When it comes to security and optimal performance of your website, WordPress Maintenance is really very important. Don’t forget if your site visitors confronted with a bad experience on your site, they surely won’t come back. So, you need to take out some time from your busy schedule and check up your website properly.
This article covers the most important points that allow you to keep your site updated and secure.
10- Step Checklist for Website Maintenance
So, Here is a 10-step checklist that you should consider once in a while.
1. Back Up Your Website Regularly
You never know what will happen to your website all of a sudden. So, before when the things go wrong with your WordPress site, create a backup for it.
You can take help from the particular WordPress Backup Plugin to create a backup for your site.
Another simple way to restore your files is by using PhpMyAdmin software.
Here is one more way to do the same. You can log in to your cPanel. And, from there you can easily create the backup of your site manually.
Do check out this article to get an idea of the Best ways to restore WordPress site from backup
2. Update Your WordPress Core, Themes and Plugins
WordPress has an in-built system that allows managing updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes. Make sure whatever themes and plugins you are using on your site including the WordPress Core, are of the latest version.
You can follow these 3 simple ways to make sure you are using the updated version of WordPress files or not:
Check manually for updates by navigating to the WordPress Updates page.
Review the installed plugins and themes manually and check if there is any latest version launched.
3. Monitor Uptime of Your Website
You can’t afford the loss occurs due to the downtime occurred on your site or your client’s site. The reason is that due to the downtime, the site’s reputation also goes down resulting in losing your site visitors.
So, if you don’t want to happen it with your site, you have to monitor the uptime of site regularly.
You can take help from many WordPress Management Solutions for WordPress maintenance.
4. Run Malware Scans
Make sure your site is not getting hacked by the hackers or is not exposed to any online security threat. Otherwise, it will cause serious consequences for you.
You can leverage many WordPress Security Plugins to run malware scans on your site and to ensure your site is safe from all dangers.
5. Check and Delete Spam Comments
Once in a while, take a look at the spam comments also. Make sure you have deleted all spam comments from your site.
Obviously, it won’t assist in improving your site performance, but it will surely help you manage genuine comments to impress your site visitors well.
6. Clean Up Your Database
Having a large amount of Junk Data can increase your site loading time. So, clean it up as soon as possible. Run a scan of your WordPress Database to make sure no unnecessary files are there. It’ll make your site load faster and optimized.
There are various plugins available in the market that you can use to clean up your database.
7. Find and Fix 404 Errors
You’re visiting to a web page and found 404 error! Ah! You’ll leave that site and don’t want to come back. Your visitors will also do the same with you.
So, make sure they are not finding any 404 error on your site. Fix the things up before your site visitors and search engine algorithm notice it.
Here are the 5 Best WordPress 404 Plugins 2019 that you can take advantage of. Also check out this step-by-step guide to fix WordPress custom post type 404 error. I’m sure this will help you a lot in fixing 404 errors on your site.
8. Find and Fix Broken Links
It often happens that a website that you have linked back for any reference in earlier days, does not exist anymore. You need to fix such broken links on your WordPress site before anyone notices them.
But, it’s not just about the broken external links.
Maybe, you have misspelled any word in links or there are some images that are now broken or there are some internal links that is no longer exist now. So, you need to also fix these up.
You can take help of various link analyzer tools like Moz, ahref, Yoast etc. to find out broken links from your site and fix these things up.
9. Perform SEO Audit
Performing SEO Audit is also a crucial task for site maintenance. You need to analyze regularly what’s happening on your site. Find out how your visitors are responding to your content, what’s the bounce rate, whether your campaigns are performing well or not.
SEO Audit is something that can’t be overlooked as the report provides crucial information regarding your site based on which you can take relevant decisions.
Take help from various tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Moz, ahref, etc.
Also, check out these WordPress SEO Plugins to Improve your website ranking.
10. Run Performance Tests
How often do you optimize your site performance? Are you sure your website is loading faster? Are your site visitors able to navigate your site without getting frustrated?
Try to find out the answers to these if you want to enhance your site performance.
For deep information, I’ll recommend you to check out this article on Best Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Site.
Final thoughts on WordPress Maintenance
Got these points? Hope you have understood what you need to do in order to improve your WordPress site performance.
Leave a comment below if you are still finding it difficult to apply these WordPress Maintenance tasks. We’ll surely get back with some relevant suggestions for you.
