Why do you need my WordPress website maintenance services I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you a true story of a situation you probably would want to avoid. I will then go on to outline the importance and numerous other reasons you need my WordPress website maintenance services. 

Once upon a time, there was a busy businesswoman. She had a WordPress website hosted with – well we won’t say who, but it was not with the Virtual Click. In fact, it was one of the big boys in the hosting industry who promised the earth, for very little money. I can’t stress enough the importance of having good hosting for your business.

Anyway, It was a Friday. I was having a pretty good day. I woke up, made myself a coffee, sat down at my computer, and opened up my emails. But then I saw it. A notification from a worried client.

While she was very occupied with running her life, school run, business appointments, networking, etc. You know how it goes. She completely forgot to update her WordPress website plugins, and as a result, her website was nearly hacked ?.  I will not bore you with the long story, but I jumped in, secured her site and saved the day. ??‍♀️?. I am happy to say her website is locked down safe and secure.

I was able to detect the intrusion and contained the damage. But it got me thinking, what if I hadn’t got there in time. That’s why I’m writing this post. To warn you about the dangers of not having a WordPress maintenance service. Below I have listed:-

• Why you need a WordPress Maintenance Service
• The dangers of not having one
• The benefits of having one
• How to Update your WordPress website yourself, plus more…. read on.

Website and Plugin Updates

Every plugin on your website will need to be updated to fix any bugs that help to strengthen the security of your website. 

Whatever you do, you do not want to leave outdated plugins on your website. You will be exposed to attacks just like my client. If these hackers were to succeed and break into your site, you may end up losing the content that you worked so hard to achieve. They could steal your customer data, and worse, take control of your entire website. 

Imagine all those years of hard work down the drain ?.

Typically, your plugins should be updated at least twice a month. ( I know! I know! you ain’t got no time for that.). I mean, look at my client. Life got in the way, she forgot and she nearly lost her website.   

But, this is the benefit of having a WordPress website maintenance plan. You get to go carry on with your business and not have to worry about those sneaky, slimy hackers. 

How to Update Your WordPress Website

Updating your WordPress website can be a quick and easy process, or it can be a complete nightmare.

It all depends on how often you update your site, how many plugins you have installed, and whether or not you have a WordPress maintenance service.

If you don’t keep up with your updates, as I said, you run the risk of your site being hacked, or worse, being taken down entirely. I really don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why I’ve put together this quick video to show you how to update your WordPress website in just a few simple steps. You can find the video below

Monitoring and Security

Generally, WordPress is a pretty secure platform, but these hackers come up with new and creative ways to try and bypass its security. This is why your website needs extra security to help block every attempt to breach it. 

These measures include automatically blocking suspicious IP addresses and detecting and blocking bots that create user accounts or try to get into your admin dashboard. 

Website Backups

Just the other day, I asked a client how frequently she does her WordPress website backup, and her response was, “Ummmm let me see?”

I was not really shocked to hear that she didn’t know when she last backed up her WordPress website. I hear it all the time I get it.  I mean when you’re running a business and a busy household. Why should you have to worry about WordPress site backups? ?‍♀️ It should be the last thing on your mind. But, in reality, that’s not the case. Your WordPress website backup should be done at least once a week, possibly daily if you have a very active site. Yep! You read that right! 

You might be wondering, what is this WordPress site backup, and why is it so important that I have to do it every day? 

A WordPress site backup is a copy of your website that can be restored if something goes drastically wrong. It consists of all your website data from images, blog posts, users, fonts, customers, sales data, etc.  Basically, the whole lot.  

Having a backup of your website will enable you to have a safety net to fall back on no matter how bad things get.

Website Speed Optimisation

So, you spend months designing a beautiful website. You have made sure your website safety is at its peak, spent money and time on creating content for your blog or products, making sure your website SEO score is on point, and everything checks out.  

If you’ve been noticing that your website isn’t getting the traffic you think it deserves, there could be a number of reasons why. Let me, let you in on a little secret ? about why this could be happening to you.

One thing that could definitely be causing potential visitors to click away is if your site is loading slow.

In today’s fast-paced world, people are used to instant gratification and if they have to wait more than 2-3 seconds for a page to load, they’re likely to click away and find a site that’s quicker.

There are a number of things that can cause a website to load slow, but one of the most common culprits is outdated software or plugins. That’s why it’s important to keep your site up-to-date with the latest version of the software and all of your plugins.

You should also regularly run security scans and backups. If this sounds like more than you want to deal with, I’m always happy to help you out.

Even if your website checks all the boxes, if the speed of your website is low, no visitor will wait for it to load except maybe for a few loyal visitors who are already familiar with your website.

Test Your Website Speed

• Google Pagespeed Insight 
• Gtmetrix                                                                                                                      

All you need to do is, type your website URL(link) in the available box and click on the “Analyze button”. After a few seconds or minutes, it will bring out a speed score and recommendations on how to make your site faster.

You can also implement the following to increase website speed:

• Implementing Lazy load images
• Image Size Optimization
• Hosting Migration 
• Browser Cache Configuration
• CDN Setup and Configuration
• Database optimization.
• optimize plugins
• Minification and Compression of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Deferring Unused JS/CSS
• Image Webp format conversion
• Optimize your DNS
• Enable GZIP Compression

I know, I hear you. That’s a lot of tech stuff. But implementing all these things can improve your page speed as you can see by the pics below. – If I’m in the mood, I may just cover the details of each in another blog post.

Your Web Host can Affect Site Speed

The speed of your website can also be affected by the quality of your hosting, and that can have a big impact on your business. I don’t mess around – I always go for premium hosting, and Siteground would be my provider of choice. 

Why? They offer quality hosting that keeps your website running smoothly, and their customer service is outstanding. 

Yes, premium hosting cost a little more than the budget options, but it’s worth it in the long run. 

In general, it’s worth paying a little extra for good hosting, as it can make a big difference to the performance of your site.

After all, your website is one of your most important marketing tools, you can’t afford to skimp on quality.

If you have managed to stay with me up until now, you would have discovered why WordPress website maintenance is super important.

You do need to put in the effort and time.  And if you cannot, then I highly recommend outsourcing it. As a business owner, you already have so much going on.

Benefits of Subscribing to My WordPress Website Maintenance Services

Monthly Reporting

When you subscribe to any of our WordPress maintenance packages,  you will get an in-depth monthly report about what state your website is currently in. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own. It will give you an overview of how to better optimise your site.    

Priority Support

Here at The Virtual Click, we understand that your business is important to you. This is why we offer priority support to all of our clients.

We’ll set up exclusive contact details so that you can always get in touch with us when you need an update or have any questions. And we promise to do our best to get back to you within 24 hours on business days. So you can rest assured that we are always here to help you grow your business. 

With our service, you can sleep well at night because you have, absolutely nothing to worry about.

Personal Consultations

Every business owner worries about conversion. Converting leads to clients, visitors to customers, etc. Along with this package, we provide best conversion practices for our clients on a quarterly or annual basis.

Because we are growing with you, we understand your business, and we have your best interest at heart, we are best equipped to offer you conversion recommendations that will help grow your business even further.

Giving You Peace of Mind Month after Month

Here’s the good news. My WordPress website maintenance services are hassle-free and affordable. It helps you focus on the things that are important to you. And best of all you can pay as you go.

There are no cancellation fees. We offer monthly or annual care plans so you can choose what works best for you without any questions asked, and you’ll have complete freedom to pull out. Your care plan is billed for the month or year that’s paid for.

So There You Have It!

You might have experienced one or more of these problems.

let me know in the comment below what you went through and how you tackled it or if you’re ignoring it and wishing it to go away.

Also, don’t forget to grab my Free Mini Website Audit or better still, subscribe for a Maintenance package. I promise you, it’ll be the best decision you make for your business.