Proper attention should be given to:
- core WordPress updates
- plugin updates, removal of unused plugins
- cleaning spam comments and never published draft posts
- use of strong passwords
However, there’s so much more to WordPress maintenance than theme and plugin updates. The design of your website plays a huge role in attracting new visitors and keeping the loyal ones. We recommend updating the look of your site every 2-3 years. And for this you need a reliable, trusted partner.
As a business owner, your focus should be on growing your client base and making money, not on website support.
Here’s 6 reasons why you must have a reliable, professional team to take care of your site:
SECURITY & PROTECTION FROM HACKERS
You may think that your company is not significant enough to get hackers’ attention. It is simply not the case. Hackers do not discriminate. To combat known threats, WordPress releases frequent updates. And so do plugin developers. So when you see a red circle with a number next to Updates in your WordPress Dashboard, you should not ignore it.
COMPATIBILITY & FUNCTIONALITY
Once a major WordPress update happens, your site files (theme files) may need to be updated as well to make sure that everything still looks and functions as it should. Many times a WordPress update will lead to themes and plugins updates as developers try to maintain compatibility. While not every update has to do with addressing security issues, the changes may still be significant enough to affect the look and/or functionality of your website. It’s important to run scheduled back-ups of your site files.
DESIGN & CONTENT UPDATES
WordPress is great at giving you the freedom to manage content on your website on your own terms. However, keeping the look of the website fresh and attractive for your target visitors requires programming skills. Here’s a few reason to update website design:
- look better than your competition
- attract targeted, affluent visitors
- improve layout to increase customer conversion rates
- engage visitors with imagery and fresh content to reduce bounce rate
MOBILE UPDATES
Most internet searches today happen on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. If your WordPress site is a few years old, chances are it’s not mobile-friendly. This is detrimental to your business because Google and other search engines are placing your website at the bottom of the list in mobile search results. Whether you want to keep the current look or redesign the website, you will need the help of a development team to implement responsive design.
SEO & SEM
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a multi-step, continuous process that helps increase your website’s visibility in search engines. Much of SEO is based on the use of keywords for your specific service, product, location, and target market. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) focuses on promoting your website in social media, online business directories, and search engines. Properly implemented SEO and SEM strategy will improve search engine rankings, driving targeted visitors to your website. After all, you may have the best product and the best value, but if you’re not found online you are not selling.
WEBSITE HOSTING
Quality and capabilities of your web server have a direct impact on your website. It affects page speed, vulnerability exposure, security, and much more. If you host with a big name company, you are probably on a server with hundreds if not thousands of other websites, which increases your website’s risk for hacker attacks. You’re also sharing bandwidth and storage resources with other websites – things that negatively affect performance of your site. While web hosting may seem insignificant to your web needs, it plays a major role in ensuring that your WordPress website is up and running smoothly for your customers.
Finding a reliable and accessible partner for WordPress support and maintenance can be difficult. You may have had a bad experience in the past. We understand that. At Velvet Ink Media we have a long list of satisfied clients who trust us to take care of their websites. And we will do the same for you.
