Quick Summary: There are five reasons why performing routine website maintenance is so important. The first reason is security (every day, there are over 30,000 hacks of websites that could have been prevented); the second reason is performance (for every one additional second it takes to load your site, you lose an approximate 7% in conversion rates); thirdly, there is SEO (the technical aspects of your site such as how fast it loads and whether or not it has security features will affect your ranking in search engines); fourthly, there is user experience (if your users see broken forms or old information on your site they are going to lose confidence in using it); and finally, there is cost saving (fixing a problem before it becomes a disaster can be 3-10 times cheaper than trying to recover from the disaster.) Once you neglect your site, you will notice your site start to go down hill (decline) very quickly; most of the time this starts happening somewhere between six to twelve months after you started ignoring your site.
Many small businesses know that they need to keep their website updated. Only a handful know what really occurs if they choose to ignore this necessity. Those who ignore the obligation of regular updates will find their lack of action has serious and very costly consequences. These negative effects are not merely hypothetical; rather, they are easily quantifiable and most often irreversible at the moment one becomes aware of them.
Reason 1: Security
More than 30,000 websites are hacked daily. Most hacks occur through an automatic bot process that scans the internet to find known vulnerabilities in outdated software. Leaving a WordPress website that does not update on a regular basis is similar to locking your front door but failing to turn the key, while hackers will automatically scan all doors in your neighborhood.
WordPress hosts over 40% of the web which means that WordPress is the most targeted Content Management System (CMS) available today. Once a developer discloses a bug or vulnerability in a plug-in, hackers will immediately write a reverse engineered fix and begin scanning for websites that do not apply the fix. This window of opportunity for hacking has decreased from weeks to hours.
If you allow your website to be hacked, there could be severe consequences including malware being injected onto your pages, creating hidden links and pages that can harm your search engine ranking (SEO spam). Data can also be stolen, this includes customer information, payment details, business data. Your website can also become blacklisted by Google causing the following alert to appear: “Google believes this site may be malicious” and ultimately reducing your website traffic. It can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to clean up after a hacker attack.
You can prevent nearly all WordPress hacks by regularly updating your site to ensure you are running the latest version of WordPress, keeping track of any issues with plugins, and using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to monitor your website for any unusual behavior.
Reason 2: Performance
Even when nothing appears different about your website, the speed of the site will decrease. Temporary data accumulates in databases, post revisions create unnecessary metadata and orphaned metadata builds up. Each time you install a new plugin, it adds more JavaScript and CSS files to slow down your website. Unoptimized image libraries continue to grow. As PHP updates, server configurations lag far behind.
These decreases happen slowly enough that you rarely recognize them because you visit your site so frequently. However, people visiting your site notice and so does Google. These statistics are alarming: every extra second of loading time causes your conversion rate to drop by around 7%. If a site takes 2 seconds to load initially and then takes 4 seconds to load, you’ve lost about 14% of potential conversions quietly – without a single error message.
Maintaining performance of your website through regular maintenance activities such as optimizing databases, removing unused plugins, compressing images, and configuring caching can help maintain fast load times and keep your core web vitals compliant.
Reason 3: SEO
There will be some ranking changes on your website. The Search Engines algorithms are always evaluating your website. There are many technical aspects of your website that will affect how well your website ranks for specific searches. These technical aspects can include; page load time and your Core Web Vitals (INP, LCP, CLS) which measure user experience, mobile usability, whether or not your site uses HTTPS for secure browsing and whether or not there are any malware threats, whether or not GoogleBot has crawled errors or broken links to crawl on your site, if your structured data is accurate, and if your content is fresh.
Each of these issues, by themselves can have a minor effect on your search engine rankings. However, together, they contribute to a steady loss of search engine rankings each month. This is where most people get frustrated because it generally takes much longer to regain the rankings that were lost then it took to lose them. It also costs significantly less money to maintain your search engine rankings, then it does to recover from them.
Reason 4: User Experience
Generally speaking, the first interaction an interested customer will have with your business will be through your website. If your website has broken contact forms, outdated prices, broken functionality, slow loading pages, and/or has design and layout issues for viewing on a mobile device. All of this communicates to your customers that you don’t pay attention to detail.
Broken Contact Forms Are Particularly Costly Because They Fail Silently
Contact forms become especially problematic when they stop functioning due to an old plugin being updated. Any leads that try to use the contact form will fail silently and therefore you’ll never know what happened. That means the leads will essentially evaporate into thin air. Testing your forms regularly helps prevent the silent failure of forms and thus prevents unnecessary lost revenue.
Old Content Will Erode Trust
Using old content such as last years’ employee list, old product/services, or expired promotional offers will cause visitors to question if your company is still operational and if the information they see on the website is current. When users have questions regarding the legitimacy of the content they will naturally reduce their willingness to convert at checkout regardless of how well the rest of the website works.
Reason 5: Cost Savings
Spending money on maintenance can actually save you money. Emergency Response is typically 3-10x more expensive than preventive maintenance.
Costs associated with monthly maintenance plans range from $100 to $300. Costs associated with recovering from a single hacked site range from $500 to $5,000. If your site fails (due to negligence), rebuilding your site can be anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000. The time and cost required to recover from a Google penalty for poor security practices will take 3-6 months and cost $2,000 to $10,000.
Maintenance provides another key benefit beyond preventing disasters; It protects your initial investment in your website. For example, if you spent $15,000 on developing your website, after 24 months of non-maintenance, your website loses all its functionality, security and performance. In essence, you’ve essentially lost the use of your original website. On the other hand, by investing approximately $200/month or about $4,800 over two years, you’ll preserve the functionality, security and performance of your website.
What happens when you skip maintenance?
Neglecting your website maintenance follows a very predictable path.
Months 1-3: Nothing appears different. Your updates were missed, however, your site was functioning as expected. Most people feel that they don’t need to maintain their website during this timeframe.
Months 3-6: Minor problems start to develop. A few broken links begin to appear. Load times become slightly slower. Someone notifies someone else that a plugin needs updating, yet no one takes care of it. Although there are minor problems with the site’s operation, it still operates properly. However, it is beginning to degrade.
Months 6-12: Problems continue to grow. Many plugins are several versions behind. There is substantial bloat in the database. Site speed becomes notably worse. One of the outdated plugins likely had a known vulnerability which could potentially allow unauthorized access into your site.
More Than 12 Months: Something finally breaks. A hacker exploits a vulnerability in an older version of a plugin. A major update of WordPress comes out and since many of the plugins used are outdated, the site crashes and displays nothing but a “white screen of death.” A hosting company upgrades PHP forcing incompatible code to break. At this point, the cost of fixing these problems far exceeds the amount of money that would have been spent maintaining your site.
Prevention costs less than recovery. See Deutrix Care maintenance plans →
For the complete guide, read our Website Maintenance Ultimate Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Whether you have a small and simple site running off WordPress Core, a Theme, and some Plugins, they are still receiving security patches. In fact, due to their simplicity, it’s actually much easier and less expensive to perform maintenance on your small and simple site; therefore, creating an even stronger case for maintaining this type of website.
Present maintenance as a financial opportunity: Maintenance costs X dollars/month. Hacking a website costs Y dollars. Decreasing search engine rankings results in Z dollars lost from organic traffic values. Preventative measures (maintenance) is a fraction of what you would spend on recovering from hacking. Your Return On Investment (ROI), based upon these numbers is clear and measurable.
To keep WordPress core and plugins up-to-date with security patches tested on staging before updating production. This singular act of maintenance will prevent most WordPress security-related issues.
