If I am hosting your site, and I built it for you, I revisit your website every three months to make sure everything is OK. If I am actively supporting you on something, it will be more frequently than that.
Each time I visit your site I do the following:
Google Search
Perform a good search for your website by using your organisation name (not your web address).
why?
This will tell me if you are at the top of a google search or not. Most (90%) of the sites I have built, I have got you to page one in a google search, usually in the top three. There are a number of techniques to doing this, one of the most important is backlinks. If you are not near the top of a google search, it is generally because you have not searched for sites listing you that could have backlinks (links back to your site from their site).
If I find you are not listed on page one, I will let you know. There are generally some very simple steps you can take to help yourself.
Login and health check
I log into your site and check there are no outstanding updates pending, no comments pending (with very few exceptions nobody is using comments), check error messages and make sure the site is working ok.
Why
It is important that you are using the latest versions of code for everything. All sites should automatically update, some plugins and themes do not (I am checking why), so they need a manual update.
Backup and locally store
All sites use a premium plugin called UpdraftPlus. I pay the subscription for this. It backs up your site on a regular basis, usually once every week or two weeks, and depending on the size of your website it will hold anything between 2 and 6 backups on the site, or optionally off of the site in Dropbox if you have one set up.
Why
I make sure this section is working and take a complete backup and store it locally on my systems. I will generally hold four or more backups of your site from the previous year. If something goes drastically wrong, I can use one of these to create a new installation and get you back online if nothing else works.
On some sites I have found a background task has not been running on 5% of sites. I have resolved that in all cases working with the hosting company.
Media Library
One of the commonest errors, which is usually highly visible in the backup is the size of the downloads folder. If this runs to 100’s of megabytes, it is generally because the editors are uploading full size images to the site. You should avoid doing this.
Why
The website will continue to work, but a mobile user will be downloading a 4MB image where a 100KB one would have achieved the same result. Mobile users pay per megabyte. If I see a consistent trend like this I will let you know, and what actions you can take either on the site or before uploading images.
If I find anything that is unusual, or unexplained, I will let you know. If you have any questions about this drop me a line.