How to keep your website up to date

A website is not a poster you hang once and forget. Hours change, prices change, photos age and the software behind the site needs updates. This lesson gives you a simple schedule of what to check every week, month, quarter and year, so your site stays accurate, safe and working.

An outdated site costs you trust

Visitors judge a business by small details. A wrong closing time, an old price, a link that leads nowhere or a news section whose last post is from three years ago tells them that nobody is minding the shop. People act on what your site says: they drive to your address, they call at the hours you list, they bring the price they saw. When the information is wrong, you lose the visit and often a review as well.

Consistency matters too. Your website, your Google Business Profile and your social accounts should say the same thing about your hours, address and services. When they disagree, visitors believe whichever one they see first, and it is not always the right one.

Three kinds of updates

Content updates

This is what visitors read: hours, prices, services, photos, the team, offers, news and articles. You decide when it changes, and it changes most often.

Technical updates

This is the machinery behind the site: the platform, its plugins or themes, security settings, backups and the connection that shows the padlock. Outdated software can leave known weaknesses open, so these updates protect you.

Business details

This is the information about you that appears in many places: your address, phone number, email, social links, legal pages and the year in the footer. When one of these changes, it changes everywhere at once.

A schedule you can follow

Small checks done often are easier than a big cleanup done rarely. Copy this schedule into your calendar.

Every week: five minutes

• Open your site on your phone and look at the first screen.
• Check that any banner, offer or notice has not expired.
• Look for messages from your contact form, including the spam folder.

Every month: thirty minutes

• Test every form and button. Send yourself a message through the contact form, and confirm that it arrives. Tap your phone number on a phone.
• Read your hours, prices and seasonal information. Compare them with your Google Business Profile.
• Click through the menu. Look for broken links and pages that no longer make sense.
• Confirm that backups exist. Ask whoever hosts or maintains your site.
• Apply software updates, if you manage the software yourself.
• Add one fresh thing. A new photo, a short post or an updated answer.
• Check your numbers. Analytics and Search Console, as lessons 10-1 and 10-4 explain.

Every quarter: one to two hours

• Read each page as if you were a new customer. Is it still true?
• Replace old photos and add new real ones.
• Check how fast the site loads on your phone.
• Review your privacy policy and any cookie tools, as lesson 10-5 explains.
• Update your reviews or testimonials with new, real ones.
• Check who has a login to the site, and remove anyone who should not.

Every year: half a day

• Check the renewal dates for your domain, hosting, email and paid tools.
• Confirm that the padlock is still there and the certificate renews.
• Change the copyright year in the footer.
• Rewrite your About page and your team information.
• Remove pages you no longer need.
• Ask whether it is time to redesign. Lesson 10-7 helps you decide.

Decide who does what

A task without an owner does not happen. Write down who is responsible for each part of the list.

• You or a manager. The business facts: hours, prices, offers, the team and new photos.
• The person who maintains the site. Software, backups, security and technical fixes. This can be a person on your team, a freelancer, an agency or a maintenance service.
• Whoever answers customers. Messages from the forms, and reviews on your profiles.

Put the names next to the tasks and the dates in a shared calendar. When someone leaves, the first job is to hand their tasks to someone else.

What to fix first

When you find several problems at once, work in this order.

1. Anything that sends a customer to the wrong place or wastes their time. Wrong hours, a wrong address, a broken phone link, a form that does not deliver.
2. Anything that puts the site or your customers' information at risk. Security warnings, expired certificates, outdated software and old accounts.
3. Anything that makes the business look neglected. Old dates, old photos, broken links and an old year in the footer.
4. Everything else. Wording you would like to improve and pages you would like to add.

The content that goes stale first

Some information ages faster than the rest. Check these first.

• Hours and holiday closures. A frequent mistake, and one that sends customers to a locked door.
• Prices and offers. An old price can force you to honor it or to disappoint someone.
• Seasonal information. Menus, trip dates, collections and events change with the calendar.
• The team. People leave and join.
• Testimonials. Add recent ones, and only real ones.
• Dates anywhere. Dated pages show their age the moment the date is old.

Dated content deserves its own routine. A calendar of availability, a list of events or a table of seasonal dates is useful only while it is current, so decide who updates it and when. If a date-based section is too much to maintain, replace it with something that does not expire.

Photos, videos and files age too

Photos of a storefront that has been repainted, a team that has changed or a product that is no longer sold make visitors doubt the rest of the page. Replace them when the reality changes, and prefer real photos of your own work, place and people.

• Keep file sizes small. Heavy images slow the page, and visitors on phones feel it first.
• Describe each new image. Write a short description for people who use screen readers. It also helps search engines understand the picture.
• Check downloads and links. A price list or a menu saved as a file can stay online long after it is out of date.

Articles and journals: keep them alive or leave them out

A journal, a news section or a list of articles shows visitors that the business is active. It also shows the opposite when the last post is old. Choose a rhythm you can keep, such as one short post a month or one a season, and keep it for the whole year. A modest schedule that you meet is better than a big one that you abandon.

When you revise an old article, change its date only if the content really changed. Keep the article at the same address instead of deleting it and writing a new one, because the page may already be known and linked.

Software, backups and security

If your site runs on a platform with plugins or themes, updates fix problems and close security gaps. Apply them regularly, and take a backup first. Test the site after each update. Remove plugins and accounts you do not use.

• Backups. A backup is a full copy of your site. Keep one away from your host, and test a restore at least once, as lesson 2-9 explains.
• Passwords. Use a long, unique password for every account, a password manager and two-step login wherever it is offered.
• Access. Give each person their own login, and remove former staff and former agencies.
• Forms. Check that your spam protection still works and that real messages still arrive.

If you do not manage the software yourself, ask the person who does how often it is updated and how backups work.

Renewals that can take your site offline

Several parts of a website are rented by the year. If one lapses, your site or your email can stop working.

• Your domain. If it expires, your site and your email addresses can stop working. Turn on automatic renewal, and keep your contact email current with the registrar so reminders reach you.
• Your hosting plan. Know the renewal date and the payment method.
• Your security certificate. It is usually renewed automatically. Check the padlock once a month.
• Your email and tools. Booking, chat and email platforms often bill monthly or yearly.

Keep one list with every renewal date, what it covers and who pays for it. A list like this takes ten minutes to write and can save you a bad week.

A change log takes two minutes and saves hours

Keep a simple list, in a document or a spreadsheet, of everything you change on the site. One line per change is enough: the date, the page, what changed, who did it and why. Here is an invented example of three lines.

• March 3. Hours page. Added the spring hours. Done by the manager.
• March 17. Contact page. New phone number. Done by the owner, and updated on the Google Business Profile the same day.
• April 2. Home page. Replaced the first photo. Done by the web person.

When something looks wrong a month later, the log tells you what changed and who to ask. It is also the best handover document you can give a new person.

A safe way to make changes

1. Save the old version. Copy the old text, or ask for a backup, before you replace anything.
2. Change one thing at a time. It is easier to find the cause if something breaks.
3. Preview on a phone and a computer. Layouts can change in surprising ways.
4. Test your forms and buttons. Every time you edit a page that has one.
5. Write it in a log. Date, what changed and who changed it.
6. Undo it if something breaks. Then ask for help.

When something breaks

• The contact form does not deliver. Check your spam folder and the email address in the form settings, then send a test. Ask the person who built the site if it still fails.
• The site does not load. Try it on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off to see whether the problem is only yours. Then contact your host.
• The browser says the site is not secure. The certificate may have expired. Contact your host.
• Strange pages or redirects appear. The site may have been hacked. Google's Search Console shows a Security issues report for this, as lesson 10-4 explains. Contact your host and a web professional, and change your passwords.

Keeping your site current with us

Updates are easier when someone owns them. If you would rather not handle the technical side yourself, you can add a monthly service to your site: the Care maintenance plan covers backups, updates, security and up to 2 hours of small changes a month. It is one of the monthly services you can add to your site. If you do not have a site yet, you can start your site.

Questions people ask