Bethesda, MD Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Bethesda, MD Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Bethesda business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. These are some examples of website issues that Bethesda web support companies might fix:

• Updating your website platform.
• Keeping apps and plugins updated for better security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new information.
• Staying fresh with new blog content.
• Rearranging your Bethesda website's navigation menu.
• Improve your page speed to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of your website's files and databases.
• Changing the look and feel of your website.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

Those services are just a taste of what Bethesda web maintenance might look like. In fact, Bethesda web maintenance is basically anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website.

Reactive Bethesda Website Support

Most Bethesda website owners wouldn't want a web developer messing around with their site without their permission. That's why we consider website maintenance a reactive service. Our firm will be your web support team on standby for any questions you have. However, we can provide some proactive website support services for your Bethesda website.

View Bethesda Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Bethesda Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Bethesda who need proactive website upkeep! We can take care of platform upgrades, app/extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring as part of our proactive website management service.

View Bethesda Website Management Pricing

In addition to supporting Bethesda-area websites, our web maintenance firm also offers Annapolis, Baltimore, Columbia, Frederick, Rockville, Salisbury, and Silver Spring small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Support in Bethesda, MD

At some point in time, every Bethesda website will require some form of website support. It's just that the internet changes all the time. However, we don't charge a lot for Bethesda web maintenance, so you'll be able to afford it! There are a few reasons why a website in Bethesda might need maintenance:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Bethesda website was originally developed to support. This means you have to refactor your app or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the new PHP version. You can't expect custom web functionality from the past to work forever.
• In order to focus on maintaining the newer version of an ecommerce platform or content management system, they eventually have to deprecate the previous releases. Magento 1.x store owners recently had to migrate to Magento 2.x, or an alternative ecommerce platform, because Magento 1.x was no longer maintained by Magento after it reached "End of Life". As a result, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Bethesda were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• Whenever a website owner falls victim to malware or some other form of malicious activity, the website needs to be cleaned of malware and reviewed for security exploits. This is time-consuming, and often happens when the website owner isn't paying attention to the first two web maintenance examples.
• When the content on your Bethesda website, which explains your organization, products, or services becomes outdated and needs to be refreshed to help ensure future visitors receive accurate information about your operation. Keeping your Bethesda website up to date is key to its success.

Above and beyond just updating something, there are plenty of reasons why a website might need maintenance. Plan your budget and schedules for website support and maintenance based on your Bethesda business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Bethesda, MD Website Maintenance

We have an experienced web support team who puts forth great effort to understand your maintenance needs, schedule your work in a timely fashion, and follow up with your Bethesda business after the tasks have been completed.

Most Bethesda website support services start with an email from the website owner. Your email gets routed to our ticket system and automatically gets assigned to your project manager. We can then work on the ticket without delay, which leads to faster turnaround and easier internal communication.

The process for Bethesda web maintenance services that come from phone or chat is similar. We route the support request to the most appropriate web developer on our team based on the nature of the work needed on your website.

Example Website Maintenance Service List for Bethesda, MD Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Bethesda web support requests that might come up after the launch of a website. We've performed these Bethesda website support services in the past, and would be happy to do it for you too!

Simple Bethesda Website Updates

Changes to your Bethesda website could be as simple as updating a paragraph, swapping images, or adding a new page. This is just normal, routine web maintenance to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Bethesda Site Performance Improvements

We can analyze your Bethesda website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and more if it's slow. It'll help improve page load times, which will make users and search engines happy.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

It's important to keep your Bethesda website updated if it runs on a CMS like WordPress. Updates help improve security and functionality - and they're usually quick, so it might be a simple task.

Extension / Plugin Updates

If your Bethesda website has functionality developed and maintained by a third-party, it is important to update those plugins and extensions to include the latest changes by the developers. The idea is similar to updating the CMS platform since it fixes security and functionality problems.

Fixing Search Console Issues

Did Google Search Console tell you about a coverage problem? If so, we'll look at the coverage issues, fix them, and update you on the status. By making Google happy, you'll boost your search engine rankings throughout Bethesda and beyond!

Add Structured Data

Do you ever see product prices or reviews in Google organic search results? This is structured data, which is a standardized way to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Bethesda business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to Your Website

By adding Open Graph Tags to your website, digital platforms can better understand the content of your page, which improves its appearance on social media.

Add Google Tag Manager

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? No problem at all! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Bethesda website and teach you how to use it.

Setup Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions is important if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising for your Bethesda website. Then you'll know where your conversions come from, whether it be direct traffic, organic search, or paid ads.

Image Optimization

Do you have a Bethesda website that's slow because of large images? That won't be a problem! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Integrate a Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? We can make recommendations on the best live chat systems for your business requirements, install the tracking code, and configure the design to match the branding of your Bethesda business!

Review Error Logs for Issues

Are your error_log files big? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

We can set up a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your Bethesda website.

Implement a Caching Plugin

Interested in installing a caching plugin for your Bethesda website, but don't know how to set it up? We can help you figure out which caching plugins to install and configure on your website!

Send Website Emails Over SMTP

If you want to improve email deliverability, we can set up your contact form and website platform to send emails via SMTP instead of PHP mail.

Restrict Malicious IP Addresses

Is your Bethesda website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific network? Our team can help set up IP restrictions so your website doesn't get hit with as much malicious traffic.

Run Website & Database Backups

Would you like a backup of your Bethesda website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store locally or offsite.

Create a Staging Website

Before you do a major update or extension installation, it's a good idea to setup a development or staging site. Just let us know if you need help creating and managing that development / staging site!

Create A/B Testing Rules

Are you a fan of making Bethesda web design changes based on statistical data? We can help you run A/B testing to help you decide which design or content layouts are best.

Add 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects for your Bethesda website. We've seen businesses in and around Bethesda lose huge amounts of organic traffic due to widespread broken pages. We can help you create 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS platforms.

Provide Website Training

Do you need help learning how to make changes to your Bethesda website? If your Bethesda site was developed in a platform we work within, such as WordPress or Shopify, we'll be happy to help!

The Platforms We Maintain for Bethesda, MD Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Bethesda businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. Nevertheless, mastering a handful of platforms is better than trying to be an expert on everything. Because of that, we tend to service only these platforms for Bethesda websites:

• Bethesda WordPress Web Maintenance
• Bethesda WooCommerce Website Maintenance
• Bethesda Shopify Web Support

As a website support company, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Bethesda-area businesses. However, we chose not to use those platforms so our website maintenance experts could focus on training and support within the more popular platforms.

Questions to Ask Bethesda, MD Web Support Companies

Before signing up for any Bethesda web maintenance package, it is important to ask the Bethesda web maintenance company some questions about how their services work. By doing this, you'll be able to better understand your future experience with their professional Maryland web support services before you submit payment or provide website access. You can ask these simple questions:

• Can you tell me how you handle website security? Do you run website security scans for clients?
• When can I expect an average Bethesda website support request to be completed?
• Is your Bethesda web maintenance outsourced?
• How much does Bethesda website maintenance cost?
• Are there minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Bethesda website updates?
• At what times of the day are you working and able to take our maintenance requests?
• When there are new updates on my platform, will you let me know?

If you ask these questions to a Bethesda website services agency, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Bethesda, MD Website Support Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web maintenance plan by larger companies in and around Bethesda looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Bethesda business has a web maintenance plan to ensure optimum performance.

Read through this list of annual Bethesda website maintenance tasks to consider:

• Message your web hosting firm to see if they have upgraded servers you can switch your website to for faster page speeds.
• Check if your website platform is releasing a major upgrade in the near future which will require a major overhaul of your website.
• Try restoring a website backup to make sure the data is good enough for a full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored somewhere else besides Bethesda.
• Check out competitor sites (even those outside of Bethesda) to see if you're missing out on any competitive advantages they have over you.
• Take a look at your website's security to make sure nothing's been compromised.
• Ensure that structured data, open graph, and social links are all working.
• Remove any unnecessary 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that may have been installed in the past.
• Take down any unnecessary development or staging sites.

Read through this list of semi-annual Bethesda web support tasks to review:

• Ensure you have access to your domain name and that it isn't expiring soon. This will be helpful when you have to process a domain name renewal.
• Check your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Bethesda and that your website backup schedule is working.
• Make sure you're running an image optimization service.
• See if there are any console errors on the website.

Check out this list of monthly Bethesda website support tasks to consider:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• Make sure your website isn't having performance issues after recent updates.
• See if there's anything wrong being reported within Google Search Console.
• Update some of your service pages or blog articles to keep your website fresh.
• Check if there are available platform or extension updates.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Bethesda, MD

The starting price for our Bethesda website maintenance services is $119.50/hour, but we offer discounts for pre-purchased blocks of time that bring the rate as low as $99.95/hour. We also offer website management for Bethesda websites, starting at $50/month, if you'd like the peace of mind knowing a company is proactively upgrading your site.

To get started, if you are new to our web maintenance company, we'll need you to pre-purchase a block of time which includes a discount on our hourly rate. If you are an existing client in Bethesda, you are welcome to choose monthly billing at our higher hourly rate or continue to pre-purchase time and receive discounted hourly rates for your website updates.

If you pre-purchase a block of time for your Bethesda web maintenance services, you will be happy to know there are no contracts, there are no hidden fees, the time never expires, and there are no minimum deductions for small website update requests. Please keep in mind we rarely see tasks take less than 10 minutes, since the process of reviewing an email or taking a phone call, checking on whatever was asked, providing some form of feedback, and then logging the task usually takes at least 10 minutes of time. To keep you informed of the time usage on your pre-purchased block of web maintenance time, you will receive a monthly email update letting you know how much time remains on your account.

What is Considered Billable Time?

When talking with prospective Bethesda website maintenance clients, we are often asked what is considered billable time. You will find the answers to vary greatly within the website support industry. In some situations, you may find a website maintenance company in Bethesda to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for communication and organization. Likewise, there are website support companies in Bethesda who charge a more affordable hourly rate, but also bill out for most communication and organization. This is the approach we take. To help provide clarification, let's go over some examples of what we consider billable time when it comes to maintaining and supporting your Bethesda website.

Here are examples of what is considered billable time:

• Reading through lengthy emails to understand what is being requested.
• Preparing responses to lengthy or complex email messages.
• Helping you figure out your domain name or web hosting provider.
• Scheduling your website maintenance to be completed by the best team member.
• Talking with you on the phone about ideas or tasks you want to discuss.
• Reviewing completed work for quality control purposes.
• Providing you training on how to handle administrative tasks.
• Researching unique solutions to difficult questions you present our team.
• Providing more detailed time usage reports, beyond the automated monthly update email.
• Helping you figure out email client issues within Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.
• Almost any other task not specifically mentioned in the list below.

Here are examples of what is not considered billable time:

• Talking with you about personal matters, such as the weather, a recent vacation, or a sporting event.
• Responding to simple email messages that don't require research or lengthy feedback.
• Handling accounting-related tasks, such as invoice generation, payment confirmations, etc.

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