A simple schedule for updating your website
Most small business sites fail quietly. A form stops sending, a plugin goes out of date, the holiday hours are still from last year. Nobody decides to neglect the site. It just has no schedule. This guide gives you one. It belongs to our website support and care plans topic, where someone is made responsible for it.
| How often | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Within days of release | Apply security and software updates after a backup | Known flaws are fixed in updates |
| Monthly | Test your forms, booking link and click-to-call. Check that backups exist. Look for broken links | A broken form loses leads without telling you |
| Quarterly | Review hours, phone, address, prices, services, staff and service area. Compare with your Google Business Profile | Old facts send customers the wrong way |
| Twice a year | Read each service page as a customer. Update photos, offers and seasonal information | Pages drift from the business |
| Yearly | Read every page, renew the domain and hosting, check legal pages and accessibility | Small things add up |
| When something changes | New service, price, hours, license or staff: update the same week | Accuracy is the point |
The schedule is our own advice, based on how sites usually fail. Google does not publish a required update frequency.
Software updates: the part that cannot wait
If your site runs on WordPress, updates matter most. WordPress’s documentation says existing installations receive minor core updates by default, and that new installations also get automatic major updates. For plugins and themes it says automatic background updates only happen in special cases. That means plugins and themes usually wait for a person.
A safe routine:
- Back up first. WordPress’s documentation says to back up your database and files, to verify the backups are usable, and that rolling back without a full backup is near impossible.
- Update one thing at a time, or in small groups, so you can tell what broke.
- Check the site afterward. Load the home page, submit the contact form, click the phone number, open the booking page.
- Keep a note of what was updated and when.
If your site is on a website builder, the platform usually handles its own software, but you still check forms, links and connected tools. If it connects to a booking tool, CRM or automation, one of those changing can also break a lead path. Our care plans include checks of connected tools for that reason.
Facts to keep current
These matter more to customers, Google and AI assistants than a new blog post:
- Opening hours, including holidays
- Phone number, address and service area
- Services and what each includes
- Prices or “from” prices, and what is extra
- Licenses, insurance and certifications, with current dates
- Staff names and roles
- Booking link and payment options
- Reviews or testimonials, only real ones
Keep the same facts everywhere: your site, Google Business Profile and other directory listings. A mismatch confuses customers and can confuse assistants that read those pages. If your hours change, update the site first, then the listings.
What to publish, and what to skip
Publish when you have something true and useful. Good reasons:
- A new service or a new area. Give it its own page with the facts: what is included, price, timeline and who it is for.
- A question customers ask repeatedly. Answer it on a page or in your FAQ, in plain words. Use the calls and messages you actually get.
- A change customers must know. New policy, new hours, a seasonal limit.
- A finished job or project, with your own photos and the customer’s permission.
- A correction. If something on the site is wrong, fix it the same day.
Skip these:
- Posts written only to hit a calendar. A blog with six thin posts from three years ago looks abandoned.
- Generic articles that could be on any competitor’s site.
- Copy written only to look fresh. Google’s guidance asks whether you are changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed, and says adding or removing content mainly to seem fresh will not help rankings.
Dates on your pages
If you show dates, make them honest. Google recommends a clear, visible date labeled with text such as “Publish” or “Last updated”, and, if you use structured data, matching datePublished and dateModified values. Dates must describe the real publication or update date of the page. Change the “updated” date when you change the content in a way a reader would care about, and not when you fix a typo.
A 15-minute monthly checklist
- Submit the contact form and confirm the message arrives.
- Open the booking page and make a test booking, then cancel it.
- Click the phone number on a phone.
- Load the home page and your top service page on mobile.
- Check that the latest backup exists and when it ran.
- Apply pending updates after the backup.
- Click through the menu and footer for broken links.
- Check hours and holiday notices.
- Look at your Google Business Profile for the same hours and phone number.
- Write down anything you want changed, and send it to whoever edits the site.
If you do these on the first Monday of each month, most silent failures get caught within a few weeks.
Signs your site is overdue
You do not need a calendar to notice some problems. Look for these:
- The copyright year in the footer is more than a year old.
- The newest post or news item is over a year old, or the last “updated” date is.
- The hours, phone or prices differ from your Google Business Profile.
- Staff who left are still listed.
- A test form submission takes a day to arrive, or never does.
- The site shows a warning in the browser, or a plugin has been waiting weeks for an update.
- Customers ask about a service or price that the site does not mention.
Any one of these is reason enough to do the monthly checklist this week.
Who does the updating
You have three options.
- You do it. It costs your time and needs discipline. Put the checklist in your calendar.
- A person on staff does it. Make one person responsible and write down where logins and backups are.
- A care plan. Ours are Support at $149/month, Improve at $299/month and Grow at $499/month, with 1, 3 or 5 hours of changes a month. Checks, updates and backups are included, and hours are for changes. For what other providers charge, see website maintenance cost.
Not included in any of our prices: domain and hosting, new photography, third-party software subscriptions (billed at cost), SMS carrier registration (A2P 10DLC) and message fees, and AI usage above the plan allowance. Prices are as of October 2026.
Check what the world sees
An accurate site is only part of the picture. Once a month it is also worth checking what AI assistants say about your business, so wrong hours or old services get corrected at the source. Our guide to monitoring what AI says about your business gives a method you can run yourself.
If you are not sure how current your site is, ask for a free demo, or see our pricing and FAQ pages.
Published . Updated .