WordPress Website Development is a really easy Job. This is what most people think.
Do you think it is right?
Yes, it is. Real Challenge is to maintain WordPress on optimum performance. WordPress grabs almost 30% of CMS share. It is due to its ecosystem and user-friendliness. These qualities make it attractive to hackers and spammers everywhere.
WordPress maintenance itself is not a very tricky Job. Timely maintenance is of utmost importance either it is a website or your any other stuff. The product becomes a liability if it is left without giving attention. Similarly, Websites are built to attract customers and to generate successful sells. Spare your few minutes. We guarantee to give you deep insight on WordPress maintenance.
This is an ultimate guide prepared for you. It will help you to implement successful WordPress maintenance.
1. Update WordPress Core, Themes and Plugins
You may think
Why should I?
WordPress or any technology is going through a continuously evolving process. Security, Speed, functionality and other factors are the key reason to get WordPress Website updated.
This section will cover step by step operation with no step skipped
⦁ The first step, you need to do is to backup all your data. This will save you from losing any data accidentally,
⦁ Click on the Dashboard tab on the left side of the window
⦁ Click on updates. First, select all plugins and click on update plugins
⦁ Next step is to do the same procedure with themes.
⦁ Now click on dashboard→ click on updates and check the status. All of our Plugins and themes are updated.
⦁ Now the final step is to update WordPress Core. If you find an option “Update Now” just above Plugins where right now “Re-Install now” is. Click on it and it is done
What if you think this is still a hectic Job to go through this.
Good News is!
There are many Plugins for monitoring and reporting these events. Every system has some flaws as well. We don’t recommend this for old business. You may not be able to immediately respond in case of any crash or downtime.
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02. Optimize Page Speed
There are a number of speed test tools. These tools help to gauge the performance of your website. It helps you to analyze and take precautionary measures of WordPress maintenance. WordPress is considered one of the best Open source CMS. However, A study by Yottaa suggests, WordPress is the slowest content management system among competitors.
Some measures can be taken to optimize speed. There are a variety of actions that can optimize WordPress.
We are discussing a few techniques. It will help you to get optimal performance.
⦁ Choose a good Host: Choosing a reliable Host is crucial for better page load speed and uptime. Every second your Website is offline. It loses potential customers.
⦁ Optimize Images and media: Media Optimization is essential for better performance and to decrease load time. WordPress response becomes slow with the passage of time. Installation of WordPress plugin is necessary for WordPress maintenance.
⦁ Use an effective Caching Plugin: Caching Plugin generates an HTML page of your Websites. Normally there are many codes running at the backend. Caching Plugin makes the page static in return it takes less time to load.
We have listed a few speed test tools for your convenience.
| S No | Speed test tools | URL |
| 1 | PageSpeed Insights | https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ |
| 2 | Key CDN | https://tools.keycdn.com/speed |
| 3 | WebPage Test | https://www.webpagetest.org |
3. Database Optimization
Data Optimization is essential to get rid of unwanted data. It helps you to improve the performance and speed of your website.
There are a lot of WordPress Plugins available. We created an ultimate guide for you to outperform your competitors.
⦁ First, go to Plugins then install and activate WP-Optimize.
⦁ Click on database tab and select elements that need to be optimized
⦁ You can schedule automatic optimization from setting tab as well
These simple steps can help your WordPress website to give it full potential.
4. Uptime Monitoring
Uptime is very crucial for your audience satisfaction. Visitors stop visiting your website if they face this issue. You cannot keep an eye all the time to make sure your website is online.
You can make sure someone is looking after and reporting to you if it happens.
“Jetpack” is an excellent tool. It is a WordPress Plugin that informs you if any downtime occurs. It immediately sends you an email so WordPress maintenance can be done.
Why uptime monitoring is Important?
It very essential for your business due to the mentioned reasons
⦁ Loss of Money: Every second your business is offline. You are losing your investment as well as potential customers.
⦁ Readers Reliability: Visitors stop relying on websites that do not respond when needed. Uptime is essential to gain the trust of customers. It is the significance for visitor retention.
⦁ SEO Factor: WordPress SEO ranking is a very important element to retain customers. You can drive traffic by steps mentioned before as well as advertisement. It is of ultimate importance to have proper WordPress SEO audit. Implementation of SEO as per audit to get visibility on Search Engines. There is a range of WordPress SEO Plugins available for your ease.
WordPress Monitoring Plugin is very crucial. It helps you in timely WordPress maintenance and loss of visitors.
We have created a list of “free” WordPress Plugins for you.
| S No | WordPress Plugin | Active Installations |
| 1 | JetPack | 1 Million |
| 2 | Manage WP Worker | 1 Million |
5. Regular Security Checkups
This is another important factor. It helps to minimize the time spent on WordPress maintenance. WordPress is more prone to hacks. This is due to its largest market share among other content management systems. It has become the favorite hack resort for hackers.
A study by Internet Live Sats suggests, more than 70 thousands Websites get hacked every day
You need to be careful to keep your website running. Security Plugins and other timely checks are vital for your Websites.
Here is a list of some free WordPress Plugins for you.
| S No | WordPress Plugin | Active Installations |
| 1 | Wordfence Security | 2 Million |
| 2 | IThemes Security | 900,000 |
| 3 | Sucuri Security | 400,000 |
| 4 | Cerber Security | 100,000 |
6. Backup
Backup is necessary to save you from loss of data. WordPress provides several free and premium Backup Plugins.
This unit will cover step by step process to install and backup your website data.
⦁ First, you need to install a WordPress Backup Plugin
⦁ Once the installation is done.
⦁ Click on Plugins → Click on Installed Plugins
⦁ Click on WordPress Backup Plugin you installed
⦁ Click on Settings
Settings give you the opportunity either to manually backup data or set an automatic timeline when to backup data.
1. It also gives you various options where to store backup data
2. Now click on backup/restore tab and click on backup now
3. It will start backing up your data on your desired storage.
Once data is a backup is done. It will be shown under the heading of Existing backups in Backup/Restore tab.
This is how you can easily backup your data. It will give you peace of mind from any unfortunate scenario.
Here is a list of few best WordPress Backup Plugin. This will help you in WordPress maintenance.
| S No | Backup Plugin | Active Installation |
| 1 | Updraft Plus | 2 million |
| 2 | Duplicator | 1 million |
| 3 | BackWPup | 600,000 |
| 4 | VaultPress | 80,000 |
| 5 | Blog Vault | 30,000 |
7. Website Audits
Website Audit is the ultimate solution to drive more traffic to your Website. Website Audit helps you to analyze your potential customers, website security, marketing strategy, and design. It helps you to analyze issues that are restricting conversions. Consequently, It helps to create a well-formed strategy to drive sells.
There are many other key elements. This unit will be the ultimate guide for your success.
SEO: This is the building block of Website Audit. SEO plays a key role in your website. It makes or breaks the objective. It is of utmost importance to install WordPress SEO Plugin. It helps in analyzing Your On-Page and Off-Page SEO strategies.
Compelling Content: “Content is King” Bill Gates realized this back in 1996. This still holds true after more than 20 years. Clear, Concise and compelling content is required to engage customers. A report by Workfront suggests content has a big role in the failure of Marketing Campaigns.
A thorough WordPress SEO audit is needed to compete in the market. The audit is not limited to above-mentioned elements. It has a few other elements as well. These elements combine to generate analysis for WordPress maintenance.
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8. WordPress Clean Code
Do you hear this term before “Clean Code”? It means removing un-necessary codes.
Clean Code refers to cleaning all the irrelevant content from your website. A website needs periodic maintenance to avoid clutters. This is important to retain the optimum speed of your WordPress Website.
There are several actions that can be taken to do this Job. We are listing a few for your convenience.
⦁ Delete Unwanted Themes and Plugins: As the name suggest delete all inactive or other themes and Plugins that are not in use. It makes space on server and Website speed will be increased.
⦁ Delete Revision: We usually revise posts. These revised posts gathered on back-end along with a published post. Making Server go through all content before giving visitors the last updated Page. This slows down the overall process and increases response time.
⦁ Remove Unused Media: Delete all unused media. They also take space and server has to read all the available information on your website.
⦁ Removed Unused Tags: A clean blog is necessary for optimum performance of your website. Delete all unused tags from your website/blog. There are few WordPress Plugins available for this purpose as well.
⦁ Deleted Unwanted Comments: Spam and unwanted comments creates clutter and slow down the website. There are many WordPress Plugins available that helps to delete them manually or automatically.
9. Search Engine Optimization
If you are done with developing a wonderful website. Created and posted wonderful content. All is done from your end but Website is not getting traction.
You are wondering why?
The reason is you neglected the benefit that content is creating for your audience. A thorough analysis is necessary before posting or working on any content. Knowing the behavior, needs, characteristics and other basic requirements of the audience can be helpful. There are many WordPress Plugins and other tools which can help you analyze these aspects.
There are a few important courses of action which guarantee you drive more traffic and sells.
⦁ Create Content after a thorough analysis of Your visitor
⦁ Make the Content Search Engine Friendly
⦁ Comply with all On-Page and Off-Page SEO Techniques
We have compiled a list of some amazing WordPress SEO Plugin for WordPress SEO Audit for you.
| S No | WordPress Plugin | Active Installations |
| 1 | Yoast SEO | 1 Million |
| 2 | Google Analytics | 1 Million |
| 3 | The SEO Framework | 80,000 |
10. Find and Fix broken links
A broken link can harm your website. Finding and Fixing a Broken link is essential to retain visitor and WordPress SEO ranking.
What is Broken Link?
Many of you people came across 404 Error. This famous error is called “Broken Links” or “Dead Links”. It occurs, when you are linking a page with another and that page goes offline. Analysis of these broken links is very easy.
Here is an ultimate guide for you to resolve broken link issues.
⦁ Install and Activate Broken Link Checker Plugin
⦁ Click on Settings
⦁ Under the tab General. It is showing 1 broken link
⦁ Click on it, you will be directed towards a new window
⦁ Select move source to trash from drop-down menu and click on apply
⦁ You have successfully removed the broken link.
Conclusion
Timely WordPress maintenance creates customer trust and retains them. A WordPress SEO audit is very crucial along with WordPress maintenance. It leads business towards success which is the ultimate objective. This checklist will add value to your learning and website.
You can hire WP inCare as well for all your WordPress related needs. Our Professionals assure no stone unturned to meet client expectations.
Please contact now!!
Our Team is available across all social media and website channels for your service.
Do you applied or have any plans to apply these strategies? Was it useful for you? We will love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
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