If you searched “website maintenance checklist,” you usually want a list you can reuse — not a “site under maintenance” holding page. This is that checklist for small-business website maintenance: backups, SSL, speed, forms, hours, and Search Console. Print this page or copy the table. Written for a Canadian owner, not a CMS specialist.
You do not need to do every item yourself. You need the items to happen. A fully managed website is how we take the list off your desk. If you keep the site in-house, treat this as the minimum bar.
Website maintenance checklist template
Use this as a website maintenance checklist template. There is no separate PDF to download — print or save this page. Tick monthly items every billing cycle; do quarterly items four times a year.
| Cadence | Task | Done if |
|---|---|---|
| Whenever you look | Load the homepage on a phone | Padlock shows, layout is not broken |
| Whenever you look | Tap phone, email, and submit the form | You receive the notification |
| Monthly | Confirm a backup from the last 48 hours | You know who can restore it |
| Monthly | Hours, holiday, phone, service area | They match the shop door and Google Business Profile |
| Monthly | Search Console (if you have it) | No new coverage errors; page-two queries noted |
| Quarterly | Photos, service pages, redirects | Facts still match the work you want |
Do this whenever you look at the site
- Load the homepage on your phone, not just the office Wi-Fi laptop.
- Confirm HTTPS is valid (browser padlock). Expired certificates look like scams.
- Tap the phone number and email. Call tracking and mailto links break more often than people admit.
- Submit the contact form with a real message and wait for the notification. “It looks like it sent” is not a test.
Monthly
- Backups: confirm a successful backup from the last 24–48 hours and that a restore has been tested in the last quarter.
- Uptime: glance at monitoring or hosting status. If you have no monitor, you will hear about downtime from a customer.
- Software updates (WordPress and similar): core, theme, and plugins. Skip this and you inherit security holes. If you do not want this job, do not run WordPress.
- Content that goes stale: hours, holiday closures, phone, service area, pricing notes, staff names.
- Broken links on key pages: home, services, contact. A 404 on “book now” is a lost job.
- Speed spot-check: if the phone load feels slower than last month, images or scripts probably crept in.
- Search Console (if you have it): coverage errors, queries where you sit on page two, pages that lost impressions.
Quarterly
- Photos: replace outdated vans, storefronts, and people who left. Compressed, properly sized images only.
- Service pages: does the copy still match what you want to be hired for?
- Local details: NAP (name, address, phone) consistent with Google Business Profile if you use one.
- Redirects: old URLs from a previous site should still land on the right page.
- Privacy and legal: contact details on the privacy page, form consent still accurate.
- Competitor sniff test: not to copy them — to see whether they now answer a question you should answer first.
When something breaks
- Note when you first saw it and on which device.
- Check hosting status and domain expiry before redesigning anything.
- Restore from backup only if you know what you will lose (newer content).
- If a plugin or app is the suspect, disable that — not the whole site — if you can.
- Tell customers a straight status if the outage is public-facing (form down, booking down).
What a monthly plan should already cover
If you pay for website care, the vendor should be doing the infrastructure items without you asking: hosting, SSL, backups, uptime, and security patches. Edit hours should cover the copy and image changes that actually happen in a normal month. SEO foundations (titles, speed, a sitemap sent to Google) should not be a surprise invoice. That is how Web Maintained plans are built — Care for a tight brochure site, Plus if you want analytics and monitoring, Pro if you want monthly improvements from Search Console.
For why some sites stay easy and others become a second job, read What Makes a Website Easy to Maintain?.