One of the most common mistakes I see small business owners make with their WordPress website is assuming that if the website is working, everything must be fine.
The homepage loads. The contact form is still there. Nothing looks broken.
So the website gets left alone.
Unfortunately, quite a lot can be happening behind the scenes without there being an obvious problem on the front end. Plugins become outdated. Backups stop running. Contact forms stop delivering emails. Links break. Pages become outdated. New services never make it onto the website.
And sometimes the website itself simply stops reflecting the business it was built for.
After more than 20 years of designing and working with small business websites, I’ve found that website maintenance is much broader than keeping WordPress software updated.
Your website needs to keep working technically, but it also needs to keep up with your customers and your business. If your services, customers, and expertise have changed but your website hasn’t, keeping the software up to date isn’t enough.
That’s why I think of website maintenance as looking after the website as a whole – the technology, the content, and whether it’s still doing the job the business needs it to do.
So what should you actually be checking?
1. Start With the Basics: Is Everything Working?
Before worrying about rankings, content, or design, make sure the website actually works.
Visit it as though you were a potential customer rather than its owner. Click through the main navigation. Try important buttons. Check links to external booking systems or resources. If you sell online, go through the shopping and checkout process. Most importantly, test your contact forms.
Don’t simply check that the form appears on the page. Complete it yourself.
Did it submit properly? Did the inquiry arrive at the correct email address? Did the expected confirmation appear or arrive?
A contact form can look perfectly normal while the emails it generates have stopped being delivered.
If business has suddenly gone quiet, most people assume they need more marketing. They don’t necessarily think to check whether the inquiries they’re already generating are disappearing somewhere between the website and their inbox.
2. Check WordPress, Plugin and Theme Updates
WordPress websites are made up of several moving parts.
There’s WordPress itself, your theme, and usually a collection of plugins adding functionality such as forms, SEO, security, galleries, bookings, or eCommerce. All of those components continue to be developed after your website has been built.
Updates can fix bugs, improve compatibility, add functionality, or patch security vulnerabilities. That’s why ignoring the update notifications in your WordPress dashboard for six months isn’t a particularly good maintenance strategy.
However, I also don’t recommend blindly clicking “Update All” without knowing what you’re updating.
Before significant updates, make sure you have a current backup. Once they’re complete, check the website itself rather than assuming everything worked simply because WordPress displayed a success message.
3. Make Sure Your Backups Are Actually Happening
A backup is one of those things nobody thinks much about until they desperately need one.
A WordPress website has files and a database, and you need a backup system that allows the website to be restored if something goes wrong.
Find out:
- how often the website is backed up;
- how many backups are retained;
- where they’re stored;
- whether the website files and database are included; and
- how the website would actually be restored.
The appropriate frequency depends on the website. A relatively static brochure website doesn’t necessarily need the same backup schedule as a busy WooCommerce store processing orders every day.
And don’t simply assume your hosting company is handling everything. Know what is being backed up and what your recovery options are.
4. Check Whether Your Content Still Reflects Your Business
This is one of the most overlooked parts of website maintenance.
Businesses don’t stand still. You introduce new services. Stop offering old ones. Change prices. Develop expertise in new areas. Work with different types of clients. Hire people. Win awards. Complete great projects. Receive fantastic testimonials.
But quite often none of that makes it onto the website.
Every few months, look at your important pages and ask:
- Are these still the services we want to promote?
- Are the descriptions still accurate?
- Are there services we now offer that aren’t mentioned?
- Are our best projects and examples of work shown?
- Are our strongest recent testimonials there?
- Does the website answer the questions customers are asking us now?
- Does this website represent the business we are today?
This is also a good time to look at whether existing pages need improving rather than automatically creating more.
Sometimes a service page that was perfectly adequate three years ago now contains only a couple of paragraphs while competitors are answering the subject in much greater depth.
Sometimes several old articles cover almost the same subject and would be more useful combined. And sometimes the business has changed so significantly that updating individual pages isn’t enough.
That’s when it can be useful to look at the broader website design and redesign process and decide whether the structure, design, and content still support where the business is going.
5. Don’t Just Add Content – Build Useful Groups of Content
Website owners are often told they need to “keep adding fresh content”.
I don’t think that’s particularly helpful advice.
Publishing another blog article simply because you haven’t posted anything this month doesn’t automatically make your website better.
I’d rather see a business develop useful content around the subjects it genuinely wants to be known for.
That may mean starting with an important service page or substantial guide and then creating supporting articles that answer more specific questions around that subject. Those articles can link to one another and back to the relevant service or main topic page. This is often referred to as a content cluster.
It gives the reader somewhere useful to go next rather than leaving them with a collection of unrelated blog posts, and it helps build a much deeper body of information around your expertise.
It’s an approach I’ve been using with one of my clients, The Cutting Room, a Sydney hair salon.
Rather than continually publishing unrelated hair articles, we’ve been developing groups of content around subjects that matter to their clients and the areas the salon wants to be known for.
The idea is quite simple. Instead of treating every article as a standalone piece of content, we look at the broader subject, the questions clients are asking, and the useful supporting information we can build around it. We then connect that content back to the relevant services and other related articles.
Over time, that creates something much more useful than a blog containing dozens of disconnected articles. The website increasingly demonstrates the depth of the salon’s expertise, while clients can move from a broad question into more specific information that’s relevant to them.
That’s what I mean by maintaining content.
You’re not maintaining a static library of old blog posts. You’re looking at what your customers want to know, what your business wants to be known for, what you’ve already published, and where the gaps are.
A good content and visibility strategy should build on what you already have rather than simply producing more content for the sake of it.
6. Review Older Content Instead of Automatically Replacing It
Older doesn’t necessarily mean useless.
Before deleting an old article, look at whether it still receives traffic, has useful links pointing to it, or covers a subject that’s still relevant to your customers. It may simply need updating. Dates change. Statistics become outdated. Services evolve. Recommendations change. Screenshots become obsolete. Links stop working.
Sometimes an old article can be substantially improved and brought up to date. Sometimes two or three overlapping articles are better consolidated into one strong resource. And sometimes content genuinely has no further purpose and should be removed or redirected.
Website maintenance is partly about making those decisions rather than allowing years of content to accumulate without anybody reviewing it.
7. Check Your Internal Links
As websites grow, their internal linking often becomes messy.
You publish a new service page but none of your existing articles link to it. You write a fantastic guide but forget that three older posts could naturally point readers towards it. Or you delete a page and leave links to it scattered throughout the website.
When you’re reviewing content, look for opportunities to connect related information. Internal links should primarily help people find useful information and understand where to go next. They also help search engines understand how pages and topics on your website relate to one another.
This becomes particularly important when you’re building content clusters because the supporting articles shouldn’t sit in isolation.
8. Look At the Website Through a Customer’s Eyes
Business owners know their own websites too well.
You already know where everything is. You know what a particular phrase means. You know which menu item contains a service.
A new visitor doesn’t.
Every so often, pretend you know absolutely nothing about the business.
- Can you quickly understand what the company does?
- Can you see who the services are for?
- Can you find the important services?
- Is there an obvious next step?
- Can you contact the business without hunting for a phone number or form?
- Does the website provide enough information to make you trust the business?
As websites grow, pages tend to get added one at a time. Eventually, the navigation and structure that made perfect sense when there were six pages may not work nearly as well when there are 40.
Good small business website design isn’t only about what a website looks like. Its structure, content, and customer journey matter just as much.
9. Check the Website on Your Phone
Don’t just shrink your desktop browser window and assume everything is fine. Pick up your phone and actually use the website.
Try the menu. Click the buttons. Complete a form. Read a service page. Check the footer. Look at images and headings. If you have a click-to-call button, use it.
New content and changes made over time can sometimes create mobile layout problems that weren’t there when the website was originally built.
Something that looks perfectly good on a large monitor can be frustrating to use on a phone.
10. Keep an Eye on Website Performance
If your website has become noticeably slower, investigate why.
Large images, plugins, external scripts, hosting resources, database issues, and other factors can all affect performance.
You don’t necessarily need to become obsessed with chasing a perfect performance score.
Think about the actual visitor.
Does the website load reasonably quickly? Do pages respond properly? Are huge images making someone wait unnecessarily? Does something seem significantly slower than it used to?
A noticeable change is worth investigating.
11. Check Security and User Access
A hacked website doesn’t necessarily stop working.
A compromised WordPress site can continue looking perfectly normal while something unwanted is happening behind the scenes.
Keep WordPress, themes, and plugins updated, and periodically review the Users section of WordPress.
Does every administrator still need access?
I’ve worked on websites where previous developers, SEO providers, staff members, and other suppliers still had administrator access years after they stopped working with the business.
If someone no longer needs access, remove it.
Also watch for unfamiliar administrator accounts, unusual files, unexpected redirects, spam pages appearing in search results, or unexplained changes in website behavior.
12. Check SSL and Important Third-Party Services
Your website should load securely using HTTPS without certificate warnings.
Many hosting companies automatically renew SSL certificates, but it’s still worth checking that everything is working properly. Also think about the third-party services your website relies on.
That could include:
- payment gateways;
- booking platforms;
- email marketing integrations;
- CRM systems;
- maps;
- social feeds;
- online forms; or
- external scheduling systems.
Your WordPress website can be working perfectly while an integration it relies on has stopped doing its job.
13. Pay Attention to Google Search Console
Google Search Console can provide useful warnings about technical and indexing problems affecting your website.
You don’t need to panic over every fluctuation. What matters more is spotting unexpected changes.
If important pages that were previously indexed suddenly disappear, Google starts reporting server errors, or you receive a security warning, investigate it rather than leaving it for months.
Search Console can also help you understand which pages and topics Google is already associating with your website, which can be useful when deciding what existing content deserves further development.
Does All of This Really Need to Be Done Every Month?
No.
And this is where website maintenance checklists can become unnecessarily overwhelming. Some things should happen automatically or continuously, particularly backups and security monitoring.
Some things are worth checking monthly, such as forms, important website functionality, pending updates, and obvious performance problems.
Content doesn’t need to be rewritten every month either. Instead, make content review part of the ongoing development of the website. Update important information when it changes, review older material periodically, and continue building useful resources around the areas that matter to the business.
A more substantial review of website structure, content, and design might only happen every few months or even annually, depending on how quickly the business changes.
A five-page brochure website that changes twice a year doesn’t need exactly the same maintenance schedule as a WooCommerce store processing hundreds of transactions.
The important thing is having a process rather than waiting for something to break.
Your Website Isn’t Finished When It Goes Live
A website launch isn’t the end of the project.
WordPress changes. Plugins change. Your customers change. Search behavior changes. And, most importantly, your business changes.
Regular website maintenance isn’t just about preventing technical problems. It’s about making sure the website continues to work, remains useful, accurately represents the business, and grows into a stronger resource over time.
Sometimes that means updating a plugin. Sometimes it means fixing a contact form.
Sometimes it means updating a service page, improving an old article, adding a testimonial, or developing an entire group of useful content around a subject your customers care about.
And sometimes it means recognizing that the business has simply outgrown the website it started with.
The best-maintained websites aren’t necessarily the ones somebody tinkers with every day. They’re the ones somebody is actually paying attention to.
About the author
Ivana Katz is the founder of Websites 4 Small Business, helping small businesses get found online, build trust, and turn more website visitors into customers. She specialises in website design, content, and online visibility, with a practical, no-nonsense approach to what actually helps a business grow.
