Why You Need To Maintain Your Site

Posted by Nick Leonard

Nick Leonard is the Founder and Creative Director at Fable Heart Media. With over a decade of experience driving revenue and managing projects across multiple disciplines, Nick is uniquely equipped to help clients.

What Happens If You Don't Maintain Your Website?

Have you or someone you know ever been the victim of a broken website? Maybe you were shopping on Amazon, and a page didn’t load, or you visited a webpage chock full of jumbled images and text. Site issues can seemingly strike out of nowhere, no matter how big or small the business, and if you’re not prepared, your website could be next.

Below we’ll cover what can happen if you don’t maintain your website and how website management can help.

Website Maintenance Issues

At Fable Heart Media, we run website diagnostics on many sites before working with new clients. On most of the websites, we observe the same type of issues, and they’re usually caused by what we call “The Snowball Effect.”

“The Snowball Effect” refers to the collection of little problems that add up over time to become large issues. Think of a snowball rolling down a mountain, gathering more and more snow until it becomes a full-blown avalanche.

Here’s a list of the website issues that we see “collect snow” most:

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to your website’s elements that affect a search engine’s ability to crawl it. Probably the most common technical SEO issue that we see has to do with site speed. Many things affect site speed, and it’s one of the easiest things a website manager can mess up without even realizing it.

What’s the biggest culprit? Images that are too large to be used on a webpage. Remember, the bigger the download, the slower your website speed.

SEO Content

For customers to be able to find your website, it needs to have the right content in the right places. People are searching on Google for what you’re selling, do the pages on your website match their search intent? If you’re selling widgets, your site’s content needs to focus on widgets and other widget-related items.

You also need to place that widget content in the right places. Missing title tags, alt descriptions, and meta descriptions are the most common SEO content mistakes that we observe in our website audits. These issues, if not corrected, can derail your marketing efforts.

Content Updates

It’s not always easy to update text, images, and other elements on a website. In some cases, it can be downright daunting. Unfortunately, it’s widespread for web developers and agencies to build sites without thinking about how a client can update it in the future.

From our website observations, these sites usually have out-of-date copyright, dead images, duplicate content, and broken links throughout the website. In some cases, the business owners knew there was an issue but didn’t know how to fix it.

"We run website diagnostics on many sites before working with new clients. On most of the websites, we observe the same type of issues, and they’re usually caused by what we call 'The Snowball Effect.'"

Security

38% of all websites in the world use WordPress, according to Kinsta, and it’s by far the most popular content management system(CMS), holding a 63% market share. Unfortunately, the popularity of WordPress also puts it in the crosshairs of hackers. Things like out-of-date plugins and mixed content can put your website at risk.

However, even if you use another CMS and don’t have a WordPress website, you’re not out of the woods. You still need to update javascript files, PHP, and other elements to keep your website secure.

Mobile Issues

If your website is older than three years, there is a good chance that you have mobile site issues. According to statista.com, over 50% of website traffic comes from a mobile device. With so many people using their phones for web surfing, you can’t afford for your site to make a bad impression on smaller screens.

The most common mobile issues that we uncover while running our website diagnostics are sizing and spacing. Google will penalize your website in search engine rankings for things like buttons that spaced too closely, text that is too small to read, and content wider than a visitor’s screen. Mobile is a significant part of your online presence; don’t miss out on potential customers because your site’s not mobile-friendly.

Don’t Worry. Our Website Management Service Can Help

With our monthly website management service, you can leave the tricky stuff to us. The Fable Heart Media team will keep your site up-to-date, secure, and running the right way.

With our website management service, you’ll gain access to the following benefits on a regular basis:

Content Updates
Website Repair
Threat Mitigation
Web Traffic Reporting
Plugin Updates
SEO Auditing and Repair
On-Demand Support

Schedule a Free Website Diagnostic Today!

During our website diagnostic, we will take a look under your site’s hood, pull website health analytics, and personally meet with you to develop a website management plan. You get to keep our findings free of charge, and if we are a good fit, we can get to work repairing your website right away.

Schedule Your Free Website Diagnostic