Website Maintenance Contract – Why Have One?

Why Have an Annual Website Maintenance Contract?

Updating content and running regular website maintenance are key to maximising return visits by both current and potential customers and clients. A website maintenance contract is also crucial in ensuring your website is kept safe and secure.

A neglected website results in old and outdated information. The lack of new content may dissuade repeat visits and even send a message to search engines that the website has been abandoned and thus of lowered quality compared to your competitors. Altogether you may be giving an essentially unprofessional impression.

I recognise that every website and associated company or organisation will have unique requirements. With that in mind you can expect total flexibility to find the right maintenance provision for your website.

Regular Website Maintenance Necessities

Here are a few things that should be high on your checklist;

  • Link Checking – check that all internal and external links are still working. Those articles on other sites you linked to are great for adding background to your topic but if they are moved or removed from the destination site then you are left sending your visitor to one of those nasty 404 error pages. So carrying out regular checks is vital. Make sure the broken link is disabled or corrected as soon as possible. This also ensures that search engine crawlers do not suffer error pages and mark your website down in their index.
  • New Content Optimisation – do you want to put new content on your website yourself? Then make sure it is properly optimised for the search engines. For best results this should be done by someone with the relevant expertise and knowledge of current SEO practises. It is also worth letting someone edit your content to meet best practise.
  • Security – if you are using a CMS like WordPress or an eCommerce application especially, you should ensure that both the core files, themes and third party plugins are kept updated. Have your website security hardened with one of the security plugins available – I install iThemes Security Pro on all my WordPress sites.

ithemes security pro plugin for wordpressManaged Rates

My services are available at a Pay As You Go rate of £40.00 per hour, billed in 15 minute increments. If you prefer a monthly or annual website maintenance contract then these have substantial savings on the hourly rate. Due to the individualised nature of these plans, I ask that you get in touch to discuss your specific needs. Don’t worry that I may not have designed or built your current website, I am happy to provide maintenance and management in most circumstances.

Full web service and management contracts are available if you prefer to hand off all your website related work. This can include your Social Media marketing needs.

Search Engine Optimisation Reports

I can carry out an SEO audit as a standalone item or include an SEO reworking as necessary. Followed by re-submission to the major search engines. I recommend you get a full SEO analysis at least once a year as the ‘rules’ that search engines use to determine value evolve constantly. At very least to determine any need for meta tag edits or content finessing.

Regular website maintenance and updating is a pivotal part in keeping your website running efficiently. It will also benefit the search engine ranking.

Hosting Server Maintenance

The servers used to host client sites have 24 hour, 365 days a year technical support to ensure that your site is live and functional whenever anyone tries to reach it. Insofar that clients of our hosting should reasonably expect their website be available and working, any server maintenance and repair costs that arise will not be charged to clients.