In today’s digital world, your online presence can end up being the lifeblood of your business. This is why it’s imperative that your site is continuously up and running, and that you mitigate its downtime.
To do so, it’s wise to get started with uptime monitoring to ensure that your website is available and accessible at all times. And Jetpack has a useful uptime monitoring solution for you, and it’s available for free.
Today, we’ll learn why uptime monitoring is crucial for every WordPress website owner, and how using it can even save you money. You’ll come away understanding just how easy it is to get uptime monitoring notifications sent to your email address, as well.
Uptime monitoring limits your site’s downtime
Many people use their websites to show off their content or products to a specific audience segment. If your website doesn’t function properly, you risk disappointing your customers and site visitors. Ultimately, this might cost you business and revenue.
By implementing an uptime monitoring solution with Jetpack, you can keep this vulnerable downtime to a minimum. Jetpack notifies you via email if it detects that your website is offline, so that you can begin resolving the problem by investigating any recent site changes or contacting your host provider.
If your business has a dedicated IT team, you can route these notification emails straight to them. This will allow you (or your IT team) to respond quickly and resolve the issue sooner.
Use uptime monitoring to prevent lost business
If your website is the linchpin of your business, then it absolutely must be functioning properly in order for you to make sales. If it’s not accessible and performing the way that your visitors are accustomed to, you could lose customers and tarnish your brand’s credibility. This will increase your bounce rate and prevent customers from returning for any repeat visits.
Also, first impressions count. A first-time customer visiting your website will be unlikely to return if they find that your site is down. With uptime monitoring, you’ll minimize site downtime and potentially any lost business.
Downtime can harm your SEO
Search engines like Google rank websites based on what they find when crawling websites like yours. If your site is down, search engines will not find any content or pages to index and rank. You’ll want your website to be back up and running before a search engine decides that it’s no longer an active presence online.
Additionally, downtime prevents users from visiting your site… and may drive them toward a competitor instead. According to Christy McNeil of SocialMarketingFella:
Since a major factor of SEO is how people use a website, every click you drive away is one that can allow a competitor’s site to shine.
If your website continuously experiences downtime, your competitors will have more opportunities to attract your customers and get ahead in the race for search engine excellence.
Uptime monitoring with continuous pings to your site
Jetpack monitors your website’s uptime by checking the connection of your site’s homepage every five minutes. Jetpack will mark your website as “down” if it notices redirects, slow response times, or no response at all.
Once your website is tentatively marked “down,” Jetpack employs servers in geographically different locations to verify that the problem is not isolated to its network or primary data center location.
If all three checks fail, Jetpack marks the site as “down” and notifies you. Should your website ever fail any of these checks, you’ll receive a push notification on WordPress.com and the application, if you have it installed.
Additionally, you’ll receive an email notification.
Once the issue is resolved and your website begins passing Jetpack’s tests once again, you’ll receive another email notification, alerting you that everything is running smoothly once again.
You can monitor your site’s downtime and uptime in the Activity Log.
Let Jetpack do the monitoring for you
Jetpack’s uptime monitoring tool is extremely handy for anyone who isn’t able to constantly check the status of their websites. Jetpack not only safeguards your business, but it delivers valuable peace of mind knowing that you won’t embarrassingly find out from your site visitors that your website is having an issue.
Are you currently using uptime monitoring on your website? If so, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below!
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