An Unglamorous Website Maintenance Checklist

Many of us were drawn to the world of digital media because of the promise of creativity.

We liked the sound of coming up with catchy headlines that resulted in clicks. We liked the idea of thinking up ideas for infographics that would garner links. We were drawn in by the challenge to create content that might have a viral life of its own.

It’s challenging. It’s rewarding. And it’s fun.

But it’s not the only thing we need to focus on when we’re building audience online.

Some of the stuff seems more custodial and less well, enjoyable.

However, your buzzkill can be a boon for your site’s traffic if you’re willing to sometimes get your hands dirty by employing this unglamorous website maintenance checklist: 

1. Check for broken links.

Search engines don’t like deadends or bad directions – and a broken link is just that – so removing them from your site is a step in the right direction.

Think of this from a human perspective, if you give someone directions to a dead end, they’re not going to value you as a direction—giver or a knowledge resource. And neither will search engines who find your dead link or visitors who click on it.

Run a broken link finder (I like Xenu link sleuth) to see if any outbound links from your site are pointing to dead pages.

2. Check for 404 errors.

When someone follows a link to a page that no longer exists, they get a 404 Page Not Found Error. And unfortunately, it often causes them to leave (which is why you should make sure you’ve created a custom 404 error page but that’s literally another post altogether).

A page not found error can be caused by several factors, some of which you can control, some of which you can’t. Regardless of the cause, it’s a good idea to check to see if your page is turning up any 404s.

(I use combination of Google Webmaster Tools and checking Google Analytics for pages with a content title that match the title of my 404 page template.) Track down the 404 errors and find the source (i.e. is it a link from your own site or an external site) and either fix the source link or use a 301 redirect to pass the erroneous link to the correct URL. (Sorry for the technical speak, here’s a good article that breaks this down specifically: HTTP Status Codes)

3. Test all site forms and social sharing buttons.

We’re so used to seeing the forms on our websites that sometimes we might not notice if they aren’t working properly.

Does the right thing happen when you press the “like”/Tweet/share/+1 button?

Act like a new visitor and fill out contact forms, email subscription forms, and any other bit of third-party functionality just to make sure it’s functioning as it is intended to function.

Also, make sure the messaging is on point (e.g. does the notification someone gets when they are a new subscriber to your email newsletter need to be updated?)

4. Check your page load speed.

Something strange happening on your site that is running up your page load time? Uh oh.

Page speed is becoming increasingly important to Google’s algorithm (mostly because it’s becoming more and more important to Google users – the humans who get frustrated with slow-loading websites). Use YSlow or Google’s Page Speed tool to gauge how quickly (or slowly) your site is loading. Speed counts.

5. Check analytics for bizarre behavior and oddities.

Check content listings in your analytics program for duplicate or strange URLs. Is third-party functionality throwing a strange URL parameter onto your homepage? Look for anything out of the norm and resolve any issues.

Though far from complete, these are just some of the things you can do on a regular basis to make sure your website is a well-oiled machine.

What are some of the items on your website maintenance checklist?

[Image: PortlandCorps]