The Small Business Website Maintenance Checklist

Most websites don't break all at once. They drift. A plugin goes stale, a certificate lapses, a contact form quietly stops sending, and nobody notices until a customer mentions it, or doesn't mention it and calls a competitor instead.

Here's the maintenance routine we follow for client sites, broken down by how often each task should happen. Use it as a checklist for your own site, or hand it to whoever looks after yours.

Every week

• Make sure the site is up. Better yet, use uptime monitoring that alerts you within minutes, so you aren't relying on luck.
• Test your main contact form. Submit it yourself and confirm the message arrives. Forms fail silently more often than anything else on a website.
• Check for pending updates. On WordPress and similar systems, updates to the core, theme, and plugins often patch security holes.

Every month

• Take a backup before you update anything. Then apply updates one at a time, checking the site after each.
• Review the site on your phone. Most local customers find you on mobile. Tap your phone number. Does it dial?
• Look for broken links and error pages, especially on your most important service pages.
• Update anything that changed: hours, prices, services, staff, photos, holiday closures.
• Glance at your analytics. You're looking for sudden drops in visits or form submissions, which often signal a technical problem.

Every quarter

• Run a health check. Look at speed, security headers, SSL, page titles and descriptions, and mobile setup. Our free website health check covers 20+ of these in about ten seconds.
• Test a backup restore. Restore a backup to a test location to prove it actually works.
• Review who has access. Remove old employees and past vendors from your hosting, website admin, domain registrar, and Google accounts.
• Refresh your Google Business Profile. Add recent photos, check your hours, and answer new questions. Our Google Business Profile guide walks through it.
• Check page speed. Images uploaded straight from a phone camera are a common cause of slow pages.

Every year

• Confirm your domain renewal and auto-renew settings, and make sure the payment card on file hasn't expired.
• Review your hosting plan. Is it still fast enough and fairly priced?
• Re-read every page. Does the site still describe what you sell today?
• Check that every account is in your business's name. Our website ownership checklist covers what to look for.
• Decide what to improve next: a new service page, better calls to action, or a faster mobile experience.

Signs your site needs attention now

Don't wait for the next scheduled check if you notice:

• A "Not secure" warning in the browser
• Calls or form submissions dropping with no other explanation
• Pages that take more than a few seconds to load
• Strange pages, links, or ads you didn't add (a common sign of a hack)
• An admin dashboard full of overdue updates

Or let someone else handle it

If this list looks like a part-time job, that's because it is. Our care plans handle all of it for a flat monthly price, starting at $69 a month with hosting included. Every update runs with a backup taken first, a before-and-after comparison, and automatic rollback if anything breaks, and every action is logged so you can see what was done.

See our care plans or ask us to take a look at your site.