Website Maintenance Checklist

Website Maintenance Checklist

Note: This checklist is provided as a guide. Your website may require additional maintenance tasks. This checklist is intended for those clients NOT using our Website Care services. For Website Care clients, we take care of all this for you. 

Weekly Maintenance Tasks

  1. Check to make sure that a recent backup has been taken of your website and is stored safely off-site
  2. Perform any WordPress core updates
  3. Perform any WordPress plugin updates
  4. Perform any WordPress theme updates
  5. Run a security scan
  6. Check that all pages are loading without any errors
  7. Check all forms on your website to ensure they are functioning and working correctly
  8. Remove spam comments or form submissions
  9. Check for broken links
  10. Check for any 404 errors
  11. Review uptime logs - If there are any significant downtime periods, talk to your hosting  provider to ascertain why

Monthly Maintenance Tasks

  1. Test the loading speed of your website using GTMetrix or Pingdom Tools. If your website is loading in over 2-3 seconds, it needs optimising
  2. Review the security scans from the last month and ensure that all issues are resolved
  3. Check your website statistics are being saved in Google Analytics or the tool of your choice
  4. Check how your website is performing in the search engines. Are you visible locally?

Quarterly Maintenance Tasks

  1. Review your website - Is there anything that needs improving?
  2. Do you have any new content to add? Is anything outdated?
  3. Graphics and photos - Are these all up to date? Do any of these need updating to newer versions?
  4. Check your meta titles and meta descriptions - have you correctly set each of these on every page?
  5. Do each of the pages of your website have a clear Call to Action (CTA)?
  6. Are all of the forms on your website user friendly and giving a clear success or failure message when used?
  7. Test your website to make sure it’s loading well responsively - across computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices
  8. Test the health of your backups by restoring a backup on a staging website
  9. Review uptime logs - are there any worrying trends with your hosting provider?

Annual Maintenance Tasks

  1. Renew your domain name(s)
  2. Check your hosting contract and make sure it’s the most suitable one for your business
  3. Update the copyright year in the footer of your website
  4. Review each page on your website and make sure that your content is still accurate
  5. Review your website and marketing strategy for the year ahead and reflect on the data from the year that has gone
  6. Consider updating the design of your website to better suit your target audience.