Wipe away winter. Spring is here! There’s something about the change of season that makes people want to clean up, clear out, and start fresh, but why limit a spring clean to just your house?
Now is the perfect time to take a look at the functionality, usability and relevance of your WordPress website to see where you can make improvements.
1. Fix those annoying WordPress issues
Do you have a WordPress issue that’s driving you mad? Perhaps you’ve tried to fix it yourself but you’ve been unable to find the solution, so instead you’ve just left it. Though it bugs you every time you look at your website, doesn’t it?
Stop leaving it and start working toward fixing it. Google is your friend when it comes to common WordPress errors and how to fix them, or you can always turn to a professional for complex issues that require coding or an extensive knowledge of WordPress.
2. Backup your website
Backing up your website is critical to protect against accidental data loss. Without regular backups, you could completely lose the latest version of your website resulting in hours of frantically updating and republishing your content. Data loss can easily happen due to internal mistakes, hardware failure, plugin errors causing crashes or becoming victim to hacking.
Can you afford to take the risk? If the answer is no, you need to investigate a robust offsite backup strategy to protect of your site.
3. Make any WordPress updates
The popularity of WordPress has made it vulnerable to hack attempts. However, most of the time, the only reason your WordPress website will get exploited is due to personal negligence, such as not keeping on top of your website maintenance.
Website maintenance, such as reviewing and updating your plugins, should be done on a regular basis to keep your site secure and running as it should. Schedule time to regularly check and update your theme, core and plugins to prevent having a deal with a hacked site.
4. Review your site security
Web security is a critical aspect of your online presence and not something to be ignored. It’s important to implement security measures so your site is shielded against common weaknesses and attacks.
Read these blogs to identify and resolve potential risks before they become apparent to yourself or your customers:
5 simple ways to secure your WordPress website from hackers
5 common WordPress security issues to be aware of
5 key signs your WordPress website’s been hacked
5. Run a website audit for improvements
When was the last time you checked that the images on your site loaded properly? Or that every link within your site is working? Likewise, when was the last time you read through the content on your site to make sure it is still relevant and still meets your company’s vision and values?
Take time to audit the content and functionality of your website so that is remains fresh and gives customers a good level of service. Nobody likes outdated information.
6. Delete spam comments
It’s likely you’ve received annoying spam comments at least once. In fact, it is not uncommon to receive hundreds or even thousands of comments every week.
Although you may be tempted to leave a backlog of unapproved comments due to the time and effort it takes to look through and approve them, it can greatly reduce the size of your WordPress database.
To avoid slowing down your website, it’s vital to keep on top of the comments being accumulated in the backend and regularly delete them.
7. Test the speed of your site
Slow page loading times are common for WordPress websites and this can be frustrating to your visitors. Unoptimised images, bad hosting and poorly coded themes are just some of the reasons your website can become sluggish.
As faster websites result in a better user experience, it’s worth the time and effort to investigate how to speed up your WordPress site. You can check the current speed of your website here.
8. Optimise your site for search engines
When your website is well optimised, it will improve your visibility on search engines leading to increased traffic and conversions. A strong site architecture, clear navigation, properly tagged images and relevant content will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also provide visitors with a better experience of using your site and encourage repeat traffic.
Spend some time reviewing your site to see how SEO friendly it is. Are you ranking for the keywords and phrases you want to? Are they included in your page titles and alt tags? Now is a great time to go through the content of your site to make improvements for SEO.
Here at WP Tech Support, our team of highly experienced developers will take care of all of the above for you, leaving you to focus on running your business. Our monthly plans ensure that your WordPress website stays up to date, secure from hackers and is fully optimised and backed up daily. Investing in our services is like a regular spring clean of your website so your online presence stays fresh and vibrant all year round.