Setting up a website is the beginning, not the end. Most Canadian small business owners launch a site, breathe a sigh of relief, and then ignore it for months or years. The result is predictable: outdated content, expired SSL certificates, unpatched security vulnerabilities, broken contact forms, and a site that slowly degrades in search rankings.
The good news is that keeping a website in good shape does not require hours of work. A focused 30-minute check once a month handles the most important maintenance tasks. Here is exactly what to do.
Update WordPress, Plugins, and Themes (10 minutes)
Log into your WordPress admin dashboard and navigate to Dashboard > Updates. Install all available updates - WordPress core first, then plugins, then themes.
Outdated plugins are the leading cause of WordPress security compromises. Plugin developers release updates to fix bugs, patch security vulnerabilities, and maintain compatibility with newer WordPress versions. Running outdated plugins is the equivalent of leaving your back door unlocked.
Before updating, confirm your host is running automated backups. If you are uncertain, take a manual backup via cPanel's Backup Wizard first. Then update, and quickly browse through your site afterwards to confirm nothing broke.
Check for Broken Links (5 minutes)
Broken links - links on your site that point to pages that no longer exist - frustrate visitors and signal to search engines that your site is not well-maintained. Use the free Broken Link Checker tool at deadlinkchecker.com or install the Broken Link Checker plugin in WordPress to flag them automatically.
Pay particular attention to links in your navigation menu, your footer, and any pages that link to external resources, which can disappear without notice.
Review Google Search Console (5 minutes)
If you have not set up Google Search Console for your site, do that first - it is free. Log in monthly and check the Coverage report for any new errors (pages returning 404s, pages blocked by robots.txt) and the Core Web Vitals report for any pages that have degraded in performance.
Search Console also shows you which search queries your site appears for - useful context for understanding what is working in your content.
Test Your Contact Form (2 minutes)
Submit a test message through your own contact form. Confirm you receive it. This takes two minutes and catches a surprisingly common problem: contact forms that stopped working quietly after a plugin update, a server configuration change, or an email deliverability issue. A broken contact form means you have been missing leads without knowing it.
Update Any Content That Has Changed (5 minutes)
Scan your site for information that may have become outdated. Common culprits: business hours, pricing pages, team pages with former staff listed, product or service descriptions that no longer reflect your offering, and COVID-related notices that were never removed.
Outdated content erodes trust. A visitor who finds information that contradicts what they learned elsewhere - or calls and gets different pricing than what the website shows - loses confidence in your business.
Verify Your SSL Certificate (2 minutes)
Open your website in a browser and check that the padlock icon is visible in the address bar. Click it to see the certificate details and confirm it shows a valid expiry date that is not imminent.
On dotCanada hosting, AutoSSL renews your Let's Encrypt certificate automatically - but it is worth a quick visual check to confirm renewal has been happening. If you see a certificate warning, contact your hosting provider immediately.
Check Site Speed (1 minute)
Run a quick test at pagespeed.web.dev or gtmetrix.com once a month. You are not looking for perfection - you are looking for significant drops from your baseline that might indicate a new plugin, a large unoptimized image, or a server configuration issue.
If your score drops noticeably from one month to the next, investigate what changed. Usually it is a new plugin or an image that was uploaded without compression.
Review Your Analytics (5 minutes)
A quick look at your Google Analytics or whatever analytics tool you use. Check overall traffic trends. Look for any page with a sharp traffic drop - this can indicate a 404 error, a deindexing issue, or a change in search rankings worth investigating.
You are not doing deep analysis here - just a health check for anything obviously wrong.
Thirty minutes. Once a month. For a Canadian business that depends on its website to attract or serve clients, this routine is straightforward insurance against the slow, invisible degradation that eventually turns a good website into a liability.
