Website Management: Why it’s Important & What’s Involved

You invest in a strong brand identity, then you commission a beautiful website. Now all that’s left is to invest in is your advertising and marketing, right?…

WRONG.

You still need to invest in your website.

Website management is one of the most overlooked areas for businesses. But it’s also incredibly important, especially when you consider that so many of our buying decisions are made online.

Why Bother Managing a Website?

Managing your website is a vital role in every business big or small. A well-managed site can be the difference between a high search engine ranking or not ranking at all, and your customers engaging with your site or leaving after the first page.

It can even be the difference between your site being live or not.

In today’s saturated online market, the ‘build it and they will come’ strategy no longer works as it did 10 years ago. In order to stay fresh and relevant your website needs to be managed; constantly updated and evaluated to keep you ahead of the competition.

If you don’t have the time, knowledge or internal resource to manage your site you have the option to hire an external website manager.

So the question is…

What Does a Website Manager Do?

Put simply… loads.

There are lots of areas that need regular attention when managing a website. Here are just a few of them…

Technical Website Maintenance

There are many reasons why a website can break. Security updates, viruses, software updates, hacks, someone clicks the wrong thing in the back end, and sometimes it seems like things break just for fun.

You can lose an image, a page or even the whole site overnight.

This means that technical website maintenance is one of THE most important roles of a website manager. They will regularly check to ensure that your site’s platform, theme, plug-ins, PHP and custom integrations are up to date. They will also check the site’s functionality and fix any issues they find.

Adding Fresh Content

Updating your website regularly not only gives your customers a reason to come back, but it can also increase your site’s search engine ranking.

A website manager not only adds the content, but they also ensure that it’s responsive to all devices, is formatted and designed correctly, is search engine optimised and that it’s promoted on/linked to relevant areas on your site.

e-Commerce

As well as adding new general content, website managers will also look after adding and removing products from your e-commerce store. They will run reports to see what products are selling well, update special offers, manage discount codes and more.

Post Readability

Adding fresh content is one thing, but adding content that ticks all of the SEO readability boxes is another. A website manager will assess all of the content on your site to ensure that it’s optimised for your target keywords and that it’s easy for your audience to digest.

Hosting & Domain Management

If your domain name or hosting expires then your site will disappear – fast. Your website manager ensures that any renewals are completed in good time to make sure your site stays live and accessible.

While we’re on the subject of hosting. Did you know that the internet is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions?

But, your website doesn’t have to be a part of the pollution when it’s on one of our green website hosting plans.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Meta descriptions, backlinks, snippet editing, title tags, keyword focusing, alt tags and more. These are all things that keep your site ranking on search engines. They are all also things that need to be updated and checked regularly to ensure the best results as SEO best practice changes all the time.

Monitor Analytics

Regular monitoring of your site’s analytics enables you to understand what content people are engaging with and what they’re not. This can help with focusing on areas of potential growth for your business. It also highlights areas of the site that may not be working as they should, or that need updating to reduce your bounce rate.