Website Owner Tasks For Better Performance & Security

Website Owner:

☐ Site Security Plugin

Consult with your WordPress Web Developer to make certain a security plugin is installed that works best for your website.  Be sure to verify who is reviewing your site’s security reports and getting security alerts.

If SEO Rocket built your site, we will have installed a security plugin and will be reviewing your site’s security reports and getting security alerts.

☐ Change Your Passwords

You should always use strong, unique passwords for all your online accounts. This may include your WordPress website login, any FTP accounts, and database login access.

Strong passwords are not fool-proof. Hackers can compromise strong passwords without your knowledge. For this reason, security experts suggest you change your passwords regularly.  Most sites that are hacked and corrupted are due to poor password security practices.

☐ Check and Delete Spam Comments

If your site’s blog permits public comments, you’ll want to regularly review the comments that have been submitted for approval and delete all spammy comments. If you get a lot of comments, you should perform this task frequently.

WordPress offers a built-in method for conveniently deleting comment spam.  There are also several plugins available for dealing with comment spam. Be sure to consult with your web developer before installing any plugin.

☐ Review User Lists and Remove Inactive Users

Make sure your website doesn’t allow access to people that no longer should have access to your site in order to prevent security breaches.

☐ Dump Drafts and Post Revisions

Delete post revisions and drafts of content you are no longer using so that they don’t clog up the database and negatively impact your site’s performance.

☐ Hosting and Domain Renewal

List yourself as the contact for your hosting service and domain renewal notices. Keeping track of your renewal schedule can help you avoid the possibility of website downtime or the loss of your domain.

TIP:  Domain registration information is often public. As a result, many scammers will email official-looking notices of domain renewal to you when your domain is about to expire.  You can easily avoid these scams by not clicking any links embedded in these reminder emails. Instead, visit your domain registration service website directly and log in to your account to renew your domain.

☐ Test All Website Forms and Features

Don’t assume your web forms or other features always work. Periodically test your site’s forms to make sure they are passing along the information as they should. Report any broken web forms or site features to your Web Developer.

☐ Report Broken Links and Missing Content

Report any broken links or missing content on your website to your Web Developer.  If you are an SEO client of ours, this is one of our periodic SEO checks.

☐ Media Files Clean Up

It’s a good idea to clear out any temporary or redundant media files from your site to help your site’s performance.

SEO Rocket:

✔ Uptime Monitoring

We provide 24/7 uptime monitoring so that we will receive alerts if your site goes down for any reason.

✔ Backups

SEO Rocket is not liable if your site or database is hacked and becomes corrupted.  It is the client’s responsibility to notify SEO Rocket if you suspect your site may have been compromised. As part of our hosting services, SEO Rocket keeps monthly backups of your plugins, settings, user accounts, menus, theme settings, posts, pages, and media files. We verify that your backup files are being properly stored on our company’s cloud drive account monthly.

In the event your website is hacked, SEO Rocket will restore your site to the most recent backup version of your site and database. Any changes added to your website since the last backup will be lost.  In the case of site corruption before the last backup, you will be responsible for malware removal and the restoration of your site.

✔ WordPress, Plugins, Widgets and Theme Updates

SEO Rocket will keep WordPress, your site’s theme, and plugins updated to help minimize security vulnerabilities.

In the event any plugin update “breaks” the site, we use the last backup to restore the site and notify the client to contact their Web Developer to resolve the conflict. Any changes added to your website since the last backup will be lost.

✔ SEO Performance

Unless otherwise noted above as a website owner’s responsibility, SEO Rocket monitors and addresses all website issues related to SEO performance on the sites that we host for our SEO clients. Our monitoring service includes but isn’t limited to page speed performance, broken links, etc.

If you found these tips helpful, you can download your own printable copy of this checklist. Interested in help with your WordPress website or website hosting needs? Contact SEO Rocket.