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5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs to Be Maintained Like Any Other Tool

 Renew Marketing    Internet Marketing

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs to Be Maintained Like Any Other Tool

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs to Be Maintained Like Any Other Tool

Very few businesses take full advantage of all the opportunities the internet has to offer. Yes, most businesses in 2014 have a website, but unfortunately, very few businesses are using these websites to their full potential.

Your website is a tool. Like any other tool used by your business, your website needs to be properly maintained. Today, I’m going to explain 5 reasons why your business should change the way it thinks about website maintenance:

Your website will get rusty and old over time

If you stop maintaining your tool – like a drill, a wrench, or a crowbar – it’s going to get rusty and worn-down over time. It will start to look old and, more importantly, it will develop serious structural deficiencies. Rust starts creeping into every weak point on your tool and before long, your tool is virtually useless.

A website operates in a similar way. If you ignore website maintenance and stop performing basic upgrades, then you’re going to run into some serious website problems over time. Your website will develop security problems, missing pages, broken links, and many other issues.

Your website will break and develop errors

All it takes is one little patch of rust to render an entire tool useless. Once rust gets its “foot in the door”, so to speak, it can quickly spread throughout the entire tool if left untreated.

On your website, all it takes is one broken plugin or one missing link to cause this problem. The broken plugin might cause a security vulnerability for your site and its users. Or, a broken link might cause a lead to close your website and never visit your site again. A simple error can have reverberating effects across your business – especially when that error is ignored over a long period of time.

Reflects the quality of your company

Your website might be the first thing people see when learning about your business. Over 95% of people search for a company online before doing business with that company. If someone Googles your business and finds an old, poorly-maintained, and infrequently-updated website, then that’s going to reflect poorly on your business.

Just like a rusty, decaying tool, a bad website paints your business in a negative light. If your business is serious about portraying itself professionally, then you need to maintain your website.

Don’t let an investment go to waste

Websites aren’t free. Websites require an investment of time and money. Just like any tool, your website involves sunk costs and ongoing maintenance charges.

If you ignore maintenance, you’re effectively letting that investment go to waste. No smart business owner lets an investment go to waste. Maintaining a website doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money on it: it just means performing basic upgrades and tasks that allow the website to continue its normal functionality.

Reduces downtime

If an important tool breaks, your company is in trouble. In construction jobs, for example, one broken tool might grind an entire project to a halt.

An unmaintained website can contribute to higher levels of downtime. If you don’t maintain or monitor your website, then you don’t know how much downtime there actually is. Downtime is devastating to businesses which take orders over their websites, but it also impacts any business that has an online presence.

Easy ways to maintain your website:

-If using WordPress, log into WordPress every week or so to check for WordPress updates or plugin updates

-Update your blog on a weekly basis to show Google your site is active and dynamic

-Share your website’s main page and inner pages with social media, bookmarking sites, and other websites to attract new traffic and backlinks

Want your website to perform its best in 2014 and beyond? Treat it like a tool and properly maintain it. It’s a valuable investment for your company and the front face of your business. Treat it properly, and your website will respond with better performance, better search rankings, and better lead conversion rates for your business.