Congratulations, you have exactly the great website you wanted. You may have gone through a painstaking process of creating it on your own or paid a company or a web designer to do it for you. If you think you can now just “set it and forget it,” you are sorely mistaken. Your computer and other “connected” devices require regular updating to keep them current and running smoothly, and so do websites. Here are some of the top reasons you should maintain your website.

Maintance Helps Keep Your Website Safe

As the Internet continues to evolve, your website will require regular maintenance to make sure it continues to function correctly. Outdated website coding, broken links, and delays loading pages are a few examples that can lead to customer dissatisfaction and the impression that you do not care about your website experience.

Frequent updates to your website code will also help keep up with Internet vulnerabilities. It is important to shore up your site against potential hackers who could wreak havoc with your site.

Maintenance Keeps Your Website Current

A website can be one of the best tools in your company’s arsenal of marketing tools. Website maintenance isn’t just about keeping your site up and running—your maintenance efforts should also focus on keeping your content fresh. Maintaining your website on a regular basis will also help you:

Attract and retain customers. You need to keep your website fresh by updating your content frequently. Customers want information that is recent and relevant to their interests, including:

• Current and new products
• Service offerings
• Price lists

You should also check that all forms of contact through your website are accurate and updated, including phone numbers, email addresses, and location address.

Keep top search-engine rankings. If you fail to update your website content on a regular basis, your search engine rankings will suffer. Google and other search engines check to see your site’s “if-modified-since” HTTP header. If your site hasn’t been modified in a while, your website will not be found on the first page of search results and possibly not even on the second page. This gives your competitors an advantage and will cost you customers.

Maintain a positive corporate image. The appearance and condition of your website reflect upon you and your organization. Failure to correct errors and keep information updated gives the impression that you don’t care about your image. Make an effort to review your website on a routine basis to check for broken links, spelling errors, or incorrect information before a visitor to your site reports problems to you.

It might seem overwhelming to need to frequently update code or keep content fresh, but it is critical to the success of your business. Consider hiring a consultant or the company that created your website to do the maintenance.