Website maintenance: the 15-minute monthly routine

A site drifts out of true without anyone touching it. You switch to summer hours, the booking tool changes its address, the card linked to the domain name expires. Nothing breaks all at once: the page becomes wrong little by little, and a customer is the first to notice.

The remedy comes down to two habits: automatic alerts set up once, which warn you, and a quarter of an hour a month written in your calendar. The rest happens once a year.

Setting up the automatic alerts once and for all

Automatic renewal of the domain name. Turn it on at your registrar, the company you rent your address from. Afnic, which runs .fr, still advises checking before the expiry date whether renewal needs an action or a payment from you: an expired card is enough to make it fail.
Search Console alerts. Once your site is verified in this free Google tool, you get an email as soon as Google detects a new problem on your pages. See our Search Console guide.
Google profile notifications. In your Business Profile, menu More, then Notifications: turn on customer activity (new reviews, new photos) and reminders about business information. Google can change opening hours or a phone number based on other sources. When a suggestion needs your review, you have four days to accept or reject it; without an answer, Google may publish it.
An alert on your name. Google Alerts writes to you when your business name appears on a new page: an article, a directory, a forum.
Automatic updates, if your site runs on installable software with plugins. Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr advises applying them as soon as they come out, and automatically when possible.
Two reminders in your calendar: a quarter of an hour on the first Monday of the month, an hour on the anniversary of the domain.

The monthly quarter of an hour

On the same day every month, in this order:

Task	Time	What you check
Hours and prices	3 min	The site, the Google profile and the door all say the same thing
Reading on a phone	4 min	Everything reads, every button can be tapped, nothing overflows
Links and buttons	3 min	Book, call, directions, social networks, the form
Search Console	3 min	The searches that lead to you, the pages in error
Google profile	2 min	Unanswered reviews, changes suggested by Google

Hours and prices

Look at the month ahead: a public holiday, time off? Google advises confirming holiday hours, even when they don’t change, so customers can rely on them. A closure of six days or less is entered as special hours; from seven days, the business is marked “temporarily closed”. Change the site the same day. Prices too: a menu shown at €18 online and charged €19.50 in the dining room makes for an awkward moment at the table.

Reading on a phone

Google crawls and ranks sites based on their mobile version. It is also your customers’ version: 91% of French people own a smartphone (Crédoc for Arcep, 2026). Read it outdoors, on 4G. Does the number dial with one tap? Does the address open a map? A cut-off title, a slow photo, a button hidden by a banner: note them, and fix them within the week.

Links that lead nowhere anymore

A dead link warns no one. The Instagram account changed its name, the booking tool has a new address, the PDF of the menu was replaced. Tap every button on the page, and send yourself a message through the contact form to check it arrives. If the page has many links, the W3C link checker tests them for you.

Search Console

Google says so itself: no need to sign in every day, a visit a month is enough, or after a content change. Look at two things: the searches that bring visitors (a service people ask you for, an unexpected neighborhood), and the pages Google reports as errors.

The Google profile

Reply to the month’s reviews, following our method. In the profile editor, text in blue marks information changed by Google: check that it is correct.

Photos from today

A shopfront from before the renovation, a team that has changed, a dish taken off the menu: a photo ages faster than text, and it is more noticeable. Google asks for images true to reality, and it shows the most recent first.

A good rhythm: a set every season, or at every visible change (new menu, new workshop, new hire), the same on the site and on the profile. See also our photo tips.

What you do once a year

An hour, on the anniversary of the domain name:

The domain. Check the expiry date, the card on file, and that the registered holder is indeed you or your company. For a .fr, Afnic provides a 30-day redemption period after expiry, during which deletion can still be reversed; after that, the name goes to whoever registers it first. A registrar that can’t reach you before expiry may request the deletion of the name: keep your contact details up to date with them.
The backups. Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr recommends regularly checking that a backup can be restored, keeping a copy in another place, and unplugging the storage after use. Once a year, actually try to put the site back up from the copy.
Access. Who has the passwords for the site, the Google profile, the domain? Remove those who have left: Google recommends it for the profile, and the rule applies everywhere. At the slightest doubt, change the password (see securing your site).
The legal notice. A new address, a change of legal status or of host goes into the legal notice.
The whole page. Read it as a stranger would: does it still say what you do today?

When an alert arrives

An email from Search Console. If it affects every page, like an invalid security certificate, deal with it the same day.
The site no longer responds. Check the domain’s expiry date first, then call the host before touching anything.
A message demanding money to “save” your domain or your profile. Click on nothing: sign in by typing the address of your registrar or your profile yourself, and check from there.

A notebook, and that’s all

Write down on a single sheet, kept outside the site: the registrar and the domain’s expiry date, the host, who has access to what, and where the backups are. The day something breaks, it is all there.

If your page was built in the 29webs studio, the text changes in this routine are requested in one sentence, like “closes at 6 pm on Saturdays”. The price shows up beforehand, and every edit can be undone. During your quarter of an hour, also tap the links in the contact block: call, email, WhatsApp.

In short: a few automatic alerts that warn you (domain renewal, Search Console and Google profile alerts), a quarter of an hour a month for hours, the phone, links and reviews, and an hour a year for the domain, backups and access.