I saw it many times a company has a website delivered, with no changes, no additions, no fresh content and most important of all is no security updates. The website stays as it was delivered, sometimes for many years.

You truly ask yourself: “If I like the design and the website just works, why would I need to be maintained?”. Please go through with me and read on to learn why maintenance is very important:

SECURITY
Probably the most important thing is: keep your site safe! Website software (Content Management Systems, plug-ins and other add-ons to the website’s functionality) are constantly updated. Partly to improve how it works or to add something new and handy, but often also to patch security holes.

Hackers are constantly looking for outdated websites or software (and known security holes). If you don’t keep up with the latest version of the software, your website could be at risk.

ATTRACTIVENESS
A website that is regularly updated with fresh content (blog posts, news articles, promotions, new products, etc.) attracts more visitors. And isn’t that what you want to achieve with your website: attracting visitors? Visitors get a bad impression if there is old data on your website.

Regularly create the new content, text, or images that relate to your business to attract both new and returning visits.

GOOGLE RANKING
Google loves websites that are regularly updated. Keeping your products and services up-to-date shows search engines that your site is fresh. A site with copyright on the bottom and the “Latest News” article years out of date will not be as attractive to Google in terms of quality or usefulness. When new content is added on a regular basis, Google values this and takes that into account with the overall ranking of your website.

Google itself provides a useful tool called “Webmaster Tools” which essentially checks the ‘health’ of your website.

YOUR CORPORATE IMAGE
Your website is an interface into your business and it can have a big impact on how visitors value your products or services. Your website should be kept relevant by regularly refreshing content. Also regularly check that contact forms work, addresses and phone numbers are updated and products, services and price lists are current and correct. This means visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily, and are more likely to become customers.

Can you do maintenance yourself?
Of course you can. The websites with Content Management Systems (like WordPress) that make it very easy to add or update content yourself. However, ask yourself: will you really do that? Will you really dedicate time every week or month to update your website’s content? And maintain those regular updates year after year? Or do you rather concentrate on your business instead of maintaining your website?

Additionally there is one thing that’s not easy for non-technical people to do software updates. An update to your website’s software can easily break your website. Because (part of) a software is not compatible with another application.

So far so good, let technical people do website maintenance for your business to professionals.