It's the Little Things that Matter

I provide a wide range of services for my clients, many of which go unnoticed, so I decided to make a list of the many little things Web site maintenance includes.

tools on a desk to make forms

Here is a list of services a good webmaster performs.

  • Listing the site in Google and setting up a Google Webmaster account for the site. Monitor this account.
  • Listing the site in Bing and setting up a Bing Webmaster account for the site. Monitor this account.
  • Install analytics software and setup the core goals. The list of goals should focus first on the parts of your site that require input from visitors (ie forms), the core main five pages of the site (these vary but will include contact forms, home pages, search engines, etc).
  • Check for the location on Google Maps. Correct the marker, if necessary, and check that their Google Place is claimed. If not, followup with client to ensure the process completes.
  • Test the website on as many devices as possible. Test all screen widths.
  • Test the website using Google PageSpeed Insights and try to get a score as close to 100% as possible.
  • Log all activity on your contact form and every other form on your site. Look for suspicious activity. Look for visitor problems that should be fixed.
  • Check the site's search engine placement on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and as many others as you can think of. Typically this occurs one month and three months after a launch. Create a baseline by making notes on placement. Look for ways to improve the ranking.
  • Check the year in the copyright - always automate where possible.
  • Check backlinks to the site. Try to generate more. 
  • Monitor the keyword ranking for the site and each page within.
  • Create and maintain an XML sitemap on your server to guide the search engine spiders.
  • If possible, watch the client interact with the site. Make notes.
  • Ask people to use the site and watch how they respond. Make a note of anything that was confusing and/or complicated.
  • Request new content from client, if possible, on a regular basis.

Testing Matters

Living in a complex, unpredictable world is very hard for humans. We love certainties. We crave (and often demand) them. But we have to face reality if we are to succeed. Things are indeed changing with great speed and much of what works today will not work next year. Or perhaps it will. We just don’t know. But what we must do is test, test, test. Observe, observe, observe. Be flexible and adaptable. Be constantly ready to change when change is needed.