Did you know? Regular website updates & maintenance can enhance its SEO rankings. Yes, it’s true! Website updates don’t help with just its maintenance but also lead to higher rankings on search engines. And there are a few significant reasons behind this fact.
Let’s learn about some of the website maintenance activities that directly or indirectly facilitate its search engine rankings.
#1 Fixing broken links
When you hire a website developer to maintain or update your website, they will prioritize detecting & fixing broken links tasks on the top. A broken link is a link that leads to nowhere, or that opens a page with a “page not found” error to the users. Broken links of a website affect not only user experience, but also its search engine rankings.
How does a website developer handle broken links?
- Identifying and fixing broken links.
- Resolving 404 errors by creating proper redirects.
- Ensuring internal linking structures remain functional.
#2 Website speed optimization
Taking care of a website’s loading speed is another vital activity that web developers take care of when maintaining or updating a website. And we all know that search engines like Google strictly consider loading speed one of the important factors to rank a website.
Slow-loading websites have a few major disadvantages:
- Higher bounce rate
- Lower user engagement
- Less conversions
- Loss of search engine rankings
Here’s how your website builder can fix your website for its loading speed:
- Regularly monitoring page load speeds.
- Compressing images and optimizing files.
- Implementing caching solutions.
- Addressing server-related issues.
#3 Enhancing mobile responsiveness
Did you know Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in search rankings? This simply means that if your website is not mobile-friendly (responsive), it can lead to lower rankings and lost traffic.
When you hire an agency or a website builder in Singapore to maintain your website on a regular basis, they will take care of the responsiveness of your website. Often, after any upgrade in the website theme, plugin, or server, a website may lose its responsiveness. It is, therefore, necessary to regularly monitor your website and make sure it looks good on mobile devices.
So, if you are serious about the SEO rankings of your website, make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
#4 Enhancing website security
Maintaining or updating your website will ensure its security. With the frequent changes in web technologies, losing the security of a website is not a big deal. But with regular maintenance and updates, you can ensure that your website is always protected.
Here’s how does a web developer secure a website:
- Installing and renewing SSL certificates.
- Monitoring for malware and vulnerabilities.
- Updating software, plugins, and themes regularly.
- Addressing unauthorized access attempts.
#5 Keeping content fresh & updated
When it comes to SEO, content is king! It has always been. The more fresh & updated content your website has, the better it is for its SEO rankings. In their website maintenance packages, most website agencies offer regular content updates through SEO-friendly content, blogs, news, or articles. Some website design companies even go the extra mile and provide some SEO benefits (mentioned below) as a part of their web maintenance services.
- Uploading blog posts and new pages.
- Updating outdated information.
- Optimizing meta tags and descriptions.
#6 Handling technical issues that work for SEO
Below are some of the technical activities that some web developers and agencies provide with their website maintenance services. These activities help a lot in gaining higher SEO rankings.
- Creating and updating XML sitemaps.
- Fixing crawl errors detected in tools like Google Search Console.
- Optimizing robots.txt files to guide search engine crawlers.
- Managing structured data and schema markup.
- Setting up 301 redirects to preserve link equity.
- Testing for broken links and missing pages post-migration.
- Updating site maps and submitting them to search engines.