Most bloggers don’t give much thought to website maintenance and leave many parts of their site’s upkeep on auto-pilot. As your site grows, you should take control of some key elements to keep it running in tip-top shape.

SEO Audits

Search engines regularly update their requirements and strategies for ranking websites. What may have been a good SEO strategy a few months ago could be outdated in no time and you could find your site penalized.

You should conduct regular SEO audits of your content to make sure your meta descriptions, title lengths, keyword densities, and backlinks are all in working order. It’s not uncommon for bloggers to revise older pieces of content on their site to keep up with the latest Google ranking trends.

Regular Backups

No matter how much content you have on your site, an important piece of your website management schedule should be to create regular backups. These backups can be scheduled automatically through WordPress’ dashboard or through your hosting provider’s back-end control panel. Making frequent backups ensures your data is always safe if your server crashes or your site is compromised.

WordPress Plugin Updates

WordPress plugins can often be a source of website maintenance headaches. Because plugins change the functionality of your WordPress site, they can open it up to unwanted security vulnerabilities if they’re not updated regularly.

Older WordPress plugins are also susceptible to security threats. Every few weeks, you should see if there are any plugins that you’re using that are out of date or any plugins that have more modern substitutes available so that your site doesn’t become vulnerable. It’s also recommended that you delete any plugins you’re not currently using. Deleting old plugins not only protects you from additional threats, it can also increase your website speed.

Speed Optimization

An often overlooked part of WordPress website management is the speed of your site. It’s recommended that every few weeks you take time to clean your PHP databases so that they don’t become bogged down with unnecessary user data, spam comments, and revision histories of all of your blog posts. Because your databases are queried every time you visit your website, keeping them clean will reduce the amount of time it takes to load the elements of a requested page.

Additionally, you can increase the speed of your website by optimizing the size of all of the images you’re using to utilize web-safe sizes and color profiles. Most photos taken with a camera or created in Photoshop have default pixel densities of 300dpi. On the web, 72dpi is recommended for the fastest loading speeds.

WordPress Management Services

While it’s possible to maintain a WordPress site on your own when you’re just getting started, as your visitor count grows, you may not have the time to keep up with the regular maintenance required. WordPress management services can help you keep your site secure, manage regular updates, and continually optimize your written and visual content so that your site is never slowed down or compromised.