Webstix is proud to announce the launch of the new Badger Utility website:

The mission at Badger Utility is to deliver value to their customers through their parts, sales and service team. They offer high quality products and superior customer service at any one of their 6 locations in Wisconsin.

New Website

The new website is modern and beautifully designed with a rotating slide show at the top, trailer selector, locations map and more. The navigation works well and sticks at the top of the page as the website visitor scrolls down the page - making it easy to get around the website.

The Webstix Website Design Process

The design was done from scratch using our wire frame process, which works like this...

First, we meet with our client and figure out which features they would like on the website along with what's most important. We then meet internally and come up with 1-3 design options which we call a wire frame.

A wire frame is the design without the design. It's in gray scale and shows the layout, what will be included and where it will go. It takes design out of the equation so that the focus is just on layout.

Here's the initial wire frame we did for Badger Utility:

Next, we get feedback, do consulting (give our advice) and come back with a more detailed wire frame image:

One this has been done for the home page, we do the same steps with the inside page template. If there are any special templates like for a shopping cart or anything else, they are also worked on and approved.

Why Go Through This?

We do this process because it's relatively easy to move things around in the wire frame stage. It's much like doing blueprints for a house you're going to build. It's easier to move things around on paper than once you have a foundation poured and walls up.

Time for Design!

After that, we work on design - images, colors and all that good stuff. We typically come up with one design. We then get feedback on it and do tweaks and adjustments until a final design is reached and approved:

We then do the same thing for the inside page design and any other templates that are required.

What Next?

While the design gets coded into HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and then later coded to a CMS or shopping cart software platform), we ask for final website content, images, product spreadsheets and anything we need. Once that has been received, we add it to the staging website, which is a functioning version of the website on a staging server.

The website is worked on until it's ready to launch. If requested, we can give our clients access to the CMS or shopping cart so that they can make changes before the website launches. We'll do any training now (or post-launch) so that our clients know how their website works and how to make changes.

We do have resources like a Knowledge Base, which has good articles about common questions that our clients may have.

We do testing on major web browsers and on mobile devices to make sure the website works as it should.

If you're having trouble with getting your text written and put together or just want it polished up, we offer copywriting services which can also include marketing consulting and research. Hiring Webstix to do copywriting helps get the copy written on time and in a consistent voice that matches your company and audience. It really can help make the whole process go smooth, too.

Conclusion

That's basically our process. It works well and our client enjoy it. We give consulting as we go. If things change during the process, we can give a quote for additional work if it's needed. At that point, our clients can decide if they want that new feature or not. If approved, we'll get it included and get it ready for launch. The whole time, we're communicating with our clients with our online project management software, which sends them notifications in their email and gives them links where to find new designs or we'll ask them for files or content. In this system, we have a timeline thread so that you know when we need certain things and when the website will be launched.

If you are interested in getting a professionally designed website from Webstix, then contact us to find out more. We'll happily answer your questions and give you advice so that your website project is a success!

-Tony

• Does something on your website need to be updated or changed?
• Is it some text, an image, an event or something more complex?
• Is your current Webmaster just taking too long to do it?

Don't get mad! Contact Webstix today!

Find out about simple and easy website design maintenance services. We have a team of developers (designers, programmers, etc.) waiting for your website maintenance requests and they can turn the work around quickly.

Finally! You can get these things off of your list!

Website Maintenance Definition

Sometimes people ask what the definition of "website maintenance" really is. Here's how we would define it:

Perfoming all the tasks necessary to keep a website up to date and in good, working order so that it works and shows up correctly with the latest web browsers and mobile devices.

For example:

• Changing website content (text, images, PDF files, calendar events, etc.)
• Tweaking / optimizing pages so that they rank higher with search engines
• Redesigning a header / website banner
• Testing that the website works well with the latest web browsers / mobile devices
• Upgrading website software
• Checking website error logs
• Reporting website rankings and statistics
• Troubleshooting why pages don't work or why certain things don't line up
• Testing forms
• Cleaning up old files
• Formatting and sending a monthly e-newsletter
• and so on...

Who is Web Maintenance For?

Small to medium sized companies who do not have staff to do maintenance tasks on their website are perfect candidates for this service. Working on their website is not a part of daily operations as they need to tend to running their business. Taking the time to learn how to do website design and maintenance properly is not a good investment in time as they need their staff to work on other things. They can instead hand the work off to a team of experts with a wide range of knowledge.

Larger sized businesses may also benefit from hiring out website maintenance because then the work doesn't sit at the bottom of the IT Department's to-do list. The work is done professionally (up to standards) and quickly so that the website and business benefit.

It's also for organizations and non-profits that just need a little help with their website.

Important Information About Website Maintenance

With web maintenance work, you want to make sure a number of things are done. These are things that we always do but you should ask these things of whomever does the work for you to make sure it's done right. After all, your website is very important and vital to your business.

1. Get a quote for the work before the work begins. Make sure the quote explains exactly what will be done. If the person doing the work isn't clear about what you want, they should ask you questions to make sure.
2. Make sure files and databases / information is all backed up so that it can be restored and put back the way it was if needed.
3. If any design work is being done, make sure a mock-up is included so that you can see how it will look. The mock-up acts as a blueprint and saves you money since it's easier to move things around in the mock-up stage.
4. Make sure the work is tested in the latest web browsers and mobile devices.
5. Get a report of what work was done when it's completed. The report should confirm how much you are being charged and it should match the quote you were given.

Website Maintenance Turnaround Time

Once a quote is approved, the work takes 24-48 hours at the most. From time to time, we might run into unexpected issues and, if that's the case, we will notify you as early as possible.

Ready to Get Started?

Find out more about pricing, discounts and where to submit a quote:

Get Started With Website Maintenance >>

-Tony

We've launched another Webstix X-Press website today - one for Cornerstone Designs of Madison:

Cornerstone Designs builds top quality indoor and outdoor living areas throughout southern Wisconsin. They pride themselves in the quality workmanship that goes into every project and they make client satisfaction their top priority. They can do home building, construction, custom homes, outdoor living spaces, basement finishes, decks, 3-season rooms, retaining walls, ponds and more.

They chose a Webstix X-Press website package that got them a top notch website at an affordable price. If you have your website's content done and just want to give your old website a new look, then going with X-Press is the perfect choice!

They started with this design (171036):

and then we changed the background and added their logo and content. Simple!

-Tony

When you own a website - be it personal website or business website, there are a number of things you must do in order to maintain it. Here is a list of 10 of those items with an explanation of what needs to be done to check each item off of your list:

1. Domain Name - Make sure the domain name is registered. Some people don't even know when their domain name is going to expire and then their website goes down without them even knowing. Also, check to make sure that the contact information is correct - especially for the Administrative Contact. This is who will receive emails regarding the domain name expiring. What's best is to have this set up as the "info@" (for example, info@yourdomain.com) email account. This email account should be a group account so that more than one person receives email from it.
2. Website Software - If your website is using a Content Management System (CMS for short) or any kind of scripts (PHP, Perl, DotNet/ASP, etc.), then you need to make sure that software stays up to date. Check for updates from the software publisher. Also, your website host should be updating the core server software. For example, they should be applying patches and upgrades for things like the web service, FTP service and database running on the server. If you run your own web server, then you should be applying and testing these updates yourself.
3. Web Statistics - Commonly known as "web stats," this is the program or service responsible for reporting who is visiting your website, how they got there and where they come from. You want to keep up to date on your website traffic so that you can improve your website and have it rank better.
4. Content - Of course, your website's content needs to be up to date. This includes copy/text and pictures.
5. Testing - If you website has any kind of form, newsletter sign-up or other kinds of functions, then those should be tested regularly to make sure they're working fine and going to whomever they should be going to (the emails from your Contact Us form, for example).
6. Link Checking - If your website has links going to other websites, you should make sure those links work fine so that your website continues to be a solid resource that search engines like Google will rate as a result they want to provide.
7. Backups - Check to see if backups of your website and database are being done. Also check that the backups work and can be restored without problems.
8. Design - Make sure that your website still looks fine in all of the latest versions of major website browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. These browsers are updated often and if you website doesn't adapt, then it might not show up looking nice (or show up at all) on certain browsers and you could be losing business and destroying your branding. Also make sure your website looks good on mobile devices!
9. Website Errors - Check all error log files and messages at Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools to make sure there are not major errors.
10. Check Load Time - Do some testing to make sure your website loads quickly. Google and other search engines tend to favor websites that load quickly.

Of course, there's more that can be done but these 10 items are the basics.

Why Do Website Maintenance?

If what I've listed above sounds boring and like something you think can just be skipped, you should think again!

There is a lot of competition out there now. More and more businesses are online and are thus trying to get their website to rank high. The World Wide Web is the new Yellow Pages. The difference is that with the Yellow Pages, there was no maintenance needed... your ad was printed on paper and put into a book and that was it. With websites, the paper changes... web browsers update, server software updates and so forth. If you're not watching to make sure your website still looks good, then it might not be. You could then be ranked lower and not receive much traffic at all. Then, the people coming to see your website might not see it correctly.

Who Should Do Website Maintenance?

It should be done by someone who really knows what they're doing. They should be up to date on the latest tools and techniques. They should know how to fix things quickly and be careful with what they do.

If you're the business owner, this person probably isn't you.
You probably don't have time to learn website design or keep up on the latest browsers and coding (HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.).

This person might not even be on your staff.
Your staff might already be over burdened and they might never make it a point to consistently check these 10 things and do it right.

For the same price as paying one person on your staff to do this work (remember, it might take them longer than if an expert did it), you could pay a team of experts to handle all of your website maintenance needs. It's really a no brainer and a smart move.

Find out more about Webstix Website Maintenance and the team of experts we have standing by - right now!

-Tony

On Wednesday afternoon and evening, the Google Penguin 2.0 hit (which I mentioned the other day). I noticed it yesterday morning when I was checking a few rankings. Here's a little news on it with my commentary.

Google Penguin 2.0 Update is Live (searchenginewatch.com)

Webmasters have been watching for Penguin 2.0 to hit the Google search results since Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts first announced that there would be the next generation of Penguin in March. Cutts officially announced that Penguin 2.0 is rolling out late Wednesday afternoon on "This Week in Google".

"It's gonna have a pretty big impact on web spam," Cutts said on the show. "It's a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentinally only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."

...

He detailed that the new Penguin was specifically going to target black hat spam, but would be a significantly larger impact on spam than the original Penguin and subsequent Penguin updates have had.

Google's initial Penguin update originally rolled out in April 2012, and was followed by two data refreshes of the algorithm last year – in May and October.

And here it is, right from the horse's mouth:

Penguin 2.0 rolled out today (mattcutts.com)

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.

Added: If there are spam sites that you’d like to report after Penguin, we made a special spam report form at http://bit.ly/penguinspamreport . Tell us about spam sites you see and we’ll check it out.

Here's Matt on YouTube explaining the update:

He answers someone's question about what to do to prepare for this update and he says that they should be creating good content that people want to share and bookmark. Right there is exactly what Google wants. Pretty simple.

"Can I Copy Text From Other Websites?"

People ask me if they can copy text from other websites to use on their website. I think they ask because they don't want to sit down and write content. They're lazy or maybe just aren't good writers.

First... no, you should never copy text from other websites - you get no benefit and might actually be pushed down in rankings. You can, however, use their copy (text) as a guide and rewrite it in your own words - that's perfectly fine. Do that if it helps you.

Second, I don't think too many people are born good writers but I think there are a lot of good writers out there. It's like anything, at first it's tough but as you do it, it gets easier and easier. You have to work it and pretty soon, it's effortless and maybe even a little fun. There's a sense of accomplishment you get after writing a really good article.

If Your Websites Went Down in Rankings - What Do You Do?

If you were hit hard by the Google update, there are some thing you can do. Again, as mentioned... get writing. Get some awesome content on your website. Take 2 hours to writer an article if you have to - yes, it should be that good. If doing that sounds worse than pulling teeth, then hire a writer - they're out there. Here's more advice:

Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO (searchenginewatch.com)

Is SEO Enough?

As small business owners move through the here we go again feelings to actually decide what to do in response to Penguin 2013, sorting out the truth is paramount. Google is clearly beating the familiar drum with the same core messages:

1. Build a great website.
2. Make awesome content with high end-user value.
3. Visitors will magically appear.

But the reality is that visitors don’t magically come, at least on any reasonable scale, without organized promotional activities. Many excellent websites have died a slow death due to lack of promotion. And this is where the contradictions emerge in SEO, which has demonstrated extremely high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

...

Content marketing: In my opinion, content marketing is the new link building. Earn recognition, social spread, and backlinks by giving away valuable information for free. Excellent content has high audience value and points readers to other resources via cocitation. Video is an excellent form of content marketing that is still under-utilized by small businesses. And newsjacking is an emerging form of content marketing that specifically targets hot news topics for viral spread.

I always say that content is the net you use to catch more fish. The more content you have, the bigger your net is and the more fish (traffic) you will catch. It makes total sense.

Look what I'm doing here in this article... I'm curating content. I've taken content from other websites, linked to it and then added more text to it to give it more value. Gee, this kind of reminds me of writing papers in college... you cite sources and come up with a work of your own. I guess college did pay off!

Conclusion

You might have noticed some changes with Google's results or maybe you're not even checking your rankings and all of this is new to you. Your website's rank matters to your business' success. It's time to start caring about it and doing something about it. We're here to help - you can see from this article and other articles here that we know what's going on with website design and SEO. Contact us and find out how we can help your website rank better with a solid content-based strategy that search engines like Google love. Write a good article once and it works for you 24 hours a day.

-Tony

Here in Wisconsin, we put up with a lot of not so desireable weather. That makes us really appreciate days like today. It's super nice out and there are finally leaves back on the trees. The flowering trees are in bloom, too - I love that.

So what does this have to do with your website?

Everything!

Go outside, right now (if it's nice where you are) and take a picture of your building. Now is the time to do it - not in the fall, not in winter but now - mid-spring.

Your "About Us" or "Contact Us" page on your website needs a picture of your building for a few reasons. First, to show that you are an established business with a location - that you're a "brick and mortar" business. Second, so that people can find your location.

If you need help updating your website, let us know - but take that picture!

-Tony

Today I'm reminded of a post from a little while ago:

How You Design Matters
August 24, 2012 Written by Tony Herman

We tend to stay away from all the "latest and greatest" website gimmicks that are out there - meaning, the "cool factor" stuff. We do this because how we look (how Webstix looks) as the website designer is not at all a priority. What matters is how the websites we make work and how well they produce results for our clients.

There's a trap that most website designers fall into. They think that if they create something that's really "cool" for their client, then their client will be really happy with them. Ok, sure - that might work some of the time. The problem is that the "cool factor" wears off - especially when the website isn't paying for itself or making a profit. That's not "cool" at all. They may also find that some of these fancy features don't work in some web browsers or on mobile devices. How is that supposed to be a good thing?

We are sometimes asked to design websites that have this cool thing or that cool thing. This causes us to question what the real goal is. Do they want to be "cool" or do they want to have a website that ranks well and generates sales? In other words, do they value their job?

Problems with "Cool" Websites

Yeah, everyone does want a cool website - we kind of get that. Website can be too cool though.

You see, the more cool stuff you put into it, the more complex it is. The more complex it is, the more there is to break. More things can go wrong. Most cool things are written in a language called JavaScript. It can do some pretty neat stuff, no doubt. It runs on the web browser though. There are several main web browsers out there and they're always coming up with new versions and updates, so there's a very high risk of things not working when you have a lot of complex stuff going on. The technology is getting better with standard libraries/code bases but the chance/the risk still remains high. One bit of code could easily clash with other code. It can be a programming nightmare.

Then bring a mobile website into the equation. Those are different browsers, too. They work differently.

I saw a design recently that a client of ours (who has some graphic design experience) came up with. They wanted a website coded that had hidden navigation. They were making the website visitor mouse over an item in the navigation in order to see what it is - yes, hiding the website's navigation. That's so backwards and so 10 years ago. I couldn't believe they wanted that and we tried to talk them out of it. We explained why it's a bad idea but they were dead set on making their website be cool. I didn't know that making website visitors frustrated was a cool thing to do.

There's also the high possibility that the more "cool" your website gets, the more you're blocking Google from seeing all the great content you have. That'll bring your website rankings down because Google or other search engines might not see it or they might not know how to bookmark pages. You can seriously lose your good rankings by being too cool. Your rankings and traffic could totally tank!

Keep it Simple, Dumb Dumb!

The trend now is simplicity. It's actually called Responsive Design. You've probably seen this already but what it does is actually really amazing (and cool) if you think about it.

The way it works is, the same website template (theme, design, etc.) works on any device. You can even see this work if you change the size of your web browser window and shrink it. The design moves around to accommodate the size of the window. What you get is a design that's more minimalistic but still nice to look at (professional).

Conclusion

In my opinion, doing cool things like Flash animation and all that jazz went out the window 10 years ago. That was the 1990s and early 2000s. It's 2013 now, man! Don't go backwards. Don't wear your 90s clothes now. Update! Simple is better and it makes you more money!

-Tony

When you're searching for website management services, you could be searching for a number of things. It could be a content management system (CMS) or cloud services or even an enterprise information system. Most likely, you are looking for a company to help you manage your website, which means tasks like:

• Updating website content
• Updating website software (patches and upgrades)
• Doing website maintenance
• Adding new users
• Adding new events
• Archiving old content
• Uploading files
• Changing the website navigation
• Fixing website errors and broken links
• Checking for malware and viruses on a website
• Making the website work on mobile devices (a mobile version of your website)
• Search Engine Optimization research and page tweaking
• Promote the website to search engines
• Help with website hosting, domain names and DNS servers
• Posting new content (text and images)
• Fixing old content
• and so forth...

Some people think that once a website is up and running, the project is done and that's all you have to do. They think that from there, the website just runs itself and there's nothing to do. That's very wrong. There's probably more to do once a good website is launched. If you don't do anything, then your website won't do anything and you've just wasted all the money and time you just put into your website.

Serious Businesses Work Their Websites

Companies that want their website to work for them put work into their websites - not just at launch but continually going forward. If you're not promoting your website, adding new content to it, checking it in new versions of browsers that come out or keep up on website software updates (to mention just a few things), then your website will eventually stop working for you. Sure, it might work fine for a little while but soon enough, it's going to need some help.

We live in an online and information-based world now. Your website is people's first impression of your company. There are more mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, etc.) now than ever before. Your prospective customers can look up information about your company from anywhere. People can search for anything anywhere - and you want to show up on that search, right?

Showing up at the top of search engines takes many things working together. Your website must be tuned and optimized to show up well. It needs to show up looking nice on mobile devices, it needs to have landing pages for specific searches and you, of course, need to be actively promoting your website so that you show up before your competition does.

If all of that doesn't sound like work to you, then great - you have the know how and staff to have success on the web.

If all of that sounds like something you don't have time to do or time to learn or have the staff to work on, then you need website management services.

How Do Website Management Services Work?

We've worked out a system to make it very simple for you to purchase and use only what you need. The work gets done quickly and you're quoted on how much time something will take before the work starts.

Yeah, simple... and smart.

Here at Webstix, we're often complimented on how well our system works and how good our people are. If you put in a website maintenance request, you won't get 100 questions back wondering what to do. If we understand what you want done, we'll go ahead and quote it or, per your request, just get the work done pronto! We know you don't have time to waste explaining things in great detail or you could just do the work yourself probably. If we do have questions, we'll ask them, of course - we don't want to do it wrong. If we happen to do it wrong, we'll fix it.

Here's the process:

• You send in your request
• We quote the work
• You approve the quote
• We do the work and report back to you within 24-28 hours (or sooner)

You can even bypass the quote if you want and authorize a certain amount of blocks (a block is a half hour of time - explained below). Typically if we've been working with you and you have blocks in your account and it's less then 2 blocks, then we'll just go ahead and do the work so that it's done quickly.

How Much Does Web Management Cost?

We break up our time into half hour blocks. We call them "Maintenance Blocks." You can use that time for whatever you need done. If it's a quick question and you're already a client, we might not even charge you anything for that.

The more Maintenance Blocks you pre-purchase, the better pricing you get - here's a quick breakdown:

• If you buy 1-5 blocks (1/2 hour to 2.5 hours), there's no discount - you're paying our normal hourly rate of $115/hr.
• If you buy a 6-pack of blocks, then you save 15%.
• If you buy a 12-pack of blocks, then you save 25%.
• If you buy a 24-pack of blocks, then you save 30%.
• If you buy a 48-pack of blocks, then you save 35%.

Find out more about our Maintenance Blocks Pricing here.

We Want Your Satisfaction!

We know that managing a website isn't something most business owners know how to do or do well. The last thing you want to do is try to do it yourself and then months later find out that people using a certain web browser can't view your website because of something that was done with a website update. As in life, there are some things you just leave up to the experts.

If something we do is not done right, we'll fix it and make it right. Enough said.

We want your business for years to come. We want you to be so happy about what we've done for you that you'll tell others. That's our standard.

Why pay just one person/one employee a semi-outrageous salary to do work on your website when you can hire an entire time for a fraction of that cost?

We're offering something that makes sense, is smart, is simple and something that just works. You need the work done and we're here to help!

-Tony

Happy Monday Morning, Everyone!

There's usually one big update a year. Google does a big change to their algorithm where they clean out certain types of websites that were trying to gain the system. Google actually does 500 or more a year (over 1 per day) but there is usually one big update per year and it's usually in the spring. The next big update, dubbed "Penguin 2.0" (or "Penguin 4.0" - the search community looks at it differently) is expected to hit in the next few weeks:

Google’s Matt Cutts: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away (searchengineland.com)

In March, Google’s chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update — keep waiting. It’s still a few weeks off. Along the way, there’s some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin 2 or Penguin 4. It’ll be Penguin 4, in how we reckon things. Let’s dive in.

There was actually a smaller update last week that happened but it wasn't "the big one" as some people were thinking. That means this next one is even bigger.

Google's Major Penguin Update Coming In Weeks. It Will Be Big! (seroundtable.com)

This has sent shockwaves through the webmaster and SEO industry over the weekend. We know the next generation Penguin update is a major revision to the existing one. Matt said the previous ones were minor updates. To take you back, we had an update on May 24, 2012 and October 5, 2012. Matt said on Twitter that those were more minor, he would have named them 1.1 and 1.2 and that Google is naming this new update version 2.0.

We are calling it the 4th update to Penguin, but yea, this is expected to be huge. We past the anniversary of the Penguin update and many SEOs and webmasters have yet to recover.

Why Does Google Do This?

Google does these updates so that they give out better results when people do a search. That's their #1 goal. I saw a lot of commercials over the weekend about the "Bing Challenge" where you do a search and decide which results you like better. Bing is coming on strong and Google needs to keep up. Also, there's the new Facebook search and that's where everyone is (on Facebook). Google needs to adapt to keep up.

Also what happens is the Internet Marketing/SEO community figures out what works with Google and what doesn't. There's a lot of money to be made with the top search results. Google tries to get the results that shouldn't be at the top off the top by looking for patterns in what these websites do to try to reach the top (black hat/gray hat techniques).

What's Going to Happen?

It's kind of fun to watch Google algorithm changes go through and see everyone's reaction. Yes, many people are devastated. Others are happy, though. We just have to wait and see.

What we do know is that Google wants:

• Very good, original content. Thank "bookmark worthy" content.
• Social signals - this means mentions of your website showing up in places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social bookmarking websites.
• Genuine interest in the topic your website covers.
• Links to your website. I put this lower on the list because this is getting more and more difficult to manufacture. They want authentic links.
• They want to see this good content published regularly.

We'll wait and see what happens with this one but we just wanted to get the word out that it's coming. The best thing you can plan to do is write some awesome content for your website and keep doing that over and over. If you don't, your competition will.

-Tony

Just having a website up and running isn't really enough. You have to do maintenance to make sure it keeps running fine and to make sure that all the time and effort you put into creating your website doesn't go to waste. Once it's up, maintaining it isn't as much work but it has to be done. It's like maintaining a building or your home - if work isn't done to keep it up, it's going to eventually fall apart.

You might wonder why a website would eventually fall apart if left alone. Well, the online world is evolving/changing all the time. You may put your website up on a server and then the core software on the server changes (due to keeping up with security patches to counter attack hacks and to add new features or improve efficiency) and then find your website not running well or not even showing up right. Besides the server, web browsers update as well. Standards change. For example, websites that looked good in Internet Explorer 7 don't work well with Internet Explorer 10 and so on.

A Poor User Experience

Having information that's not up to date on your website or having issues with the website/web page not looking right will not provide your customers with a good experience when they stop by your website. Your website is very often the first impression people get about your company or organization, so it's vital that it always looks its best.

You should always be updating your website and keeping it looking fresh and new. Think about the websites you visit most often. Take Facebook for example. People go there a lot because the information there is always new. No, your company website doesn't have to be Facebook but it should have new content on it regularly for the same reason.

What Content Should You Add to Your Website?

Here are some ideas to help you decide what content to put on your website - or what you might call website maintenance activities:

• Company news - Did you get a mention in the paper or trade magazine? Have you been at a trade show? Do you have new employees? Constructing a new office? Look around, there's probably some news to post on your website.
• Industry news - What's going on in your industry? Post at least one news item per month about your industry. If you don't have any news like this to publish, maybe you're not looking hard enough (that's right, I went there).
• Create a download - Write an e-book (PDF) or come up with a spreadsheet that does something cool.
• Update your products or services - This one's important. Make sure all the information on your website is up to date - especially the things you make money on. If a product is being discontinued, you should mention it.
• Employee additions - If you hire new employees, that's news. Of course, don't publish news about firing employees.
• Giveaway or content - Get some buzz going by giving away something. It can be something you buy or else do a trade with one of your vendors or customers and use that item or service in the contest.

Ask your staff for ideas - they will often have a few or can help you brainstorm ideas for content.

Check for Broken Links

A part of making sure that your website's content is up to date is making sure there are no broken links when your website links to other websites or between pages on your website (internal links). All outgoing links should be tested a few times a year. If search engines see a website that's full of broken links (either internal links or links to other websites), they are not going to want to give your website as a top result. Your website will fall in the rankings and not be seen as an authority or valuable resource if there are a lot of broken links. You ideally want no broken links at all.

We can help check your website every month for broken links if you like.

Website Statistics Analysis / Analytics

Is your website getting traffic? How much? Do you know? You're paying for it - you should know. Enough said.

Reputation Management

If you don't have a Google Alert set up for your company name, you won't find out about issues with your company's or organization's reputation. Your company could be getting bad press and you wouldn't even know about it until it's too late. You have to stay on top of this to protect your assets.

Technical Website Maintenance

Besides updating content and images, there's the technical side of your website that you should be maintaining or getting some help with. Don't trust that your website host is doing everything for you. Your website could go down or get deleted and that's the wrong time to find out that backups were never done.

Website Backups

Your website host should at least be doing a full backup once a week with incremental nightly backups. Are they? Ask them. Have them do a test restore of a backup from time to time (monthly) to make sure that backups are working.

Website Monitoring

Do you know when your website (web server) is not running? It's a good thing to know because you'll find out how reliable your hosting is. You can sign up for a website monitoring service or else ask your host to provide you with monthly reports.

Check Your Domain Name Expiration

From time to time, we hear about or see company websites not be available simply because the domain name expired. Make sure the contact information attached to your domain name is up to date so that you are notified by your registrar before this happens. You might be in the situation where the person that bought the domain name no longer works for your company. Maybe they used their email address which isn't receiving emails anymore. If your domain registrar sends email to that account with a notice that your domain name is expiring, you won't know.

The best practice in this case is to have the domain name registration's Administrative Contact (the main contact) be set to something like info@yourdomain.com - which is the "info" or main account for your domain name. Of course, you have to make sure that yourself (if you're the owner) and at least 1-2 other people get any email that comes into that account. Test that account and make sure it works.

Also, check what that expiration date is by doing a whois look up. Set a reminder in a calendar to renew your domain name. Use this as a fail safe in case somehow you don't get those email notices.

Keep Up With Software Patches and Updates

This one's super important. Make sure that any software/scripts running on your website are up to date with the latest patches. This helps minimize security compromises (a nice way of saying "hacks"). If this does happen to your website, then find out how to clean up hacks.

Test Your Website's Download Speed

Do you know if your website loads quickly or slowly? Find out! Use the Google PageSpeed checker. If you need help fixing things technically, then let us help you.

Getting these things fixed is very important. Your website's speed does affect how you rank. Think about it... if you are Google, you want to give people the best results, right? Well, if two pages are equal but one loads twice as fast, you're going to give that as a better result, right?

Check for Errors

Checking for errors is yet another factor that goes unnoticed. A website generating a lot of errors on the server is going to load more slowly. Your load time (speed) is definitely affected. When software doesn't work right, it's going to be slow and it may be causing errors that you're not aware of. Your server error_log files need to be checked once a month.

You should also have accounts set up with Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. If you want to rank well with these leading websites, you have to find out how they are viewing your website. If there are errors or reasons why they would want to delist your website, they are most likely going to use these areas to send you messages to let you know. These tools should be checked monthly as well if not more often than that. You don't want to find out six months down the road that Google or Bing had delisted your websites.

Form Testing

Does your website have a "Contact Us" form or payment form or other kind of form? It's important to test them and make sure they work or you could be losing leads or sales. You'd hate to find out months later that a form hasn't been working. Test them every few weeks for sure.

SSL Certificates

Make sure your website's SSL certificate (security for shopping carts or for sending sensitive information) is valid and up to date. Make sure pages that are supposed be secure are fully secure (the broken lock symbol should not be there). We can help test for this as it should be done often.

SEO Maintenance

There's even such a thing as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) maintenance or SEO maintenance plan. If you're serious about making sure your website ranks high or if you need it to, then there are certain SEO maintenance tasks that should be done every month.

SEO maintenance is mostly about information and data. Here is a list of things you should know every month:

• How much traffic did the website get?
• Where did the traffic come from?
• What keywords were used?
• What are your rankings for your top keywords?
• What new keywords can you capitalize on?

Knowing this data will help you determine what to do in order to rank higher or maintain your current rankings. With this data now in hand, you can do the following:

• Tweak current pages to rank better with good keywords.
• Decide what content should be written and posted.
• What content should be improved - or even what content should be removed.
• Know how many links you'll need to get to maintain your rankings.

We can also include information about what changes have been made at search engines (they constantly change how they rank websites) and give you advice about other things you can do to help boost your rankings.

Beyond telling you what to do, we can also do the work. We can tweak pages, get you links (the right way) and even have you work with a copywriter to post fresh, new content on your website.

Need Help?

Does this list look maybe slightly overwhelming yet? This list isn't meant to scare you... well, maybe a little. It's meant to make you aware of all that going into properly maintaining a website. It's work. If you first thought that you could launch a website and be done with it, we think you're wrong.

The bottom line is, your website is a tool. With any tool, you have to maintain it if you want it to work as well as it can. Without proper maintenance of your website, it's simply going to fall apart - that much is clear.

We're here to help! Webstix is fully staffed with a team of experts that can help you with maintaining your company website. We have a simple pricing plan that lets you keep time in the bank (your website maintenance account), essentially. This means that you're only paying for what you use. Our team performs backups of work before they start working and they test your work. We're great at sending you a report when the work is done and you get updates if you work is taking some time. We always send you a quote and wait for your approval (or you can pre-approve work if you want).

If you'd like to get on a website maintenance schedule where we do the monthly tasks for you, we can certainly send you a quote and set you up so that you don't have to worry about these things. We can do all or some of the things mentioned above to help you make sure you get all the return you can on your investment (your website).

Contact Webstix today to learn more!

-Tony

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