Website Maintenance Checklist: Weekly, Monthly, Yearly

A website isn’t finished when it goes live. Links break, forms stop sending, plugins go out of date, and search rankings slip quietly. This checklist covers what to check, and how often, so your site keeps working for you.

If you’d rather not do this yourself, our website care plans cover hosting, updates, backups and checks for a fixed monthly fee.

Why maintenance matters even when nothing looks broken

Most website problems are silent. The site looks fine to you, but the contact form stopped sending emails two weeks ago, or Google can no longer read a page after an update. You only find out when you notice the enquiries have stopped.

At Elevate, we check our clients’ sites regularly, including clients who aren’t on a monthly plan, to make sure they’re still live and working as intended. It takes minutes, and it catches problems before customers do.

Weekly checklist

• Open your homepage on your phone. Does it load quickly and look right?
• Send a test message through your contact form and make sure it arrives.
• Tap your WhatsApp and call buttons to confirm they still open correctly.
• Reply to any new Google reviews.

Monthly checklist

• Update your platform, theme and plugins (for WordPress and similar systems), after taking a backup.
• Check that backups are running and that you could restore one.
• Look at Google Search Console for new errors, pages dropping out of the index, or security warnings.
• Check your most important pages for broken links.
• Update anything out of date: prices, opening hours, team, offers.
• Add at least one new photo or update to your Google Business Profile.

Quarterly checklist

• Test your site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights and fix the biggest problems.
• Review which pages get impressions and clicks in Search Console, and improve the ones that almost rank.
• Check your business name, phone and address are identical on your website, Google, Facebook and directories.
• Review who has access to your website, hosting and domain, and remove people who no longer need it.

Yearly checklist

• Renew your domain and SSL certificate before they expire, ideally on auto-renew.
• Review your hosting plan: is it still fast enough and fairly priced?
• Read every page again. Does it still describe what you actually sell today?
• Update your privacy policy if you’ve added new forms, analytics or tools.
• Decide whether the site needs a refresh. See the signs it’s time for a website redesign.

Modern hosted sites need less, not nothing

Sites built on modern hosting (such as Next.js sites on Vercel, or Wix and Squarespace) don’t have plugins to update, so the security work is lighter. You still need to check forms, content, Search Console, the domain and your Google profile.

Do it yourself or hand it over?

If you’re comfortable with the checklist and actually do it every month, doing it yourself is fine. Most busy owners don’t, which is why care plans exist. Whatever you choose, put the monthly check in your calendar.

Not sure what search engines can see on your site right now? Run the free AI visibility check. UK business? See SEO websites for UK small businesses.