Monthly Website Maintenance Checklist

Web maintenance is essential for everybody, especially when it deal with security testing.

Used in combination with our weekly, quarterly, and yearly checklists (available here), these maintenance processes will keep your site updated, free of vulnerabilities, optimized for SEO, and more.

In this process, we go through your search visibility, site analytics, security scans, and loading speed. These are vital checkups that ensure your site's marketing and user experience are top notch.

This web maintenance checklist is intended to be used as part of our weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly checklist set. When monthly maintenance is due, these tasks act as a supplement to be used as well as the weekly checklist.

[Add a link to your organization's weekly maintenance checklist (based on this template) here.]

Site speed is important for user experience and search engine ranking placements. A faster site is better for everyone.

Slow sites can be caused by anything from shared hosting to uncompressed files. You can get simple solutions for minifying and optimizing your site's code with WordPress plugins or tutorials via Google.

Site load speed tools are commonly available for free, and show you any optimizations you need to make within minutes.

Google's PageSpeed Insights tool gives you a piece-by-piece breakdown of your site's speed, and offers tips to optimize it.

Pingdom provides a similar service, but takes into account the difference location makes on site speed. It lets you choose which server will access your site. In the example below, the results are returned as if a user from Melbourne had accessed it.

Use Gravityscan (from the creators of Wordfence) to run a scan on your site. Any issues will be highlighted straight away, for free and with no need to sign up.

Other site security tools include:

• Mozilla Observatory (free)
• ScanMyServer (free)
• Acutinex (paid)
• Detectify (paid)

While Observatory, ScanMyServer, and Gravityscan are manual (e.g. they are initiated by you, and you check the results), something like Detectify or Wordfence will constantly monitor your site's security and send you notifications you should take action on.

Your site's analytics will show you which pages got the most traffic and where that traffic came from, alongside custom events you've set up (like form submissions).

Here are the things you should look for when checking Google Analytics, according to Megalytic:

Click here for some expert Google Analytics report configurations from Kissmetrics — you might want to these use for your own site.

You can use the form field below to attach a copy of your analytics report for the month:

Use a tool like Ahrefs or Moz to check on the SEO data of your site. You can find out things like keyword positions, new backlinks, and new broken links.

With a good idea of what content is ranking and why, you can tune up your SEO strategy in the future, and optimize the ranked pages to improve conversions.

Here's what you should check:

For more suggestions on what you should check when you review your SEO analytics, check this guide from Ahrefs.

Google ranks content in search according to an opaque set of rules. Whenever it changes these rules, it'll tell you about it on the Webmaster Central blog.

Example updates include information about using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for faster loading times on mobile, testing structured data for better search display, and more.

Use the site's monthly archive feature to easily catch up on the most recent developments. It might also be a good idea to check sites like Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch for developments on non-Google properties.

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom
• Mozilla Observatory (free)
• ScanMyServer (free)
• Acutinex (paid)
• Detectify (paid)
• Megalytic — A Google Analytics Checklist for Healthy Data
• Process Street — Ahrefs vs. Moz
• Google Webmaster Central Blog

• Server Maintenance Checklist
• Server Security Checklist
• Information Security Incident Response
• SQL Server Audit Checklist
• Privileged Password Management
• Network Administrator Daily Tasks
• Network Security Audit Checklist
• Firewall Audit Checklist
• VPN Configuration
• Apache Server Setup
• Email Server Security
• Penetration Testing
• Cisco Router Setup
• IT Service Call Process
• Scheduled Maintenance Notification
• Patch Management
• Network Security Management
• Client Data Backup Best Practices
• Computer Maintenance Guide
• Inventory Management Process
• Server Setup Process
• Virtual Private Server Setup
• IT Support Process
• Helpdesk Management
• Vendor Management: Supplier Evaluation
• Vendor Management: Contract Negotiation