Website maintenance checklist: what to check weekly, monthly and yearly

A website is never finished. Software ages, plugins develop security holes, integrations change, content goes stale and search engines raise their standards. None of this is visible day to day, which is why it’s easy to neglect, until a contact form has been silently failing for a month.

Maintenance protects what the website is for: winning enquiries and supporting customers. Here is the checklist we use.

Weekly

• Apply security updates to the content management system, themes, plugins and server software. Test first on a staging copy if the site is complex.
• Check uptime and error alerts. An uptime monitor should tell you within minutes if the site goes down. See proactive monitoring.
• Confirm backups ran and are stored separately from the website itself.
• Test the main enquiry form end to end: submit it, and check the lead arrives in your CRM and inbox.

Monthly

• Check speed with Google PageSpeed Insights on your key pages, on mobile. Look at Core Web Vitals in Search Console.
• Fix broken links and redirects using a crawler such as Screaming Frog or a site audit tool.
• Test every form and call to action, including booking links, downloads, newsletter sign-ups and chat.
• Review Search Console for indexing errors, security issues and manual actions.
• Check analytics for sudden drops in traffic or conversions, which often point to a broken page or tracking.
• Review user accounts with admin access, and remove anyone who no longer needs it.

Quarterly

• Restore a backup to a test environment to prove it works.
• Run a security scan and review hosting, SSL certificate and domain expiry dates.
• Check mobile experience on real phones, not only in a desktop browser.
• Review accessibility against WCAG basics: contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text, form labels.
• Audit SEO for titles, descriptions, headings, structured data and internal links. See website structure for SEO.
• Check AI search visibility for your main buyer questions. See SEO for AI search.

Yearly

• Review all content: services, team pages, case studies, statistics and legal pages. Update or remove anything out of date, and show an “updated” date on articles you refresh.
• Check legal pages and cookie consent against current rules.
• Review the technology: is the platform still supported, and is hosting still the right fit?
• Review the purpose: does the site still reflect what you sell and who you sell to?

Who should own website maintenance?

Name one owner, even if the work is outsourced. They keep the schedule, receive the alerts and decide priorities. If an agency or freelancer handles updates, agree in writing what they check, how often, and how quickly they respond when something breaks.

How do you make maintenance easier?

• Fewer plugins. Each one is a potential security hole and source of conflicts.
• Managed hosting that handles server updates, backups and SSL for you.
• Static or headless sites for marketing websites, which have far less to patch.
• Automated tests for forms and key journeys that alert you when they fail.

Where to start

A website that leaks leads is a growth problem, not just a technical one. Our AI-Era Growth work looks at the whole path from search to signed deal, including whether your forms, follow-up and tracking actually work. Tell us where you’re stuck.