As soon as we hit March and the Winter weather started to fade, everyone started Spring cleaning. Homes, closets, diets, they all got an overview and a cleaning to make sure everything was organized and tidy.
But what about our blogs? Blogging is a regular part of any bloggers life and it deserves a spring cleaning as well to make sure sites are looking their best and are running as efficiently as possible. We all have drafts we need to revisit, plugins that need updating, design elements that we want to change. This is a great time to do it!
So, here are 6 Ways to Spring Clean Your Blog.
1. Remove Any Unused Plugins
You should be updating your plug-ins on a regular basis to ensure the functionality and security of your site. It’s important to remove any unused plug-ins as well. The reason for this is that it slows down your website and it can also be a security concern. It only takes a few minutes to look through them and get rid of any that you haven’t used or activated over the last year.
2. Revisit Your Comments Sections
Obviously you’re doing something right if you’re inspiring readers to leave comments. But if you leave them unmoderated or unanswered, it might look like you don’t care and it could discourage people from leaving comments in the future. So take an hour or two one day and visit your comments section, approve or delete any that are pending and answer the comments from people who took the time to write.
3. Fix Dead and Broken Links
Often over times, links that you’ve used in blog posts no longer work. It’s annoying for a reader to peruse an old post, click on a link and find the old 404 Error message. It’s also unprofessional. A plug-in like Broken Link Checker, will crawls your entire website and lets you know where there are broken links so you can fix or delete them.
4. Re-Read and Update Old Posts
If you’ve been blogging for a while, this might be a good time to revisit some of your old posts, especially the popular ones and update them. Whether it’s with some new info or links, it’ll make them more relevant for readers. It also might spark some inspiration for a new post that allows you to link back to the old one.
5. Create an Editorial Calendar
Creating an editorial calendar for your blog can make blogging life so much more organized. It allows you to create a list of topics, schedule them according to how may times you publish a week and not be scrabbling for ideas and posts.
6. Update Your Images
If you look at your posts a year ago and compare them to recent ones, I’m sure you’ll see a difference. Of course your blog improves over time and so do your photos and graphic capabilities. So go back and replace images with new images that you like and that are better quality. Research shows that people are more likely to read your whole post if you have great images.
What will you be doing to update your blog?