If you are into the business of developing websites, you may know very well that websites developed in 2014 are going to be completely outdated according to today’s standards even though if those websites would have been dubbed as state of the art at that time. And what’s more interesting is that it takes only a number of minor tweaks and updates to up the level of an outdated website to make it compatible to the new standards. The matter of fact is that the basic technical requirements of a website do not change much even after a long time. So it is very much important to make sure that you have got those basics covered.

Now we are going to talk about the small tweaks and updates that you need to work on if you want to make necessary optimizations to modernize a website.

Enable HTTPS

HTTPS was introduced back in 1995 but it took until 2015 for half of the websites to have this protocol deployed. It has now become the very basic security requirement for the websites that deal with the transfer of sensitive and confidential data.

If your website was developed before 2015, there is a chance you haven’t installed an SSL certificate to run your website over HTTPS. In 2017, Google started prioritizing websites with HTTPS. And in 2018, it became one of the major prerequisites. It is evident with the prominent markers being shown whenever you open a website using Google Chrome.

Stop showing Google Plus in social icons

Google Plus was discontinued in 2019. Before that time, websites owners would use it in social icons to encourage users to share their webpages over their Google Plus timelines. Yet there are many websites that still show Google Plus in their social icons. These social icons are usually present in the footer sections of the web pages. The best thing that you can do in this regard is to modify the code to remove this icon.

Configure ReCAPTCHA

The spam generated from contact forms is nothing less than a big annoyance. The insecure forms are being used quite aggressively by the bots that are programmed to fill the forms and enter links. This practice is even more common on the websites that are developed using WordPress.

Good thing is that you can work on some effective anti-spam measures to have your website guarded against the spam link building bots. One of the ways is to place a strong moderation system in place if you want to engage only in a meaningful discussion with your viewers through the contact forms and comment sections. And if you want to allow all of the users to contribute while making sure that bots are not able to make any entry, you can deploy Google’s RECAPTCHA security system.