Do Small Business Owners Really Need a Webmaster?

Would you ever drive your car, uninsured?

Of course not! You know the consequences of getting into an accident while driving without auto insurance, it really isn’t something you’d ever even consider doing. The possible pay-offs of driving uninsured are completely outweighed by what could happen to you, your car, and your bank account – if something were to go wrong.

You’d never operate such a vital and expensive personal investment without the proper safety net, so why choose to gamble with one of your most vital business assets?

One wrong turn, and your website could be totaled.

In order to keep your website up and running, no matter what twists and turns come its way, you need to have a competent Webmaster looking after it constantly. Call it “website insurance.”

So what does a webmaster do? A great webmaster knows the ins and outs of not only your website, but also has a a firm grasp on SEO, search engines, hosting details, and mobile-responsiveness across various browsers. Their main objective is to keep everything running smoothly, and to have your site in tip-top shape in order to please all search engines and browsers. This ranks your site higher and keeps customers happy.

Whether you already have hired a webmaster, or are shopping around for one, you want to make sure he or she knows their stuff. A strong webmaster takes your website and makes it shine, inside and out. That’s why we made a short list of essential questions your webmaster should be able to answer in length. If they can’t, consider finding a new one…seriously.

Questions on the following topics should be no problem for your webmaster, if they know their stuff:

Is my website responsive to different screen sizes and resolutions? Is user experience on mobile devices hurting my SEO?

Is my website vulnerable to spam, or hackers? How securely have we saved our web files?

Do you change our FTP login credentials every 60 days or less?

What would we do if the server crashed? How often is our website backed up?

Have you submitted XML sitemaps and RSS feeds to all major search engines?

Does my business website have any crawl errors? If so, how have you been working to fix them?

Are media files correctly saved, indexed, and labeled on my website to promote great SEO and page speed?

Have you implemented metadata for each page, optimized for researched keywords that will bring the right traffic to my site?

What’s our Bounce Rate?

Are you working to provide quality inbound and outbound links?

Are we operating with the correct amount of bandwidth? Is it worth purchasing more?

Does our website use 301 redirects correctly, and to our advantage?

We could give you another 50 or so, the list goes on and on. For more questions (and the answers you should hear back), feel free to contact us and let us know you need more help.

We can also let you know if you are paying too much – or too little – for your webmaster services. These services should be affordable, but anyone advertising bargain basement webmaster rates may not be doing much at all to help. You wouldn’t let just anyone design or develop your website, so why place it in the hands of someone who doesn’t have your best interests in mind?

Simply put, working with an inexperienced webmaster is bad news for your company’s website. Working with no webmaster at all…now that’s a recipe for disaster. The internet can be a bumpy road, you wouldn’t want to travel it uninsured.

If you’re looking for an affordable, experienced webmaster team that is trained and experienced in SEO, Analytics, Online Marketing, and Mobile-Friendly Design, give us a call at (215) 264-9286 or contact us online and we will get back to you within 24 hours.