Think of your Internet business as a garden. It may look great when you plant it, but if you stop tending it and just walk away, it will turn into a weed jungle in no time.

The same is true for the website that represents your online business to the world. The time you put into maintaining and improving your website will keep it growing and making more money.

There’s always that nagging feeling that says, “Yes, I know this stuff has to get done, but I just don’t have the time (or inclination) for it right now.” You just need to manage your time… because all those little chores need to be done!

So here’s a website maintenance schedule to make all those tasks a little easier to manage. This way you can see what needs to be addressed often, and what only needs a checkup every now and then.

Your website stats and PPC results will tell you what you need to test or change, so we recommend doing both short-term and long-term reviews. For the more static parts of your website, you don’t have to change anything if it isn’t out of date. Just do scheduled reviews to make sure it is still current and accurately representing your business.

Daily to weekly

• Add new content to blog
• Review results of PPC ad campaigns and landing pages
• Review and track website statistics and results

Monthly

• Test parts of salesletter: headline, subhead, product descriptions, headlines, bonus, etc. (or every 1,500 to 2,000 clicks)
• Test opt-in offer
• Add articles (add fresh new content whenever you can, but at least once a month)
• Clean up links to other sites (make sure they’re still current)
• Review surveys/polls (if your surveys or polls are out of date you will look unprofessional)

Every 3 months

• Intense PPC stats analysis (historical overview)
• Intense SEO stats analysis (historical overview)
• FAQ page
• About Us (you may not need to change anything, but it’s a good idea to check back fairly often to make sure you’re giving your customers an accurate picture of who you are)

Update these as soon as there is any change

• Contact Us
• Other administration pages, for example Returns Policies
• Product descriptions/prices
• News
• Videos/audio
• Images
• Testimonials
• Summary for directories

Put website maintenance in your schedule and you’ll see your online business thrive.