Running a website is not an easy task when you strive to provide the best user experience to grow your business online. To operate a website flawlessly, one should pay heed to all the aspects of a site if they work simultaneously and accurately because a website is the virtual presence of the business and can serve 24/7. Before the inception of different Content Management System (CMS), people used to consider the process of managing a website as a burden because it was time-consuming and technical in some ways as well. CMS has made it easier for people of all ages to maintain a site.
Website management entails with various kinds of actions and among all 5 steps play the most crucial role in website management, those are:
- Check Website Performance & Speed
It is a matter of fact your website performance determines the prospect of getting more organic traffic and ensuring a maximum user-friendly experience. Haplessly, if your site’s performance is not up to the mark, it will be hard to survive. Besides, Google itself recommends increasing its performance to a certain level so that your website’s content downloads to users’ devices even if they have a slower connection.
By definition, website performance indicates the page loading speed of a the site also measures the time of how fast your website loads and has the compatibility to load in any device.
Factors such as unoptimized images, unnecessary plugins, absence of CDN (Content Delivery Network), Cache issues, etc. can relegate your website performance instantly.
To get rid of this problem, the website owner should monitor the site’s speed more frequently. For your convenient tools such as GTmetrix, Google Pagespeed Insights, Uptrends, Pingdom Speed Test are available so that you can quickly check your website performance, troubleshoot it, and fix it.
2. Maintenance and Protection
Ensuring the site’s maintenance and protection is a must to do in order to secure your website from unwanted surprises and keep the site running immaculately. The maintenance process includes daily backup, database sweep, choosing the suitable plugins, and site security.
Daily backup is one of the compulsory steps to save your data from cyberattacks. With the help of CMS, it is possible to run the automated backup process and store the whole in a safe place. Subsequently, if your data gets lost by any chance, you can just upload it and set to dominate the competition again.
Moreover, with just one click, anyone can sweep the database if it is built with WordPress. Database sweep refers to cleaning up the unused, orphaned, and duplicated data efficiently to save time and energy.
3. Website Security Measures
Apart from all the components of maintenance, security check, and measurement are the most vital steps. As you grow, hackers may try to penetrate your website and take all the access. You don’t want to give all your hard-working output to someone, right? Nobody does!
In preparation for any kind of attack, you must install a security plugin if you use one of the CMS. As a result, the security vulnerability will be minimized and encompass every page under protection. Experts suggest using the SSL certificate can create a barricade so hackers won’t be able to breach into the system so easily. What SSL does, it encrypts all the data, including customer end sensitive information effectively and no data can be decrypted between user and server.
Moreover, make sure all the plugins that you are using are up-to-date as plugins and extensions bring risk to your website. Updating software can benefit from both security measurement and user experience.
4. Create and Submit XML Sitemap, robots.txt
If you are a beginner, XML sitemap and robots.txt may sound unfamiliar or technical to you. But it is not something unattainable. Generating and submitting XML sitemap and robots.txt is a crucial step of website management because these allow your website to appear on the SERPs and also get enlisted in search engines.
Simply, XML sitemap is similar to a map, which means that with these tools, you can lead Google crawlers to find what content is available on your website, catch it and show it to the audience. However, if your website is light, Google can create its sitemap automatically. On another note, heavyweight, constant change or uploading content website sitemap to be submitted to help the crawlers to index your website in the search engine quickly.
Moving on, Robots.txt makes crawlers’ tasks easier. Fundamentally, robots.txt is known as the robots exclusion protocol or standard, which is a text file to communicate with the crawlers and convey what you precisely want from the crawlers. The robots. txt file must be uploaded at the root of the website host, for instance, robots. txt file must be located at http://www.example.com/robots.txt
5. Constant Optimization
Acquiring organic traffic and conversion is one of the goals of website management. A website needs user interface and SEO optimization to rank on the top of SERPs and achieve the targeted goal. User interface optimization refers to making the site mobile-friendly, using website speed, structuration, and organization. On the other hand, SEO optimization includes keyword research, uploading optimized content, backlinking, and many other actions. There are many tools to monitor your website optimization status. Subsequently, the site owner can study the progress and make plans for the upcoming days.
In a nutshell, skipping one or two steps can harm your website or expose you to many vulnerabilities. Experts advise that professionals should manage a site. As a result, you will be able to concentrate on your business properly and get an annual performance report on your website. And if you want to manage your site by yourself, you need to have in-depth knowledge of every aspect of the website.