There are many small businesses that have found blogging to be an inexpensive tool for both marketing and SEO. If you’re blogging for small business, you need to include a maintenance schedule into your routine. This doesn’t have to be daily, or weekly for that matter, although the more often you undertake a short maintenance program, the better. Here are a couple of major areas that you should regularly check on.

• Backing up – hopefully your server will backup your site each night. However, to be safe, make regular backups of your blog, particularly the database(s) that are associated with it.
• Up-To-Date software – you should always use the most up-to-date version of your software. For WordPress users, this has become much easier with the latest versions – a click or two of the mouse and you’re up to date.
• Up-To-Date plugins – if you are keeping your blog software up to date, you’ll need to do the same with your plugins. New features may disrupt a plugin causing a wide range of problems.
• Site Check – there are several programs and plugins that check your site for problems. You can also set up an account with Google’s Webmaster Tools. One of the tools is a malware alert – this is an after event tool, however, you will at least be aware of the problem.

As a business owner who has invested time and money into a blog, the last thing you need is for a hacker to find a way into your site. The more up to date your site is, the harder it is for them to do any damage. Don’t always rely on a backup, since that too may be infected by a hackers attack. The best approach is to keep your blog as safe as possible from day one.

Tags: hackers, malware, wordpress

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012 at 7:22 am and is filed under Blogging for Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.