@joshuamaraney

You have to continuously update your WordPress website and your WordPress plugins. According to stats, 43% of the world's websites run on WordPress. If you don't continuously keep your website updated, make sure that you're on the latest version of WordPress and most importantly, make sure that all your plugins are up to date.

It can cause big problems.

Take a look at this, for example. We have just taken over a client for SEO. They're working with a WordPress developer who said, yes, he's keeping things up to date and everything is great.

But look what happens when we look behind the scenes.

As you can see over here, first and foremost, the word press is not updated to the latest version. Secondly, they've got 33 plugins and are not updated. Now, the first question I'm looking at is why do they have so many plugins besides the plugins that have to be updated?

No website needs this many plugins, but nonetheless, as you can see, there are plugins that need updating.

Now, there's a few reasons why you have to update your plugins. No. 1, if the plugins aren't updated, the plugins don't work that well, which means the website doesn't work that well.

Secondly, most importantly, if you don't keep an update in your plugins, there can be vulnerabilities.

People can actually come into your system. Now, what has actually happened, and I've seen it hundreds of times, is that malware can happen in a Website. Now take a look at this, for example.

Here's an old client of ours.

They phoned us the other day. They said that their website was struck with malware. Take a look at these graphs over here.

Look at the spike in traffic and look at the spike in keywords that they're ranking for.

Unfortunately, these keywords have got nothing to do with the business. This specific client is a surgeon. And look at the words that they're ranking for.

You can obviously see that there's no connection at all.

Now from a SEO point of view, obviously if your website gets attacked by malware, your results are going to drop off a cliff totally. Google don't want to send traffic to a website that is ranking for some dodgy stuff. From a Google Ads point of view, your ads will be suspended straight away.

So again, if you have a WordPress website, make sure that you're working with developers that know what they're doing.

Make sure that they are updating your plugins and your website regularly. One way to look at it is, are you being charged for up keepable website? If you are being charged, make sure that the changes are happening.

But if you're not being charged, probably these things are not happening and I suggest that you look into it straight away.