WordPress has become one of the most important content management systems on the web, and it’s more than likely that your business uses WordPress for at least part of its online infrastructure. If you do use WordPress, however, don’t make the mistake of setting it up and leaving it alone forever. WordPress systems require regular maintenance. The specific details of the WordPress maintenance your site requires vary depending on individual characteristics, but you can work out a custom plan with the WordPress SEO company that helps you run your site. There are a few WordPress maintenance tasks that are universal, however. Luckily, as long as you make the time to do them, they are relatively easy to perform.
Key WordPress Site Maintenance Tasks
If you want to keep your WordPress site running securely and smoothly, these are the primary tasks you need to be aware of:
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Regularly backing up your database
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Monitoring your plugins
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Be careful with WordPress software updates
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Perform basic housekeeping tasks regularly
Backing up the Database
WordPress sites create a MySQL database that holds every single piece of content and comment on your website. Regularly backing up the database ensures you never lose content when something goes wrong that is out of your control. If you don’t want to have to remember to perform regular backups, there are plugins available that will backup the database regularly on their own.
Monitoring Your Plugins
Speaking of plugins, it’s important to keep track of all the plugins you are using and how they are affecting your site’s performance. Plugins are great because they are easy to swap in and out in order to change the features of your site, but it’s important to make sure that you’re using well coded plugins. You also want to be sure that you don’t use too many of them. As your WordPress SEO company will probably tell you, however, the more plugins you feature on your site, the slower it will be. And a slow website can get hit with heavy penalties in search engine results. So pick and choose your features carefully.
Be Careful with WordPress Software Updates
While updates to the WordPress software can improve your site’s features and increase security, upgrading can have unanticipated negative effects on your site, so approach all upgrades with caution and make sure to run everything in a test environment first to avoid a disastrous relaunch. Often, your best bet is to avoid doing the WordPress upgrade yourself and let your WordPress SEO company or someone else with the technical expertise handle the upgrade.
Perform Regular Housekeeping
Housekeeping will improve your site’s usefulness to visitors, keep it running smoothly, and even make a difference in search engine rankings. Some tasks you should perform frequently:
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Check for broken links and low quality inbound links
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Delete spam comments
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Remove inactive themes and plugins
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Delete duplicate/unused images and files
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Change passwords
If you’re looking for a WordPress SEO company, give the team at Coalition Technologies a call at (877) 989-7817 to find out more about our services. We’re happy to provide a free quote.