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A great business website is not a one-off thing. You can’t just pour all your effort and resources into creating it once and hoping that it will perform at a high level continuously even if you don’t maintain it on a regular basis. In order to ensure that your website is doing its job when it comes to marketing your business, you need to perform regular website maintenance.

What is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is the process of regularly performing checks on your websites to monitor its performance, as well as making sure that the content is kept relevant and updated. Another key process of website maintenance is looking for any bugs in the website’s features and functionality. The main goal of website maintenance is to make sure that your website is healthy, performing properly, and there are continuous traffic and growth. It also ensures that your Google rankings are kept high.

Whether you have a small business or a large enterprise, keeping your website well-maintained is critical to ensuring that your business is healthy so that you can retain old customers as well as acquire new ones. While smaller businesses might get away with cutting a few corners here and there, this still does not mean that these companies can survive for long without proper website maintenance.

How Do I Conduct Proper Website Maintenance?

There is a list of tasks that you should perform on a regular basis in order to perform website maintenance properly. You can break these down into four time periods: weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.

Necessary Weekly Tasks:

•       Backup and Update
•       Check for Broken Links or Loading Errors
•       Checking your Key Metric Performance

Necessary Monthly Tasks:

•       Update Content
•       Check loading speed
•       Review security protocols

Necessary Quarterly Tasks

•       Review and update website design and images
•       Check SEO metrics
•       Run some test purchases
•       Test website on all possible browsers
•       Review and update advertising and marketing campaigns

Necessary Yearly Tasks

•       Renew the domain name
•       Perform a thorough user utility test

Is Website Maintenance Really Important?

As you can see above, website maintenance is a process that grows on itself so you want to make sure that you always do each step properly to prevent future problems. Luckily for you, there are new tools that come out every year that allows you to perform website maintenance properly. However, you do need to invest the time and effort into learning how to use these tools correctly and efficiently achieve the results that you want.

Speaking of which, what results do you want to achieve?

High-ranking SEO results

Any website’s goal is to achieve a high Google ranking by using the latest SEO techniques. If you use the right SEO methods to increase your website’s ranking, Google will feature your website on the top of any related search inquiries. In a nutshell, Google rewards websites with updated and relevant information with high results and penalizes outdated or security-risk websites with lower search results. Your website might even get de-indexed if it falls to a low enough ranking!

Regular Customer Attraction and Engagement

Once your website has gained traction and is regularly receiving customer traffic, it’s now important to maintain the website in order to keep the current customers and attract new ones.  

Updated Security

This is arguably the most important reason to perform website maintenance, especially if you are running an e-commerce store. Since you will be handling sensitive information such as bank account and credit card numbers, you want to guarantee that your customers will remain safe from online threats such as data breaches and hacking.

Strong Business Brand and Image

If you invest in regular website maintenance, you will show your customers that you care about having a professional image. Customers often think websites that have a clean and professional design is likely to provide a better service.

How Much Will It Cost Me, or Can I Do it Myself?

            Now, the most important question: how much will website maintenance services cost me? It’s actually quite easy to calculate the actual cost of website maintenance services, but it’s not only a matter of whether or not you can afford the money. The more important question here is whether you can afford to perform website maintenance tasks by yourself.

            What does that mean?

            Well, think of it this way: if you have a leaky pipe at home, you might be thinking of fixing it yourself. If you have the proper tools and experience, you might want to fix the problem to save the cost of hiring a professional. However, if the problem is too complicated, you might be causing more damage by trying to fix it yourself!

            This is the same idea that you should apply when thinking of performing website maintenance yourself. If you have the experience and tools, you can perform website maintenance tasks yourself. However, if you don’t have experience in the latest SEO techniques, online security protocols, or updated website design trends, you should consider hiring a professional to do these tasks for you.

Whether you are a web developer or the owner, the website represents your working environment. Situations when you have to work fast or solve some problem, soonest possible, are often and frustrating. Sometimes your income depends on it, or you are at risk to lose clients or customers because the website loads slower than usual. Problems are many.

A website can be a target of a hackers’ attack or some other unfortunate issues can compromise the quality of it. Especially in the world of web development, main tasks such as testing, debugging, and coding depends on the website’s smooth run.

Developers can hardly achieve quality and reliable results in an unstable environment while the website owners run business with a lot of difficulties. One solution, when you get in trouble with the website, is to engage outside’s developers to support, but this is also the most expensive one. However, this is not necessary and there is a simpler solution at disposal you can use on your own, anytime you need. WP Reset plugin is built to enable complete restore of original website settings while you are keeping control over the process. The plugin is fast and accurate, empowered with several fail-safe mechanisms.

Maintain the Website by Checking and Updating It Regularly

Websites change over time, become more complicated, overwhelmed with all kind of content, and most importantly, they constantly grow. If they remain unchanged, the competition will beat them. You have to be aware that working hard on your website is not enough for success.

The quality of it has to remain uninterrupted, and you can ensure that only with the proper maintenance. That means, check your website regularly, keep it updated and engaged to retain visitors. Remember that every visitor is a potential customer, and routine maintenance can be of crucial importance. If you tend to provide continuous traffic and strengthen Google rankings, your site should run smoothly all the time.

While building your website, think on the theme and plugins you will need to operate your blog or business, but do not waste your time on multiple installations of those without a clear purpose. Unnecessary tools, along with the various content you no longer need might lead to some issues which will seriously affect the work of your website and consequently your business. Keeping the website clean and simple means that you should occasionally clear out everything you no longer need.

How to Solve Website Issues?

WordPress offers a long list of user-friendly plugins which are supposed to help users by solving almost every issue. However, useful tools for image optimization or those intended to delete old posts revisions sometimes are not enough to unburden the website.

A careful checkup will show you which issue you should fix immediately, what can you do to improve the website performance, but remember that you will need days to do it manually. And why should you if there is a better solution? Sometimes, the best is to get back to default settings and start from scratch. WP Reset Plugin is equipped with standard and special features you can use at will and according to your needs while you keep the track of every change.

In that way, it is almost impossible to make a mistake and delete something you did not want to. If you are a web developer, you will prefer the command-line tool, while the other users’ choice is single-click reset. In both cases, the best is to get introduced to WP Reset plugin in-depth. It features many different options providing you multiple choices on how to clean up the website.

Complete or Partial Reset

Complete reset is not always necessary when the website slows down or shows some other failures. As the owner or developer, you know best which part of the website should you intervene in. Selective reset tool is customizable to your personal preferences enabling you to get rid of specified content, individual tables, pages, or even comments.

You can use it instead of complete reset and retain what you need. With the less than a minimum of manual work, you can refresh the website and make it more pleasant users experience. Post-reset setup is completely adaptable to your personal preferences, which means – you can keep themes and plugins, for example. It is very convenient for those who had got used to the chosen website environment. Advanced features of the WP Reset plugin are more favored by developers. In a way, this plugin has brought relief because the original WordPress installation is available as many times as needed. It shortens hours of work when it comes to testing and debugging. These processes usually need to be done fast and soonest possible which is hard if the development environment is not supportive. Having the opportunity to conduct detailed check of an active website, preserving data, and still have the opportunity to develop in a default installation is what the users of the WP Reset appreciate most. Safety is one of its best characteristics since the files remain unchanged.

Website maintenance is a serious job to be done in different forms on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. If there is a while since you have the website, you probably have the check-list considering loading time of pages, security, backups, broken links, etc. Despite your effort to do everything by the book, you will need some improvements over time, and you will need the help of plugin to avoid wasting time and the risk of losing data. Using WP Reset plugin is safe. Multiple fail-safe mechanisms guarantee that while in-house support is in charge to provide help or answer the questions considering this open-source software. WP Reset is a fast, reliable and safe contributor to the well-done business.

Proper website maintenance depends on a plan. Make it according to your needs and follow the dynamic of your website. Sooner or later you will have to clean it up, and every help will be welcomed. With such a serious approach, your website will consistently run smoothly and without any difficulties. Users experience is crucial for its success. You have already invested time and energy to build it, but remember to invest in website maintenance as well.

The primary pillars of a successful SEO strategy are links, high-quality, and engaging content. However, the world of SEO has evolved, and if you examine traditional strategies that include images, articles, blog posts and at times videos, you will find that in the past they were highly resorted to invoking organic inbound traffic for the website of a business. These techniques are very popular when it comes to generating targeted traffic to the site. 

Podcasts – How do they boost SEO?

For many years’ businesses have under-estimated the value of podcasts when it comes to increasing targeted inbound traffic to their site. Experts in SEO state that podcasts, if embraced correctly, play an instrumental role in enhancing targeted traffic to your site. Besides more inbound traffic, podcasts help to establish your brand, and it supports all your efforts targeted at link-building for your site.

In order to start, you must note that podcasts should leverage your SEO campaigns. You should be aware of how to rank them for better brand visibility and inbound traffic. The following are some expert tips on how you can optimize your podcasts and bring in more traffic to your site-

 

• Guest speakers for the podcast- Podcasts are ideal for optimizing your site as they attract links. For getting more links, you need to create podcasts that are both engaging and interesting. They should be useful and drive the visitor to click on your business URL. A good podcast has the ability to attract targeted audience well in today’s competitive market. A simple way of attracting more and more visitors to your site is to hire a guest speaker to promote your podcast. For instance, if a person gives you the time to be interviewed, it is obvious that they would like others to know about it as well. They will share the links of that podcast episode, and you can host it on your business website page along with other social media and podcast channels. With these efforts, you give your targeted audience the chance to connect with your business website in a natural way. 
• Choosing the guest speaker- When it comes to choosing the right guest speaker for your podcast, look for someone who will have a business benefit for appearing on your podcast. The guest speaker might be from a company who is about to launch a new service or product in the market or an author ready with a new book. SEO experts say that authors are generally good guest speakers for podcasts. 
• Talk to your podcast guests before going live- To get the best out of your podcast guests, speak to them directly before you go live. You should ask them to link back to your business and an excellent time to ask them for that social media link is the time just before the interview. You need a verbal commitment from them. You can increase your chances of getting a link when you send an email out to them and inform them that the specific episode has been posted and you would appreciate some social mentions and a link.
• Podcast title- The title of the podcast is crucial to find its way to Google Play Music and iTunes. Experts from credible SEO services across the nation say the title of your podcast should be interesting and compelling. It should be well-defined and explain what the podcast is about. If you keep a vague and obscure title, your efforts to generate inbound traffic fail drastically. It is prudent to use keywords, but at the same time, do not stuff the author tag of your podcast with them. In short, the podcast should be created in such a way that you are proud of it. In short, experts suggest the title of the podcast should be defined and clean. You can use some keywords in the sub-titles of the podcast as well.
• Optimize the RSS Feed- Now; the average user does not use RSS Feed as much as they used to do in the past. However, the RSS Feed helps people to subscribe to your podcast on iTunes. Google Play Music and other popular platforms. Your Feed also gives information about your podcast to the above platforms as it generally takes about 24 hours for the fields to update on directories like iTunes. The RSS Feed that you get from WordPress is free, and you can use that for your podcast as well.
• Leverage the website- The podcast is audio content that helps you to attract trusted links to the business site. SEO experts face this challenge of getting genuine and trusted links to business sites, and a podcast makes it simple for them. For instance, if a writer sees your podcast and wishes to link the podcast, showing him links authoritative sites that feature your business content proves that your content is high in quality and trustworthy.

The podcast at this point of time becomes worth linking to. When it comes to the creation of a podcast, ensure that every episode is different and it should be worth linking to. Take subjects that interest and will provide information to your targeted audience. This information will generate inbound links that, in turn, will boost the SEO page rankings for your business with success.

Therefore, when it comes to the creation of podcasts for your business, you will find they play a highly influential role in the search engine optimization of your site. They should feature guest speakers who will benefit from your business. The title of the podcast should be relevant to your business niche. It should contain content that is compelling to invoke a call-to-action by the visitor. 

In this way, the SEO of your business site can be boosted, and it can be added to your search engine optimization strategy along with blog posts, articles, images, videos, and more. For getting maximum results out of your podcasts, always hire skilled and experienced professionals from credible SEO companies to help you generate organic targeted traffic and better lead conversions!

If you market your business online, you may want to consider hiring an agency that specializes in this area. However, keep in mind that choosing the right digital marketing agency can be complicated. It’s something you definitely want to get right but this isn’t easy to do. Besides the fact that there are thousands of these agencies, they are all the best! Or, at least, that’s what their marketing says.

In addition, there are a lot of different aspects of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, social media marketing and on and on. How can any digital marketing agency be experts in all of them? So with that in mind, how are you going to make sure you pick one of the best Boston SEO companies for your business?

Here are five key things you can do when searching for a digital marketing agency that will help you narrow down the search and pick the agency that is right for you.

1. Discuss It With Those You Know and Trust

When you are making a huge decision, like choosing a digital marketing agency to help grow your business, one of the best things you can do is talk to those you know, respect and trust. Talk to other business owners you know who work with an agency. Someone you trust isn’t going to send you to an agency that they don’t believe in or want to work with themselves.

When it comes to such big decisions, most business owners make their decisions based on referrals. In fact, 84% of these types of business to business decisions are based off of referrals from other business owners.

After all, a decision like this could make or break a business. It’s not something you want to leave to chance. If you want to know the truth about how good or bad an agency is the best way to do it is to talk to business owners who have worked with that agency.

Keep in mind, as mentioned above, there are many aspects of digital marketing. When you ask other business owners be sure you discuss what specifically you are looking for in an agency. If you have decided you want to focus on social media to generate leads, you don’t want to hire a digital marketing agency that focuses on search engine optimization.

2. Who Are Their Clients?

Who else works with this agency? While talking to other business owners is a great way to narrow things down, it’s also important to find out about other clients of the agency. You don’t want to hand over a big check and find out the agency is a one person shop run by the niece of the person who gave you the referral and that business owner is the only client. At least, until you that is.

Check out the agency’s web site. It’s a digital marketing agency, they most certainly should have a web site of their own.

If they don’t have a web site, or if the web site has no information from other clients, such as case studies, or testimonials, it’s quite possible this agency is not going to be able to handle what it is you want them to do for you.

If the referral was from someone you really respect and trust and you still want to meet with the agency, be sure and ask them for other clients with whom you could speak to about the work they had done for them.

While many clients make agencies sign a non-disclosure agreement,an agency should be able to give you at least a few clients or case studies. If they can’t, you may want to move on to the next agency on your list.

3. The Agency Needs To Earn Your Trust

So you’ve checked out their web site and they have some big clients, or some clients in your industry that all seem very happy with what the agency has done for them. But sometimes you need to dig a little deeper. Of course the agency is going to put their best foot forward on their web site.

If the agency touts some great case study results, ask if you can speak with the agency’s contact at the company. This way, you can verify the marketing results on your own instead of just trusting the agency on their word.

If they are willing to tout case study results, they should be willing to give you a contact so you can verify those results.

4. Ask The Questions That Matter For Your Business

When you interview an agency, be sure and go into it prepared. Have a list of questions that are relevant to your business, the type of digital marketing you want to do, and the results you are looking to achieve. It’s important to also have an idea as to the answer you are looking for so you can focus on what matters.

After all, all good salespeople can give you an answer that sounds great without ever actually answering the question.

If this is the first time you’re hiring an agency, you may not even know where to begin with questions. Go back to your friend that referred you and talk to them. They should have a pretty good idea of what questions are important for you to ask.

5. Listen To The Questions That You Are Being Asked

A good agency likes to work with certain types of clients, just as you want to hire the right agency. That means they are interviewing you as well.

They are looking for signs that you might be more trouble than you are worth. They won’t work with you if they feel there are red flags that indicate it would not be a good working relationship.

This means a good agency will be asking you questions as well. They will want to know about your digital marketing plans, what your goals are going forward, who you consider your competition, etc. They need to know all the details to be able to determine if they can even help you grow your business.

Put these five tips into action when choosing a digital marketing agency and you’ll greatly increase the chances of hiring an agency that can help you reach your business marketing goals.

In the digital world, when someone says “Apple,” you’re more likely to think of the brand that gave us the Mac, iPad, and Siri, instead of the fruit. 

That’s how effectively a brand name can leave a mark in our minds.

Now imagine having that kind of brand power for your ecommerce business.  

Although the journey to establishing a successful brand can be unique to each business, there are techniques you can use to get your brand to your target market successfully. 

In this post, let me share with you four strategies to build brand awareness for your ecommerce business. 

Let’s dive right in.

1. Share Your Brand Story

The concept behind why storytelling can be an excellent marketing technique is simple: people love hearing a success story. 

Your brand’s story gives your brand more depth and something your audience can connect with, which makes it an excellent element to add to your marketing efforts. 

For instance, technology company GoPro wrote on their website how the company founder Nick Woodman “started with a 35mm camera and a wrist strap made from old wetsuits and plastic scraps.” 

Now, the company has grown internationally and “has sold over 26 million GoPro cameras in more than 100 countries.”

Weaving this kind of narrative into your marketing strategy lets your audience “feel” the experience in your story, which helps build a connection and establish trust with them. 

When people trust your brand, they are more likely to come back, buy again, and tell other people about you. 

Your brand’s story can be anything. 

It can be a narrative of your product development journey, founder, or how the idea for your product was born as a solution to a problem.

People like hearing stories, and you can use that to your advantage with a narrative that gets your message and brand across to your target audiences.

2. Develop Your Brand Identity

Your product can leave a lasting impression on your customers even after they make the purchase and your brand identity shapes that impression.  

For instance, when someone mentions M&M’s, you’ll immediately think of those red and yellow button-shaped characters frequently shown in their commercials.

Through their iconic characters and marketing campaigns, M&M’s brand personality presents their product as fun, creative, and witty, plus, it’s something that people can easily relate with. 

There are plenty of ways to put a “face” to your brand, but one of the best ways to establish your identity is through your logo

If you’re on a tight budget, you can use online logo generators to help design your logo, or you can hire professional designers to do it for you.

Here’s a tip: If you want to tap into the creativity of the people on the internet, you can get your logo through design services such as LogoMyWay Designers.    

Through the service, you can run a logo design contest and select the best design of your choice. 

Your logo is also crucial for your other marketing efforts – such as using it for your ecommerce website and ads – since customers associate it with your brand and products. 

When designed appropriately, your logo can help you leave a good impression on your target audience, build trust with your potential customers, and ultimately lead them to buy. 

3. Create Interactive Content

In today’s digital age, there are many things to consider, such as building an effective business website, your customers’ needs, and the latest trends. 

More and more people prefer using visual mediums to communicate and interact. 

Thus, you need to shift your brand awareness strategies to cater to this kind of customer preference and improve how your customers interact with your brand.    

An excellent strategy to engage your target audience is through interactive content like videos.

With videos, you can create interactive and fun product demos that show your target audiences how to use your products and the benefits they can get.

For example, makeup brand FentyBeauty posts “Tutorial Tuesdays with Rihanna” on their YouTube channel, which shows viewers makeup looks that you can do with their products.

This is a great way to engage your target audience, offer them value that your products can give, and raise your brand awareness by giving them a unique experience with your brand.

Also, through videos, you can convey your message creatively and interactively that help make your target audiences feel like you’re talking to them personally, which helps you build a relationship with them.    

4. Run Social Media Contests

With social media, running a contest to boost your brand visibility can be easier now more than ever. 

Picture this.

You’re scrolling through Instagram to see what your favorite celebrities are up to and suddenly you find a post that asks viewers to “tag a friend” to win a contest. 

That got your attention, right?

From scrolling through your newsfeed, you’re suddenly interested in the brand, what the contest is all about, and what you can win.  

Now imagine applying that same strategy to your target audiences. 

With a social media contest, you can draw your target audience’s attention to your brand without being too promotional.  

It’s also a good marketing tactic because it offers the chance of getting value with the least amount of effort. 

After all, who wouldn’t want to win a contest just by sharing a post and tagging a friend, right?

You can use hashtags like #tagafriend for your social media contests, have the social media influencers your work with share the post, and run your it across your multiple social accounts.

That being said, social media contests can spread like wildfire, which makes them effective marketing tactics for your brand visibility throughout your social media accounts. 

If you want to target specific audiences or know the kind of content that they are looking for, you can use social media monitoring tools to improve your social marketing efforts.

Social media contests are also highly effective at creating user-generated content (UGC) from customers, which holds a lot of marketing power. In one study, consumers say they trust other people’s recommendations more than they believe in curated content by marketers.

That is why UGC is essential for any business’s marketing campaigns. Whenever you promote a new product or seasonal brand custom packaging, generate a buzz around it by organizing a social media contest where customers create content featuring the product.

What’s Next? 

Building your brand awareness for your ecommerce business requires more than just the strategies in this post. 

However, by employing these techniques, you are on the right track to raising your brand visibility, building trust with your target audience, and establishing relationships with your potential customers.