I get it. A lot of small businesses don’t have a lot of money when starting out, so we try to do things ourselves.
However, I also see that a lot of small biz owners don’t feel confident or comfortable doing their own website maintenance. And they aren’t doing it well enough to get good results.
Can You Do Website Maintenance Yourself?
So, can you do it effectively yourself? Four questions to ponder:
1) Do you understand what is needed & how to do it?
A lot is involved such as:
- Creating new content & perfecting it for people through headlines & call to action.
- Keyword research & optimizing the content for search engines (SEO).
- Distributing it via social media & newsletters.
- Keeping up with local directories.
- Lots of updates to WordPress, themes and plugins and sometimes incompatibilities develop. You want updates done promptly and any problems fixed quickly.
- Backups and security measures.
- Optimizing for speed.
- Checking the analytics & making improvements accordingly.
2) If you have the knowledge & skills, do you have the time?
3) And do you enjoy doing it?
4) Or really, would you rather be focused on your genius work?
Things Need to Happen Monthly!
Let’s also remember that a website is not a one-time thing. If you just put up a website and ignore it, you won’t get good results. There is stuff that needs to happen monthly! I just cannot say that too many times.
If you have the knowledge, skills and time to do your own website maintenance, I highly recommend having a checklist and booking time in your calendar to be sure it all gets done consistently.
Signs You Need Help with your Website Maintenance
- You are not getting good results as in good traffic, rankings and interested people contacting you.
- You aren’t adding great new content that is optimized for people and search engines.
- You aren’t sharing your content though social media and email newsletters.
- You aren’t keeping up with local directories.
- Updates and backups aren’t happening.
- The website is slow.
- You don’t know your numbers. You don’t know if things are getting better or worse. You aren’t making improvements based on the analytics.
Does it sound good to get this off your plate and done more consistently? Website Maintenance Services are available.
And perhaps it helps to hear from a client:
Another thing I would say about my experience working with Jill is that she keeps me on track. If she didn’t set deadlines for me to write my blog articles, I wouldn’t write them. I always learn something new when I write them, and it is always a good exercise in communicating that new knowledge to my patients, which of course is what it is really all about. So I guess you could say she not only keeps me on track, but she makes me better at my job as well.
~Jennie Soine @ Valley Holistic Healing
You can read more about the Valley Holistic Healing website in the case study.