Website Maintenance Checklist: What to Check and When

A website maintenance checklist is the schedule of checks that keeps a live site secure, fast, accurate and usable after launch: updates, backups, security, speed, links, forms, accessibility and renewals. Checks that nobody owns tend not to happen, so this list is grouped by how often each one should be done. It's part of our website design best practices guide.

How to use this checklist: give every group an owner and a reminder in a shared calendar. Weekly checks take minutes; quarterly and yearly ones take longer, so book time for them. Print it or copy it into your task tool, and note the date and result each time.

Every week

These are quick checks that catch the problems that cost enquiries fastest.

• Confirm the latest backup ran, and that it finished without errors.
• Submit a test enquiry, and check it reaches the right inbox.
• Open the home page and main service pages on a phone.
• Check uptime or error alerts, and follow up anything unexplained.
• Review new comments, reviews and form spam, and remove anything harmful.
• Check that key events for enquiries are still recording in analytics.

Every month

Monthly work covers software, search and the content people rely on. Our guide on how to set up conversion tracking explains the lead checks.

• Apply CMS, plugin, theme and framework updates on a staging copy first.
• Remove plugins, scripts and user accounts nobody uses anymore.
• Check Search Console for indexing errors, security issues and manual actions.
• Crawl the site for broken links and fix or redirect them.
• Review the Core Web Vitals report for templates that have slipped.
• Compare tracked enquiries with the leads you actually received.
• Update opening hours, prices, team pages and offers that have changed.
• Check that the sitemap lists only live pages that return a 200.

Every quarter

Quarterly checks look for slower drift in speed, accessibility and security. Measure speed with field data, as explained in Core Web Vitals explained. This checklist is general information, not legal advice.

• Restore a backup to a test environment, and confirm the site works.
• Run a keyboard, zoom and contrast pass on each main template.
• Check new images have useful alt text and new videos have captions.
• Review every user account, and remove access for people who have left.
• Test the site in current versions of the main browsers.
• Check that third-party scripts and embeds still earn their place.
• Review old blog posts and pages, then update, merge or redirect them.

Every year

Some renewals arrive once a year and are easy to miss. As of October 2026, the CA/Browser Forum is reducing the maximum life of public TLS certificates in stages, from 398 days down to 47 days by March 2029, so automated renewal matters more each year.

• Renew the domain, or set it to auto-renew with a current payment card.
• Confirm SSL certificates renew automatically, and set an alert before expiry.
• Run a full accessibility review of key templates and journeys.
• Review the privacy policy, cookie banner and legal pages with your advisers.
• Audit who owns the domain, hosting, analytics and ad accounts.

After every change

Small edits break things too. Run these after any update, new feature or content change that touches templates.

• Retest every form, including the success message and delivery.
• Check for new 404 errors, and add redirects for any changed URLs.
• Run the page through a speed test, and compare with the last result.
• Tab through new components with a keyboard to check focus and order.
• Remove staging blocks such as noindex before changes go live.

When something goes wrong

Have the plan written down before you need it. Our 301 redirects guide covers fixing broken URLs, and the website accessibility testing checklist covers rechecking after a fix.

• Keep a contact list for hosting, domain, developer and email support.
• Restore the last good backup if an update breaks the site.
• Change all passwords and keys after any suspected break-in.
• Check Search Console's Security issues report, then request a review once it's fixed.
• Write down what happened and what will prevent it next time.

If you'd rather hand upkeep to someone else, our in-house web team can look after your site, with the same SEO foundations we build into every project.