9 WordPress Maintenance Tips to Keep your Website Fast and Optimized

It is not easy to make a WordPress website perform at its best for weeks or even days at a stretch. The owner needs to regularly update a website to ensure its optimum performance. This task may seem overwhelming to the website owners due to multiple technical features of WordPress. These updates are necessary to make a search-engine friendly, navigable, fast running and well-optimized website. The owners need to be proactive and follow nine simple steps to ensure the websites’ glitch-free and smooth performance.

Tip#1: Regular Website Updating

It is essential to routinely update the WordPress files and plugins to guard the website’s security. It may seem like a tedious task to the website owners; although, it is essential for the websites’ flawless performance. The analysis of ‘Sucuri’s Q1 2016’ identified 56% of the hacked WordPress websites to have outdated software programs. The WordPress is to fix its vulnerabilities immediately after recognition; though, these fixes are available through updated versions. Hence, the users need to regularly update their websites to receive these fixes.

The Sucuri’s analysis also identified outdated plugins to be responsible for hacking in WordPress websites. It recognized three outdated plugins to be accountable for 25% of the hacking. The plugins undergo routine updating and the users may avoid the security risks through routine updating.

Tip#2: Spam Comments Management

The users may find some marketers to frequently comment on their websites or blogs to increase inbound links. The overflow of spam-comments may become a nuisance. Hence, the users need to follow effective steps for spam-management through WordPress spam killer plugins. The Spam Sheild, Akismet and Zero Spam are three popular plugins for spam-management. These plugins also allow the users to block the offenders. It is also possible to manage the spam comments and prevent important message from getting lost through ‘Disqus’.

Tip#3: Check Broken Links

The broken external/internal links not only provide poor-quality user experience; it also impacts the SEO. The broken links make it harder for the viewers to access a website. It is also difficult for search-engine robots to crawl a website due to the presence of broken links. Hence, it is essential for the WordPress users to have ‘Broken Link Checker’. This utilitarian tool can find out all the internal and external broken links attached to the WordPress sites. The users can edit or remove the identified links and ensure optimum performance of the websites.

Tip#4: Speed Optimization

The ‘page speed’ is an essential factor to secure higher ranking on Google. It is easier to browse the fast-loading websites. Hence, the Internet surfers prefer these websites to others. It improves the average time necessary for user interaction and it optimizes the Page View. Hence, it is essential to maintain an optimized loading speed for WordPress websites. It is a continuous process because one plugin can slow down the website’s speed. The site-owners may use ‘website speed test checkers’, such as GT Metrix and Pingdoom, to routinely check the speed. They need to use the checker before and after updating the plugins.

Tip#5: Maintenance Service

The WordPress has its own ‘Maintenance Services’ to liberate the users from the burden of some tedious tasks. We are the most beneficial WordPress maintenance service provider. We offers many additional maintenance features in comparison to other WordPress hosts. We provides weekly updates on WordPress features, removes malware, prevents hacking, monitors performance/up-time, keeps regular backups and performs many other essential tasks.

Tip#6: Keeping Backups for Different Time Periods

It is not enough to run regular backups to ensure the security of data. WordPress users also need to check the functionality of the backup process and the availability of the backups. The users also need to keep backups for different time periods with three different backups. They need to store their data in two physical locations and in cloud for maximum security.

Tip#7: Database Optimization

The database of WordPress users starts picking up different types of junks from various sources. These junks come from transients, posts revisions, spam comments, table overhead and many other sources. The accumulated junk reduces the website’s speed. Hence, it is essential to clean the junk to keep the database optimized. WordPress users can clean this accumulated junk using a WP-Sweep plugin. This plugin is easy to install and it does not require any configuration. The WordPress users need to clean the categories individually after activating the plugin in order not to remove the important information.

Tip#8: Finding Missing Pages & Using 301-Redirect

The broken links make it impossible for the visitors to find the relevant pages and they land on a ‘404 Page’. It is possible for the users to identify and control the broken links on their own sites. However, it is impossible to control the broken links on other sites. It is essential to monitor the ‘404 page’ traffic due to this reason. This monitoring may help the users find missing pages and redirect the visitors to actual pages with the help of 301-redirect. The Redirection plugin is the simplest way to monitor the 404 pages linked to a website.

Tip#9: Regular Form Testing

It is extremely important to properly test the forms to adequately run an online business. The businesses may notice a sudden drop in the number of inquiries due to the alteration of form plugins. This may happen due to a caching issue after the installation of new ‘form’ plugin. The WordPress users may avoid this problem through the regular testing of the forms. They need to use an incognito tab to log into the website during this test.

These pointers iterate the importance of regular maintenance for WordPress users. It is possible to automate some of these tasks, such as backup maintenance and security checks. The users feel less encumbered due to this facility and they can properly focus on their tasks.