Maintenance Essentials

We all know that the design of any site is a key factor to building traffic that keeps coming back. Another key factor to keeping people interested is web site maintenance. When a site isn't maintained regularly it becomes obvious to your visitors and they won't continue to return. If you don't take the time to update the site then they won't waste their time visiting. Below you will learn a few simple maintenance steps to keep your site updated.


First, always keep your contact information updated. If you change email addresses remember to update this on all your sites. Nothing looks worse than when someone tries to contact you and the email is returned or they get an invalid email error.


Secondly, be sure and keep any copyright notices updated. If I visit a site and see the copyright is from 2006 then I know the webmaster doesn't spend much time updating the site. Small things such as this will be noticed by many people. So to keep the site looking professional be sure to do the small updates as well as the bigger ones.


Finally, update your content regularly. Fresh information will keep people coming back to see what's new about any subject. Visitors will see that you regularly add new content and they will come back often to check it out. If it's possible add dates to your content. This let's them see how frequently you update.


Maintenance is just 1 of many key factors to running a successful web site. I find it helpful to set aside a couple of hours on a certain day each week just for updating. This way it is on my schedule of things to do and it doesn't get overlooked. Scheduling web site tasks makes it easy to keep up with what needs to be done at certain times. Running a web site is not always easy, but by putting in the time and effort required you get rewarded with great results.