Professional Website Maintenance Services in Cleveland
On the Southern shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland is home to several globally recognized companies, but many neighborhoods in the area still maintain a tight-knit community atmosphere, making it a prime location for small businesses to thrive.
When done effectively, website maintenance is a powerful tool. An up-to-date website keeps your brand visible, reliable, and engaging. A user-friendly site can build trust in a competitive market, so optimizing your online presence can be the key to driving new business and long-term success.
There are many options available for website maintenance providers and deciding on who to partner with isn’t always easy. From local partners to larger nationwide options, and even offshore service providers, there is a lot to compare. Businesses that outsource their website maintenance want a combination of ample resources with personalized attention, but the cost is always going to be a factor, too. Choosing a local, US-based provider for your website maintenance brings distinct advantages. At Neon Goldfish, we understand the local culture and customer preferences—insights that other providers may not offer. Cleveland’s unique business landscape requires tailored strategies, and by partnering with us, you’ll get a custom-made plan that aligns with your business goals.
The Fall-Out of Ignoring Website Maintenance
Your website is more than just a digital address—it’s the centerpiece of your marketing strategy. As your business grows and changes, your website must evolve with it. When potential customers are met with outdated content, broken links, or slow load times, it can turn them away fast. You can’t afford to lose customers in a competitive market because of website errors.
There are a lot of components to keeping a website up and running seamlessly. You know a downed website can cost you, but the problem is rarely isolated to one incident. More likely, the lack of attention to updates and security patches has grown into a bigger issue. If you wait to address your website until the problems are significant, repairs can be more time-consuming than if you were maintaining your website all along.
There are several benefits of the website maintenance services offered by Neon Goldfish. We can improve your performance, maximize your SEO, enhance your web security, and provide reliable backups to protect your website and online presence. You will have far fewer website emergencies requiring immediate attention when security updates, content, updates, and routine maintenance tasks are regularly updated and monitored.
Maintenance tasks are necessary on every web hosting platform. All platforms are consistently updated to fix bugs and address new security concerns and vulnerabilities, and one of the primary benefits of a website maintenance partner is that your site will always be protected and up to date. In addition, we understand the best SEO practices for your business and provide relevant and updated information and articles to make sure your customers are getting the experience you want them to have when they visit your site.
Services to Look for in Website Maintenance
Many businesses rely on a website service to build their website and get it up and running. Once it’s built, you have a source to rely on when that website runs into a problem. Other than that, you may not think about website maintenance.
Comprehensive, ongoing website maintenance provides real value for your business, but it needs to do more than just make sure your website is active and running. If you want your website to generate leads, you want it to operate at peak performance. A well-maintained website reaches the right clients, brings in new business, shows up on search engines, and remains relevant in your industry. Since you have a business to run, you need a website maintenance partner to help you get it all done.
A one-size-fits-all approach to website maintenance might keep your site running, but is that enough? Every business has unique needs, and your website should reflect that. With a cookie-cutter maintenance plan, you’re likely missing out on optimizations that could improve user experience, boost security, and maximize your SEO. Simply put, you need a custom approach if you want your website to reach its full potential.
We know your Cleveland business needs more than just basic updates—you need a strategy that aligns with your marketing goals and the local market. Whether it’s fine-tuning your site for better SEO, speeding things up to meet customer expectations, or making sure your content stays relevant, our plans focus on what’s going to push you to the next level. With our personalized approach, your website can evolve with your business and drive long-term growth just as you expected it would do.
Frequently Asked Questions About Website Maintenance
Managing a website isn’t just about aesthetics or launching a one-time project; it requires ongoing attention to ensure security, functionality, and search engine visibility. Many website owners have similar concerns about how to keep their site running smoothly, secure, and optimized for search engines. Below, we’ve answered some of the most common questions our clients ask about maintaining their websites.
Q: What happens if I don’t update my site?
A: Websites are no longer a set-it-and-forget-it part of your business. Your website should be updated on a regular basis to keep fresh content in front of your site visitors, keep it secure, and maintain proper functionality. Develop a habit of doing a monthly or, at minimum, quarterly website review with your website developer to make sure that everything is up to date.
- Using outdated software increases the chance that hackers may know what the weaknesses are in your version.
- Search engines use special algorithms to assign a “score” to each website based on the relevance of the content and prioritize recently updated sites. When you do not update your site, this score can be negatively affected.
Q: Would proper maintenance improve my search engine visibility?
A: Nearly 90% of all online interactions begin with a search engine. Your visibility is important, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) maintenance is key to gaining traffic on your site. Even being at the top of the second page of a search engine can be detrimental to you. According to one study, being on the second page or farther only gets about 6% of traffic. Using SEO Maintenance to improve your ranking can drastically improve your chances of being viewed. Make sure your pages have set keywords, proper length titles, and meta descriptions. All these things increase your score to give you a higher chance of being one of the first results.
Q: Can you automatically make recurring website updates?
A: Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress require frequent updates to ensure you’re running the most recent and secure software version. These updates can be performed by simply clicking the update button on the back of the WordPress CMS. Still, you run the risk of potential conflicts between the new WordPress core updates and plugins being used to execute specific functionality.
Website updates can be performed manually periodically or by leveraging software designed to detect and perform updates automatically. This software creates a backup copy of the website before the updates occur to allow us to revert to a previous version should the update impact website functionality. Websites not using WordPress can also be updated manually with a specified checklist to ensure an efficient process is followed.
Q: What happens if my site gets hacked or injected with malware?
A: If your site is acting oddly, it doesn’t always mean you have been hacked, but being aware of the possibility is important. There are ways to identify if you have malware or another virus; it is also possible for hackers to breach your data.
Your Website Won’t Load
Getting Server errors (HTTP 500) is an early indicator that something is wrong with your site, whether it is malware or an internal issue. After discovering server issues, you may also want to look for 401 Unauthorized or 403 Forbidden, as these errors are related to access issues. If you have not recently changed passwords or permissions this is a good indicator of a potential hacker.
You Can’t Log Into Your Admin Dashboard
If you cannot log in to your admin dashboard, try resetting your password. If you do not receive the emails or see an error message that ‘yourusername’ is not registered on this site, there is reason to be concerned as a hacker may have changed the passwords and associated emails.
You Get a Malware Warning Message When You Search for Your Site on Google or When Attempting to Load Your Site
Google Safe Browsing services scan sites for malware and warn users before they enter a site. If your site is being warned against with this alert, there is a good chance you have been hacked.
Sudden Change in Performance
Even with malware present, your site may still load, but irregularly long load times or timeout errors can often be a warning sign to pay attention to. This is usually a sign that your server is being overloaded. This can be caused by a hacking attempt, a faulty plugin, or something else.
You’ve Been Notified of a Problem by Your Security Plugin
Security plugins can help you in the fight against malicious programs and hackers. A good security plugin will log who signs in and where they signed in from. If, for example, an unknown, unauthorized user appears in the security logs, you may have a security breach on your hands.
Q: How do you speed up a slow website?
A: Slow websites aren’t fun for anyone. Visitors to your website will become impatient if they have to wait for pages to load, and search engines will prioritize faster-loading websites over yours in their search engine rankings.
Some common reasons for a slow website include:
- Large, uncompressed images
- Unoptimized website code
- Server performance and/or low-quality hosting
- Excessive use of scripts for tracking and external tools
- Complex website themes
- Lack of caching
- Video loops in the hero section
- and lots of other things…
Proactive Website Maintenance Services by Neon Goldfish
One of the key benefits of website maintenance is the ongoing monitoring and proactive care it provides. Instead of waiting for issues to cause problems, regular checks help spot potential concerns like security vulnerabilities, performance slowdowns, or technical glitches before they escalate. Maintaining a website isn’t just about keeping things running—it’s about making sure your online presence continues to serve your customers effectively, minimizing downtime and ensuring visitors have a positive experience every time they land on your site.
Our comprehensive website maintenance services provide everything you need to keep your website up to date, secure, and optimized for success. Here’s how we can help:
- Search for Vulnerabilities: Regular scanning for weaknesses keeps your website secure and protected against attacks.
- Repair and Fixes: We perform frequent checks for broken links and address functionality issues to prevent hackers from misleading your visitors.
- Software Updates: Keep critical software, such as WordPress plugins and themes, updated to help maintain site security and performance.
- Site Speed Optimization: We analyze and optimize your website’s loading speed for an improved user experience and better SEO rankings.
- Search Engine Optimization: Our SEO maintenance includes updating meta descriptions, keywords, and titles to improve search engine rankings and visibility.
- Analytics Monitoring: We’ll track your site’s traffic and performance to help you identify areas for improvement and make sure your website is attracting the right visitors.
- Regular Backups: Perform consistent backups to keep your website and data safe.
We also provide a range of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly maintenance tasks to keep your site going.
- Daily: Monitor uptime, review form submissions, and check website analytics.
- Weekly: Check for broken links, run security scans, and update software.
- Monthly: Evaluate SEO, generate analytics reports, conduct full security scans, and run performance audits.
- Quarterly: Complete comprehensive SEO audits, review user feedback, refresh design elements, and optimize the database.
- Yearly: Review significant updates, assess the need for redesigns, and maintain compliance.
Regular website maintenance is a proactive approach that can save you time and money. Small issues are much easier—and cheaper—to fix when addressed early before they grow into bigger, more expensive problems. Regular updates, security patches, and performance improvements help prevent downtime.
By partnering with Neon Goldfish, your business website is secure, optimized, and ready to grow with you. Let us help you create a custom website maintenance plan that meets your unique needs so you can focus on what matters most: running your business.