If you want to run your WordPress website smoothly, you need to maintain core functionality regularly. You also need to update plugins and themes on a regular basis. And it is a very crucial task, as it ensures not only a smooth performance but also a robust security. Here, you will find 10 different ways of maintaining your WordPress website with the right maintenance tactics. Take a look at them.
Update Your Website Regularly
It might sound simple and common. But updating the website regularly is the most effective WordPress maintenance tactic. Always check for new updates for your themes and plugins. It will prevent the hackers from intruding your website. Also, try to update the core WordPress themes and plugins at least once in a month. In addition, delete all the unnecessary software to keep the database clean and optimized.
Track the Page Speed of Your Website
You must ensure super-fast page loading speed to bring more visitors to your website. More importantly, it elevates the position of your website in the Search Engine Results page (SERP). Google always ranks the fast ones in the first page. So, tracking the page speed is a major tactic for the WordPress maintenance. To do it, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. The tool can provide you with the grading for your site’s loading time. It will also offer you suggestions for enhancing the speed. You can implement them to make your website incredibly fast.
Create Backup for Your Site
Backing up your WordPress site is incredibly important. You can do it by using different plugins. You can use them to create automatic backups daily, weekly and monthly. You can try using ManageWP. It is a great plugin that can store your site back up to different cloud services, including Dropbox and Google Drive. You can also use FTP to create a local copy of your website.
Optimize Database
When you install WordPress for the very first time, the database stays completely clean and minimal. However, after using the site for a few months, a lot of redundant data are being gathered. They create a negative impact on the overall performance. They take up a lot of space and make your website incredibly slow. To fix this issue, you must optimize and clean the database time to time. You can do it pretty easily by using a free plugin, called WP Optimize.
Scan for Potential Threats
You must scan your website for potential threats at least once in a week. It will disable all the hackers from getting inside your site and steal valuable information, even currencies. In other words, it will prevent them from creating a havoc and making everything completely useless. You can try using plugins, like WordFence and All In One Security, to determine and eliminate all sorts of malicious files and codes. Other great alternatives are BulletProof Security, Sucuri Security and iThemes Security.
Fix Broken Links
Broken links are very irritating. They make your visitors frustrated and drive them away from your website. So, it will result in a bad user experience. But more importantly, it will create a negative impact on the ranking on SERP. All the search engines will consider your content as low quality. So, you will never get to the 1st page of the SERP. You can fix the issue by using Broken Link Checker. It will track all the broken links and inform about them on your dashboard. As it checks for the issues constantly, there will be absolutely no broken links on your site.
Compress and Optimize Images
Large images take up a lot of space. As a result, they create a negative impact on the site speed massively. To fix this issue, you must compress and optimize all the images. You can do it through WP Smush. It is a free tool that makes your images as small as possible. As a result, the site speed is increased. So, you have a high chance of getting on to the 1st page of the SERP.
Use Caching
Caching is a great way of maintaining your WordPress website. It saves dozens of server resources. As a result, the page load time can be decreased by more than half. You can perform caching using a free plugin, called WP Super Cache. It makes a copy of each page of your website. It eliminates the necessity of creating a new dynamic version of the page that has been requested. As a result, all the elements are being loaded at a rapid pace.
Check the Overall Functionality
You should review the overall functionality of your website time to time to ensure that everything is working perfectly. You should test to see whether your website works perfectly across different browsers and devices. The functionality of the forms should also be checked. In addition, make sure that all the links are redirecting to the right page.
Perform On-Page SEO Accurately
Performing on-page SEO accurately is vital for getting your website to a higher position in the SERP. As the criteria of SEO is changing from time to time, you should definitely check it regularly to make the necessary adjustments. There are plenty of tools for on-page SEO. The most popular one is Yoast SEO plugin. It provides you with all the suggestions, including using H2 subheadings and applying keywords in the URL, to optimize your content accurately.
Conclusion
By following all these ways, you can make your WordPress website operating at an incredible pace. In addition, you can keep the site protected from malicious stuff and make it highly secured.
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