My 2-hour weekly maintenance routine

I used to 'set and forget' niche sites, then wonder why they decayed. Now every site gets a 2-hour Friday routine, and the ones I maintain outperform the ones I don't by a mile. Here's the checklist.

— Open Search Console, check for any page that dropped 5+ positions this week — catch decay early, before it compounds
— Scan for new 'almost ranking' queries (position 11-20, rising impressions) — pick one, add a section to the relevant post
— Click-test 5 random affiliate links; dead links are silent revenue leaks. I find one broken roughly monthly
— Check Core Web Vitals report — one slow new image can drag a whole page
— Reply to any blog comments or emails; engagement signals and reader trust both matter
— Add 2-3 fresh internal links from this week's content to older money pages
— Log the week's clicks/revenue in a simple sheet to spot trends, not panic on daily noise

The maintained sites hold rankings through updates far better. One site I neglected for 4 months lost 30% to slow decay; the one I tended weekly grew through the same period.

The setback: I once ignored a dead affiliate link for two months — the program had changed URLs and I'd been sending traffic to a 404 the whole time. Pure lost money.

The takeaway: Niche sites decay without tending. Two hours a Friday — catch drops early, fix dead links, feed near-ranking queries — and you compound while neglected sites slide.