Preparing Your Website for the New Year: A Complete Checklist

December 24, 2024

As another year draws to a close, it's the perfect time to give your website some attention. Just like you'd review your business finances and set new goals, your website deserves a thorough year-end assessment. A comprehensive review ensures you start the new year with a site that's current, secure, and ready to serve your business goals.

Your website works for you 24/7, often being the first impression potential customers have of your business. Starting the year with an outdated, slow, or insecure site means starting at a disadvantage. Here's your comprehensive checklist for preparing your website for success.

Content Review

Start with what your visitors actually see. Outdated content signals neglect and erodes trust.

Update Time-Sensitive Information

Year references: Check all content for year-specific references. "In 2024, we plan to..." becomes awkward when that year has passed.

Event and promotion mentions: Remove or update any references to past events, expired promotions, or seasonal content that's no longer relevant.

Statistics and data: Any data points or statistics should be reviewed. Industry numbers from two years ago may be significantly outdated.

Review Core Pages

About page: Has your team changed? Have you achieved new milestones, won awards, or reached new client counts? Your about page should reflect your current reality, not your history.

Services/products: Are you still offering everything listed? Have prices changed? Have you added new offerings that aren't yet featured?

Contact information: Verify all phone numbers, emails, addresses, and hours are current. Test your contact forms to ensure messages actually arrive.

Team page: If you feature team members, ensure everyone listed still works with you and that new team members are included.

Refresh Supporting Content

Testimonials: Add recent client feedback. Remove testimonials from businesses that no longer exist or relationships that have soured. Fresh testimonials signal ongoing client satisfaction.

Portfolio/case studies: Showcase your latest and best work prominently. Old projects should support your narrative, not dominate it.

Blog content: Review your recent posts. Are any significantly outdated? Consider updating evergreen content with current information.

FAQ section: Have customer questions changed? Are there new common queries you should address?

Learn more about why content quality matters.

Technical Health Check

Behind the scenes matters as much as what visitors see. Technical problems create poor experiences and hurt search rankings.

Software Updates

CMS updates: Ensure your content management system (WordPress, etc.) is running the latest stable version. Updates often include security patches and performance improvements.

Plugin/extension updates: Every plugin should be current. Outdated plugins are the most common source of security vulnerabilities.

Theme updates: Your theme likely receives updates too. Apply them to benefit from bug fixes and improvements.

Compatibility verification: After updating, verify everything still works together. Sometimes updates create conflicts.

Functionality Testing

Test all forms: Submit test entries through every form on your site—contact forms, quote requests, newsletter signups. Verify that submissions arrive correctly and that confirmation messages display properly.

Check all links: Broken links frustrate users and hurt SEO. Use a link checking tool to scan your entire site for broken internal and external links.

Verify e-commerce functions: If you sell online, test the complete purchase process. Add items to cart, go through checkout (without completing payment), verify everything works smoothly.

Test search functionality: If you have site search, test it with common queries to ensure results are relevant.

Performance Review

Check loading speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your site's performance. Note any significant changes from last year.

Identify bottlenecks: If speeds have degraded, investigate causes—large images, bloated plugins, hosting issues.

Mobile performance: Test specifically on mobile devices. Mobile performance often differs significantly from desktop.

Core Web Vitals: Review your Core Web Vitals scores in Google Search Console. These metrics directly affect search rankings.

Learn more about why website speed matters.

Backup Verification

Confirm backup system: Verify your backup solution is actually running and completing successfully.

Check backup location: Backups should be stored off-site, not just on the same server as your website.

Test restoration: If you haven't recently, test restoring from a backup to confirm the process works.

Document recovery procedures: Ensure you know how to restore your site if needed—or that your hosting provider/developer does.

Security Audit

Security breaches are devastating. Prevention is far easier and cheaper than recovery.

Access Management

Review user accounts: Remove access for former employees, contractors, or agencies you no longer work with. Every unnecessary account is a potential vulnerability.

Audit permission levels: Ensure users have only the access they need. Not everyone needs administrator privileges.

Update passwords: Change administrative passwords, especially if they haven't been updated in a while or if they're shared among multiple people.

Enable two-factor authentication: If available, enable 2FA on all administrative accounts. This dramatically reduces unauthorized access risk.

Certificate and Encryption

Check SSL certificate: Verify your security certificate is valid and note when it expires. Set reminders to renew before expiration.

Force HTTPS: Ensure all pages load via HTTPS, not HTTP. Redirect any HTTP traffic to HTTPS automatically.

Mixed content check: Ensure no pages load insecure (HTTP) resources on secure (HTTPS) pages. Mixed content triggers browser warnings.

Vulnerability Scanning

Run security scans: Use a security scanning tool to check for known vulnerabilities, malware, or suspicious code.

Check blacklist status: Verify your site isn't on any security blacklists using online checking tools.

Review login attempts: If your security plugin logs failed login attempts, review for patterns suggesting attack attempts.

Verify file integrity: Check that core files haven't been modified unexpectedly—a sign of potential compromise.

Learn more about essential security practices.

SEO Health Check

Search visibility drives traffic. Start the year with optimized foundations.

Technical SEO Review

Check indexing status: Verify your important pages are indexed in Google. Use Search Console to identify any indexing issues.

Review robots.txt: Ensure you're not accidentally blocking important pages from search engines.

Verify sitemap: Confirm your XML sitemap is current, includes all important pages, and is submitted to Search Console.

Check mobile-friendliness: Verify your site passes Google's mobile-friendly test. Mobile issues significantly impact rankings.

Content SEO Review

Meta descriptions: Ensure all important pages have unique, compelling meta descriptions.

Title tags: Review page titles for accuracy, keyword inclusion, and click-worthiness.

Header structure: Verify pages use proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3) for both SEO and accessibility.

Image optimization: Check that images have descriptive alt text and are properly sized.

Performance Tracking

Review Search Console: Check for any new errors, warnings, or issues flagged by Google.

Analyze traffic trends: Compare this year's traffic to last year. Identify pages gaining or losing visibility.

Track keyword positions: Note where you rank for important keywords as a baseline for the new year.

Analytics Review

Understand what happened this year to plan effectively for next year.

Traffic Analysis

Year-over-year comparison: How did total traffic compare to the previous year? Identify trends.

Traffic source changes: Which channels grew? Which declined? This guides marketing investment.

Top performing content: What pages attracted the most visitors? What engaged them longest?

Underperforming content: What pages have high bounce rates or low engagement? Why might that be?

Conversion Analysis

Goal completion: Did you hit your conversion targets? What percentage of visitors converted?

Conversion paths: How do visitors typically move through your site before converting?

Drop-off points: Where do potential customers abandon the process? These are improvement opportunities.

Form completion: Which forms perform well? Which have high abandonment rates?

User Behaviour Insights

Device usage: What percentage of visitors use mobile vs. desktop? Has this changed?

Geographic distribution: Where are your visitors located? Does this match your target market?

Session duration: How long do visitors typically stay? Has engagement improved?

Page depth: How many pages do visitors view per session?

Learn more about understanding website analytics.

Planning for the Year Ahead

Use your review insights to set yourself up for success.

Set Website Goals

Define objectives: What do you want your website to achieve this year? Be specific and measurable.

Lead generation targets: How many inquiries do you want to generate monthly?

Traffic goals: What traffic levels would support your business objectives?

Conversion improvement: Can you increase conversion rates by a specific percentage?

Plan Content Strategy

Content calendar: Plan your blog posts and content updates for at least the first quarter.

Topic selection: Based on keyword research and customer questions, what content should you create?

Content refresh: Which existing content should be updated for continued relevance?

Consistency commitment: How often can you realistically publish new content?

Learn more about why your business needs a blog.

Budget for Improvements

Identify priorities: Based on your review, what improvements would have the biggest impact?

Estimate costs: Get quotes or estimates for desired changes.

Phase improvements: If budget is limited, prioritize and plan improvements across the year.

Maintenance allocation: Budget for ongoing maintenance, not just one-time improvements.

Schedule Ongoing Maintenance

Monthly tasks: Plan regular monthly checks—form testing, backup verification, basic security scans.

Quarterly reviews: Schedule deeper reviews each quarter to catch issues before they compound.

Update schedule: Plan regular times to apply software updates.

Content calendar: Schedule content creation and publishing to maintain consistency.

Year-End Checklist Summary

Use this quick checklist to ensure nothing is missed:

Content:

Technical:

Security:

User accounts reviewed
Passwords updated
SSL certificate valid
Security scan completed

SEO:

Indexing verified
Meta descriptions reviewed
Sitemap current
Mobile-friendly

Planning:

Goals defined
Content calendar created
Budget allocated
Maintenance scheduled

Let Us Handle Your Website Maintenance

Don't have time to manage all this yourself? You're not alone—most business owners are too busy running their businesses to maintain their websites properly.

At Getwebbed, we offer ongoing maintenance packages that keep your site secure, updated, and performing at its best all year long. From regular updates and backups to content refreshes and performance monitoring, we handle the details so you can focus on your business.

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