With the end of 2023 quickly approaching, it’s time to start thinking about year-end maintenance tasks for your website. So many parts of business websites get forgotten or put on auto-pilot, so it’s important to comb through your site periodically and make sure that everything is current and working correctly. Here is a checklist to help you clean up your website and get it ready for the new year!
- Review your content. This is probably the most time-consuming task, as it involves going through every page of your website, but it’s essential to update any old information and make sure everything is fresh and current, including your footer and your About Us page.
- Analyze your data. You’re probably already keeping track of metrics as part of your overall strategy, but the end of the year is a great time to do a more comprehensive analysis. This will allow you to see where your website is performing well and where it’s not, and make changes accordingly.
- Check your SEO. Algorithms are always changing, so you’ll want to make sure you’re staying compliant with current best practices. Now is a great time to check for broken links, update meta tags, fill in missing or incorrect image alt tags, and test your page load speed.
- Verify your forms. It’s surprising how easily a form can break, ruining the communication between you and your customers. Fill out all your booking, ordering, and contact forms to make sure they behave as expected.
- Perform a security check. Outdated plugins and malware can wreak havoc on your site. Ideally you should be checking for plugin updates and running malware scans regularly, but if you haven’t done that in a while, now’s a great opportunity.
- Make a full backup. If you’re not already backing up your website weekly, make a backup right now (today!) and find out what your hosting provider offers in terms of automatic backups. Most provide the option to create scheduled backups weekly, or even daily. The frequency you choose will depend on how often your website content changes.
- Create or update your content calendar. If you struggle to get new content on your site, a content calendar is a must. If you have one but have struggled to keep up with it, revamp the calendar with tasks broken down into manageable bits to fit more realistically into your schedule.
This may seem like a lot to have to do, especially with the hectic holiday season approaching, but remember that you don’t have to do it yourself. You can easily stay up to date year-round with our managed web services — we can work with you to ensure that your site is always looking great with fresh content, and performing at the highest possible level.
COGO Interactive is an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in online marketing strategy, web design, SEO and social media marketing. We work with clients in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and across the nation.
