If you’re the type of person who’s used our website builder here at 4GoodHosting and have yourself a simple website to promote yourself and nothing more then you won’t have much of a need to be looking into the workings of your website. If there’s a lot more riding on your website and it doing what you need it to do, however, that’s a different story and you’re going to want to be at least somewhat involved in keeping tabs on how your site is doing set up alongside the information superhighway.
Now like any good Canadian web hosting provider in Canada, that definitely relates to us too. Site monitoring is definitely not my area of expertise, but we have someone who is an expert with the subject and keeps things at their best with this site. So if you have a similarly vested interest in the performance of your website and how optimized it is for SERPS and all the other priorities that exist for everyone then you will want to be involved in website monitoring. Let’s look at why that is today.
Wide Open Expanses
1.8 billion is a big number, and that’s how many websites on the Internet today. Of them, it’s estimated that 70% don’t have the proper monitoring to be entirely safe from cyber attacks. The study that came up with those numbers was based on large enterprises, but cyber resilience is increasingly important for small businesses too.
And the primary reason that’s true is because of malware. If a site becomes infected and the infection really takes root then that site could see a dramatic reduction of traffic as users are kept away by their browsers. And in a good number of cases there’s a long period of time before the site’s owner or webmaster becomes aware of that. During that time your organic SEO is going to be negatively affected in a big way, and so that’s the thing – if your website is serving any type of an e-commerce interest then there’s going to be real problems.
The longer it takes to fix problems like these, the larger the SEO impact, and the longer it will take to make the recovery. So if you need to know why website monitoring is vital, that’s why. It may be out of your realm of abilities too, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be hiring to get someone to take care of it for you if so.
Automation for Superior Cyber Defenses
This same report stated very emphatically that automation increased cyber resilience in a big way. When monitoring is automated, it’s much more likely that checks vital to that particular business or venture’s online health will be conducted from multiple locations worldwide and done regularly. The other advantages to doing what it takes for automation with cyber security is that automated monitors tend to be much more thorough and consistent than if someone is tasked with having to remember to do the checks on their own.
The biggest part of that are the instant notifications sent out if a site goes down or if an all-important email account is unreachable. And all of this is made possible with web monitoring services.
Web Monitoring Services
Cybersecurity is not the only part of effective monitoring. A good web monitoring service will cover a number of other interests too, and in particular you’ll want to have it keeping tabs on your site’s search engine and keyword ranking. It’s a nice way to get that peace of mind and be assured of the operating health of your site.
So here’s the four primary reasons you need a web monitor.
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Avoid Potential Downtimes, and Losses that Come with Them
If your website is inactive or unreachable and you’re unaware of it, you’re taking an immediate hit. No purchases, no bookings, no whatever. There’s been research done (admittedly with larger e-commerce sites, but still) where the average cost per minute of this downtime is estimated to be around $5,600. Long term costs of this type and even at a smaller scale are probably not something that you’ll be okay with.
Unless of course you actually DO want to be losing money, visibility, AND reputability in some cases. The longer your site is down, the worse the impact is on brand reputation or SEO. And again, many websites can experience downtime without the owners or managers knowing about it.
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KNOW You’ve Got the Cyber Security You Want
This same survey also indicated that as many as 57% of large organizations have been the victim of some sort of data breach or cybersecurity incident that negatively affected their site. No one needs to be told of the really serious risks that can come from data leaks, and so you should be taking this pretty darn seriously.
An insecure website is like a back door with no lock on it, and there’s also the risk of the hackers sending out harmful communications on your behalf and before you have any chance to do anything about it.
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Monitor SEO Health and Optimization
SEO shortcomings that result from a compromised website can bring down your SEO fast and furiously. But it can also affect site speed, for instance. For this reason it is useful to monitor SEO performance closely. Problems with your SEO could be indicative of a larger problem but even if it isn’t, organic SEO is a majorly important aspect of a business’s web performance. It’s a big part of creating traffic to engage and contribute to your conversion rates, and of course we all know what bounce rates are and why you want yours as low as possible.
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Proactive and Time-Saving Solutions
What you can do is use a certain way of thinking when deciding what sort of website monitoring and cyber security will meet your needs. This is a simple as a) knowing that a problem exists as early as possible, and b) knowing what actions you should take to resolve this problem
Then look into web monitoring solutions that are going to contribute to both these aims being met. Monitoring your site closely for issues is a good start, but from there you should also ensure those all-important reports that detail the actions you need to take. They should be easy to read and easy to act on.
