Website maintenance is the routine work that keeps your site secure, fast and working properly: installing updates, checking backups, testing forms, fixing broken links and keeping content current. For a typical small business WordPress site, an hour or two a month covers the basics, with security updates applied as soon as they are released.

This guide gives you a simple monthly website maintenance checklist you can follow yourself, explains how often Google crawls your website, and shows you how to check it in Google Search Console. If you would rather not do it yourself, it is also exactly what a good hosting and maintenance plan should handle for you.

Maintenance protects the money you spent on your site

A website is not a one off project. The software it runs on, the plugins it uses, your browser and Google all change constantly. A site left alone for a year usually ends up slower, less secure and with things quietly broken: a contact form that stopped sending, a plugin that no longer works or a page that has fallen out of search results.

Regular maintenance helps you:

• Close security holes before automated attacks find them.
• Make sure enquiries and orders actually reach you.
• Keep the site quick, which matters to both visitors and Google.
• Spot problems in search early, before traffic drops.
• Avoid an expensive emergency rebuild later.

Your monthly website maintenance checklist

Work through this list once a month. Most of it takes a few minutes per item once you are used to it. The steps are written with WordPress in mind, but the principles apply to any platform.

1. Take a backup before you change anything

Check that your automatic backups are running and that recent copies are stored somewhere other than your web server, such as cloud storage or your host’s separate backup system. Take a fresh backup before applying updates. A few times a year, test that you can restore one, ideally to a staging copy of the site.

2. Apply updates

Update WordPress core, your theme and your plugins. WordPress installs minor security releases automatically by default, but major versions, themes and plugins often need doing by hand unless you have turned on auto updates. After updating, check your key pages and forms still work. Delete any plugins and themes you are not using, as inactive code can still be a risk.

3. Review security

• Check your security plugin or host’s dashboard for warnings, blocked attacks and malware scan results.
• Remove user accounts for people who no longer need access, such as former staff or freelancers.
• Make sure every administrator uses a strong, unique password and two factor authentication.
• Confirm your SSL certificate (the padlock in the browser) is valid and set to renew automatically.

4. Check uptime

Uptime monitoring tools check your site every few minutes and email or text you if it goes down. Several have free plans. Review the past month’s report for outages or slow periods and raise any patterns with your host.

5. Test every form and checkout

Submit each contact, quote and booking form yourself and confirm the email arrives, including in the inbox of whoever handles enquiries. If you run a shop, place a test order. Forms that silently stop sending are one of the most common and costly problems we find.

6. Fix broken links and errors

In Google Search Console, open the Pages report and look for pages listed as “Not found (404)”. Fix internal links pointing to them, or set up a 301 redirect (a permanent redirect) to the most relevant live page. A link checking tool or plugin can scan your site for broken outbound links too.

7. Check speed

Run your home page and main service or product pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights, and look at the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. Typical fixes include compressing large images, removing unused plugins and making sure caching is working.

8. Refresh content

• Check prices, opening hours, team members and contact details are correct.
• Remove expired offers and past events.
• Update the copyright year and any dated references.
• Add something new where you can, such as a blog post, case study or FAQ.

Some jobs only need doing quarterly or yearly

Not everything needs to happen every month. Add these to your calendar:

• Quarterly: test a full backup restore, review user accounts and roles, check your Google Business Profile matches your website, and review which pages bring in traffic and enquiries in Google Analytics.
• Yearly: renew your domain name (set it to auto renew), review your hosting plan and PHP version, check your privacy and cookie notices are current, and run a broader review of design, content and accessibility.

How often Google crawls your website

There is no fixed schedule. Google decides how often to crawl each site, and each page, based on things like how often the content changes, how important the pages appear to be and how quickly your server responds. A busy news site may be crawled constantly, while pages on a small business site that rarely change might be revisited every few days or weeks. Your home page is usually crawled more often than older blog posts.

Related reading: Managed WordPress Hosting UK: What It Is and What to Look For

Crawling is also not the same as indexing. Google can visit a page and still decide not to include it in search results, for example if it is a near duplicate of another page or the content is thin.

Things that help Google crawl your site efficiently:

• An up to date XML sitemap, submitted in Search Console. Most SEO plugins create one for you.
• Clear internal links, so every important page is linked from somewhere else on the site.
• A fast, reliable server. Frequent errors or slow responses can lead Google to crawl less.
• Updating content regularly, which gives Google a reason to come back.

How to check crawling in Google Search Console

Google Search Console is free and is the only way to see Google’s own data about your site. If you have not set it up yet, do that first.

Check a single page

1. Paste the page’s full address into the search bar at the top of Search Console. This opens the URL Inspection tool.
2. Open the page indexing details. The Last crawl date shows when Google last visited, and Crawled as shows whether it used its mobile or desktop crawler.
3. If you have just updated or published the page, click Request indexing. There is a daily limit on these requests, and asking repeatedly for the same page will not speed things up.

Check the whole site

1. Click Settings in the left hand menu.
2. Open the Crawl stats report. It shows how many requests Google has made to your site over the past few months, average response times and any server or availability problems.

Google notes that the Crawl stats report is aimed at advanced users and only available for root level properties, such as a Domain property. For most small sites, URL Inspection and the Pages report tell you what you need. Google also says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks after a request, so be patient. See Google’s guide on asking Google to recrawl your URLs for the details.

Frequently asked questions

How much does website maintenance cost?

It varies with the size of the site and what is included. Many UK agencies and hosts bundle updates, backups, security and monitoring into a monthly plan, which is usually far cheaper than fixing a hacked or broken site.

How often should I update WordPress plugins?

Apply security updates as soon as possible, and review all other updates at least monthly. Always take a backup first.

How do I get Google to crawl my website faster?

Submit an XML sitemap, link to new pages from existing ones and use Request indexing in Search Console for important pages. You cannot force Google to crawl more often.

Can I do website maintenance myself?

Yes, the checklist above covers the essentials. The main risks are updates breaking something and forgetting to do it, which is why many businesses hand it to their host or web team.

Let us look after your website

Our web team handles updates, backups, security and monitoring for small business sites, so you can get on with running the business. See our hosting and website design services, or get in touch to talk about your site.