Choose a website hosting plan that actually works hard for your business!
Your website has parts that will break or expire and cause communication problems, just like your car’s parts will eventually break or malfunction and cause transportation problems. If you have a website for any length of time, you’ve surely experienced a 
utility malfunction, broken page link or even a complete outage. Panic can set in when that happens, especially in a marketing or sales-driven company. You can begin to imagine people visiting your site and leaving with the impression that your company’s act isn’t really together.
Listen up! The technology overlords of the Internet don’t particularly like websites that aren’t cared for, which clutter up the data universe with a bunch of old, static and irrelevant content. And, they have ways of punishing those sites!
FACT: You do not know the identity of your website visitors unless they give it to you by opting-in to an offer; filling out a form. That means potential customers, perhaps big ones, are examining your online offerings and possibly getting frustrated with their experience when your site lacks an adequate maintenance program… and you won’t even know about the lost opportunities.
FACT: Without a professionally managed program of itemized, ongoing technical maintenance and content updates, your website will suffer lower search results and diminished user experience. Some browsers such as Google Chrome might even flash a warning screen cautioning visitors before entering what they deem could be a malware prone or unsafe website.
Does your website have an SSL Security Certificate yet? If not, visitors are already being warned about entering it.
BEST PRACTICE: Put your website on a managed hosting and maintenance plan instead of a basic hosting plan. A fully managed website maintenance plan costs more than basic hosting and it’s more than worth the difference! You avoid disruptions in sales and workflows caused by malfunctioning web pages. Search bots “see” a secure and well-built, mobile-friendly site to crawl and properly index content for searchers of your products & services.
So, what do want your website to do?
Here are the two main service options available:
1. With a low cost basic hosting plan, you can at least have an online presence where people can find you by your own domain name or URL. However, without having and complying with the terms of an SSL Security Certificate, visitors may be warned before entering. Hopefully, your site would be mobile responsive by now, had someone paid attention to evolving standards several years ago and kept your site up to acceptable standards.
2. With a managed hosting and maintenance plan, your website would be searchable for your prospects’ & customers’ keyword queries about your product or service, not just your domain name. Your web service provider would have already alerted you to and installed SSL security certification on your site, especially if you have any contact forms or user portals. Years ago, they would have had your site complying with 
mobile-friendly (responsive design) standards giving mobile device users a seamless and high-quality mobile web experience before some of your competitors were even aware of the responsive design best practice. Every link would work as redirects are taken care of upon the first warning signal. Real human beings constantly work on the back and front ends of your website to make sure it’s optimized for speed, search and user experience. Design and functionality plugins are always updated to the latest versions. Malware is constantly scanned for, isolated and removed. And get this: You can call them and talk with them on the phone whenever you need to! Sounds like best practices for online marketing doesn’t it?
My colleagues and I cannot stress enough the importance of maintaining SEO and website competitiveness today, and it’s only getting more intense out there! If you have any questions about website maintenance plans and how they can help improve your business, feel free to contact us online or call 603-345-7223.
