We often come across many cases where businesses are spending a ton on their SEO and SEM budgets while neglecting their websites. It would seem a no-brainer that if you are spending money on advertising, your website should be fast, reliable and well designed - but often that’s not the case.
The unfortunate experience of clicking on a search result or ad and getting a bad site
Most of us have had the experience of clicking on a search result or even a nicely designed banner only to land on a website where nothing works or is a mess. Not only has the business wasted their budget but also a very valuable customer visit that your marketing team has worked hard to garner.
Why does this happen? Often, too much emphasis on SEO/SEM and poor website maintenance or sometimes almost no website maintenance.
Websites that are not maintained tend to quickly drift into obsolescence
If websites are ignored and not maintained, they tend to start throwing up issues over time. This is because although you are not changing the site itself, three factors underneath are constantly changing - browser versions, CMS software and hosting server upgrades.
Let’s take a look at each.
- New Browser Versions - With each browser version, the website code might start showing issues either in HTML, Javascript or any other plugins you might use. Companies that make browsers constantly change their browsers setup, most times it does affect the website, but over time it can add up to major changes in functionality that directly impacts the website.
- Hosting Server Upgrades - Similar to the browser, most hosting companies are constantly upgrading and updating the server software and setup. This may be due to security reasons, hardware wear and tear, new versions of software releases, obsolescence of platforms or all of the above. With each update there is potential for the website functionality to be disrupted thus affecting the visitor experience to a varying degree.
- Content Management System (CMS) Updates - Most sites today are run through a CMS system that acts as an engine for the site. Many of them are sophisticated softwares that need to be updated regularly or end up with performance and security issues.
Some of the common issues that you will notice with poorly maintained sites are:
Slow loading times or partial loading of pages
SSL security certificate issues that show warnings
Misalignment of HTML elements, ruined site design.
Text spilling out of their designated areas or fonts going haywire
Broken links or broken images. (Broken means not working or not showing)
Forms that do nothing on submission or worst, throw up an ugly errors.
Animation effects that don’t work like mouseovers effects or slideshows.
The copyright year in the footer is outdated by many years (Quite common signaling that none has bothered with this website).
All these small issues and errors can create quite a negative effect on your visitors and definitely impact your conversion rates.
The ultimate result of a neglected site - hacked or malware infested sites.
Ignore a site long enough and security issues will allow for malware or hacking to deface and destroy your website. It can be subtle as hackers hijacking your website resources to propagate their scripts or direct like a malware infected site that the visitors’ anti-virus software will block.
And it is much more difficult to restore a hacked/malware infected site than to just ensure it's well maintained by investing in a website maintenance service.
SEO signals that directly affect ranking on search engines
SEO signals are factors that search engines like Google are always studying to decide how to rank your site in the search results (also known as SERPs). Website maintenance can have a huge impact on this.
Some of the signals that search engines are closely watching:
- Site load speed (against a benchmark that can be objectively measured)
- Mobile usability / UI friendliness
- Security through SSL
- Quality of information in meta tags that give the search engines information about your site content.
- Linking structure or broken links (if any)
- Sitemaps.xml file present (that tells the search engine your site structure)
These are just some of the main ones. There are dozens of signals that impacts SEO that just some timely maintenance can really help.
What a simple website maintenance package from a vendor can make a difference
You do not need to invest in some elaborate website maintenance package, a simple basic package from a web design company can be enough.
Under the website maintenance package, the website design agency will
- Make sure all code is updated with respect to latest browser versions or server software.
- Make sure the website renders well on all types of devices including mobiles and tablets.
- Make sure the forms submit correctly and the data is captured and tracked for conversion measurement.
- Make sure all content is updated by coordinating with your team so that visitors always get the latest and reliable information.
- Take regular backups so that they can quickly restore in case anything goes wrong.
- Be available to you to address routine issues that may come up as your marketing campaign throws visitors to the site.
A good website maintenance package is like an economical insurance policy to make sure your website is serving your customers properly so that your marketing budget is not wasted.
Developing a preventative mindset and pride in the quality of the website.
Our best clients are those that take great pride in their websites. It never even occurs to them not to actively maintain their website. They have a preventative mindset where they want to make sure we catch the issues before they become a problem.
And a good website maintenance package pays for itself by impacting the number and quality of conversions from your SEO and SEM campaigns.
