Nowadays it is easier than ever to create a blog and attract relatively large readership. With a variety of available platforms, themes, inexpensive domains and hosting plans, it seems no special skills other than the ability to create interesting content are required for running a successful blog.

Of course, this is not entirely true. The options for starters are many, but maintaining a blog involves much more than content creation. For one, it requires time and dedication, as well as paying attention to a few technical aspects that even advanced users often neglect.

1. Always use strong passwords

We’ve already discussed the importance of choosing strong passwords and using them wisely across different online accounts. For website owners, this is especially important since they have too many data they wouldn’t risk losing. Therefore, it is crucial that your cPanel or Dashboard credentials are strong enough to prevent hackers from accessing your website. Once down, even for a couple of hours, your website may lose a number visitors, online reputation and authority, which is why strong passwords play such an important role of website management.

2. Update software and plugins regularly

Whatever software you use to access and manage your site, it should always run in its latest version. Software updates all have their purpose and are intended to improve your users’ experience, eliminate potential security loopholes and enable you to add new features. An outdated CMS version may easily cause your website to go down, especially if you try to add new plugins, extensions or modules to it.

3. Back up, buddy!

Regular backups are a part of every good website hosting strategy because they can save you a lot of time and money in case something goes wrong with your website. As we explained in one of our reacent posts, backing up a website is not necessarily a complex process, so there’s no excuse for you not to follow this rule.

4. Stay away from low-quality content

Although by posting low-quality or spammy content on your site you are not likely to become a target of hackers, this practice would definitely result in penalties by search engines. Duplicate content, spammy links, meaningless keyword-oriented texts or copyright infringement are all big no-nos in the online world and they lead nowhere. In fact, they can only make whatever it is on your domain less popular.

5. Reduce page-load time to make both your visitors and search engines happy

Website speed is one of the crucial factors that of both your visitors’ experience and your website’s ranking. If you notice your website takes too long to load, you should find the best way to solve this problem. One way to do this is to get rid of unnecessary plugins or extensions, or simply change your hosting plan. Have these options in mind next time you notice your visitors keep bouncing from your website due to high page-load time.

6. Design for people

If you’re using a custom theme for your website, try to make it as intuitive as possible. This refers to navigation, images, banners, footer and all the other design elements that should be straightforward and coherent. Remember that if your visitor is unable to understand what your website is about after 5 seconds, your design probably doesn’t communicate an adequate message. Therefore, if you want to keep people on your page, make sure that every single part of it is easily understandable.

7. Don’t forget to make the necessary payments on time

Setting up a website may require you to open different accounts, many of which would require recurring payments. If you forget to renew your domain or hosting plan, you website may go down for more than several days and this is certainly a scenario you’d want to avoid.

To sum up, successful website is the one behind which there stands a responsible owner, a person who is at any point aware of what is going on on his or her pages. Follow the seven rules given above and your website is likely to live a longer and a more successful life.