Website Maintenance:

A website is not something you launch and forget. Like any system that serves real people, it needs regular maintenance. Not technical maintenance like plugin updates or backups, but content and experience maintenance. Your analytics tools already contain the clues. If you know where to look, they will tell you:

• Which pages aren’t performing
• What people are trying to find but can’t
• Where users are hitting dead ends
• What links across your site are broken

Reviewing this data regularly is one of the simplest ways to improve your website. In our work, there are four reports we recommend reviewing every month.

1. Pages With 100% Bounce Rate

A page with a 100% bounce rate means every visitor left after viewing only that page. That doesn’t always mean the page is bad. But it does mean the page is not moving people anywhere else, and that is ok if that is the intent of the page. If you page is about content consumption and you have a high bounce rate and a good time on page, then the page probably did it job. However, most pages are not about consumption, typically pages are to either Convert, Inform, Engage, Guide or Bridge. When you find these pages, ask:

• Where should traffic to this page come from?
• Where should visitors go next?
• Is the page linked from the rest of the site?
• Is the call-to-action clear?
• Does the content match the visitor’s expectation?

Sometimes the fix is simple:

• Add links to related content
• Add a clear call-to-action
• Improve navigation to or from the page

Sometimes it reveals a deeper issue: the page exists, but it has no real role in the site. Every page should have a purpose.

2. Pages With No Time on Page

Pages where visitors spend less than a few seconds often indicate one of three problems:

1. The page didn’t match what the visitor expected
2. The content is confusing or poorly structured
3. The visitor landed there by mistake

Filtering these pages helps identify:

• Pages that should not be indexed
• Pages that need better internal linking
• Pages that need clearer content structure

Often the problem is not the content itself, but how the page is reached.

3. Unsuccessful Searches

Site search is one of the most powerful insights you can collect. When someone uses search, they are telling you exactly what they want. But sometimes the search produces no results. That’s valuable information. Look at these searches and ask:

• Should this content exist? If users are repeatedly searching for something that doesn’t exist, it may indicate a gap in your site.
• Is it a spelling mistake? Common misspellings can easily be handled by adding synonyms or spelling variations in your search engine.

Tools like Relevanssi make this very easy.

Is the content there but hard to find? If the page already exists, users may simply be using a different word for it. Adding synonyms can often solve this. Search data is one of the fastest ways to understand how users think about your content.

4. 404 Errors

Broken URLs happen on every website. Links change. Pages are removed. External sites link incorrectly. The key is not avoiding 404 errors entirely – the key is managing them properly. We recommend using a redirect tracking tool so you can group and analyse 404 requests. Then review the largest groups.

• Does the page exist somewhere else? If so, add a redirect.
• Should the page exist? If people are repeatedly requesting a page that doesn’t exist, it may indicate missing content. Creating the page may be the right solution.
• Is the traffic suspicious? Many 404 requests come from bots scanning your site. If the requests are clearly malicious or irrelevant, you can simply exclude them from tracking.

Once the main issues are addressed, clear the logs and start fresh for the next review cycle.

5. Broken Links

The final report to review regularly is broken links within your site. Broken links create frustration and damage trust. Fixing them is usually straightforward:

• Update the link to the correct page
• Redirect the missing page
• Remove the link if the content no longer exists

Most sites accumulate broken links over time. The important thing is to clear the backlog regularly so the list stays manageable.

A Simple Monthly Website Maintenance Routine

You don’t need complex tools or hours of analysis. Once a month, review:

1. Pages with 100% bounce
2. Pages with very low time on page
3. Unsuccessful searches
4. 404 errors
5. Broken links

Each report highlights a different type of problem.

Taken together, they reveal where your site is:

• confusing users
• hiding useful content
• sending visitors to dead ends

Fixing these issues regularly keeps your site healthy and ensures the content you’ve already created continues to perform.

A Website Is Never Finished

The best websites are not built once. They are continuously improved. Your analytics tools already contain the signals that tell you what to fix next. All you need to do is look.