Today is Blue Monday – claimed to be the most depressing day of the whole year! It’s typically the third Monday of January each year and has been calculated by taking into account weather conditions, debt level, the time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and a feeling of needing to take action.
If you need to do something productive this Blue Monday, why not take a look at improving your WordPress website? If you’ve been neglecting it recently, it’s bound to be suffering from the Monday blues itself!
Here are five key areas to look into to provide some much needed tlc for your website.
1. Regular WordPress updates to ensure your site runs smoothly
All websites require regular maintenance to give you the performance, leads and sales you want. It’s not enough to just have your website up and running, you need to continuously update your WordPress core, theme and plugin updates to keep it functioning as it should. This can take up valuable time and can easily be overlooked in favour for client prospecting, strategising and other high-level tasks but you’d be foolish to leave it unattended.
Failing to make the necessary updates will leave your site vulnerable to potential hack attempts which could compromise your customer’s data as well as leaving your site open to malicious content.
2. Invest in offsite backup for complete peace of mind
Having both an onsite and an offsite backup solution in place is sensible to help protect your business and ensure the survivability of your data and your business reputation. When done right, a WordPress offsite backup can effectively restore your entire website straight back to its previous condition, leaving your business and reputation intact.
Without regular backups, you could completely lose the latest version of your website resulting in hours of frantically updating and re-publishing your content. Data loss can easily happen due to internal mistakes, hardware failure or plugin errors so it’s not worth leaving yourself open to these risks.
3. Continuous improvement of 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 that jeopardise your reputation, content and customers.
Google is has developed a long-term plan to make the internet safer and, eventually, all websites will have to comply with the new standards they are in the process of rolling out. The most prominent being their quest to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.
As a result, all website owners should aim to acquire the necessary SSL/TLS certificates and setup HTTPS on their web servers sooner rather than later.
4. Regular website development and improvements
Every website can benefit from ongoing improvements to provide the best level of service to your customers. Common errors include images not loading correctly, broken links, or signup forms not working as they should. All of this could be losing you potential leads and customers, something every business wants to avoid.
Ideally, you should set aside time every month to focus on looking at ways to improve your site, testing links and monitoring page loading times. A sluggish site with broken links is frustrating to your visitors, so you should look at ways to make it more efficient.
6. Search engine optimisation
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.
SEO is an area you cannot afford to ignore if you want your business to grow. There’s many books, blogs and guidance on best practices but, be warned, this is an area that changes rapidly so you need to keep yourself updated to ensure you’re using the most current guidelines..
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. All of our monthly plans ensure that your WordPress website stays up to date, secure from hackers and is fully optimised and backed up daily.
Take action on this Blue Monday and invest in ongoing WordPress support and maintenance with our great value plans. It’s simple to sign up for single or multiple sites and there are no long- term contracts – and if you’re not 100% happy with our service then we will refund your monthly plan payment.