In another month it will be spring. While you’re making up your seasonal “to-do” list, consider adding more than the usual closet cleaning and gutter clearing to your list. Since you’re organizing the rest of your life, it’s a good time to spring clean your blog too. Here are a few things to look into:
- Links – Check your links. Most bloggers have several links in each post. In many cases, the link is the most important part of the post. Enlist the aid of link checker and check every link in every post. If your blog has been around for a few years, you may have quite a few outdated or useless links. Of course you’ll have to do damage control on posts with bad links.
- Posts – In addition to making your links are all working, check your posts to see if updates are in order. For instance, if you blogged about a certain tool or widget, now would be a good time to offer an update on said tool. If it didn’t work out or exceeded your expectations, let your readers know.
- Blogroll –Check your blogroll too. Are all of your blogrollees still relevant? Are all of the blogs listed in your sidebar still in existence? Likewise, are there blogs not listed that might be of interest to your readers? Add and remove as necessary.
- Ads – Many times we’re reluctant to remove ads because we’re hopeful they might make us some money “someday.” If you had the ads up for some time and they’re not producing, it’s time to re-think your strategy. Remove the ads that don’t work for you and research other income generators.
- Design – Finally, check your blog’s design. Is it still pleasing to the eye or is it now cluttered with ads and widgets? Too many bells and whistles can be a turn off. Determine which items are useful, and remove those that generate the least interest.
Use the change in seasons to do a little blog maintenance. You don’t have to make any drastic changes (unless you feel it’s necessary) but it’s good to make sure everything is still relevant and in working order.
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An interesting post. For me it doesn't involve too much work to carry out those area's of maintenance, as i'm a fairly new blog, but these are points ill certainly be referencing back to in the future when it becomes of size, and i need to take measures like these.
Keep up the great work.
These are great advices!
I have just changed my design (well, in Canada spring won’t be here for another three months at least, so I start early
) and updated my blogroll. Quite a few blogs weren’t active anymore…
I’m also going to look at previous posts, dead links etc.
Great tips to remember! Thank you for sharing this.
With the design, pay special attention to the sidebar. It's easy to get carried away with widgets and feed counts and blogrolls, ads, etc. Having a 3 mile long sidebar looks awful, especially if you care about loading times, or use your footer for anything.
Minimalism is the way to go 😉