Part of my fall cleaning this year includes cleaning up my blog. If you’ve had your WordPress blog for a while, here’s a short list of updates and tweaks you can do that will pay dividends in traffic and conversions:
1. Clean up the 404 errors. These are the “Page not found” errors a visitor will see when you have broken links on your website. An easy solution is a plugin called “Smart 404” that redirects your visitor to similar content on your site.
2. Do your old posts have broken external links? Maybe you linked to somebody’s cool website last year and that site is now gone. The WordPress plugin “Broken Link Checker” notifies you of broken links so you can fix or eliminate them.
3. When was the last time you really looked at your site? Has it become cluttered with links, text boxes, social media links and just stuff? (Sounds like my office.) Like our living and work spaces, our websites and blogs get cluttered and stale too. Revisit your widgets and the stuff in your sidebars and get rid of stuff that doesn’t serve your current needs.
4. Read your “about you” page again. Is it time to update your qualifications and areas of expertise? And how old is your photo on the page? Are you sporting a dated hairstyle or glasses? Or worse yet, dated clothes? It’s time to bring it all to the present. (By the way, this one’s next on my makeover list.)
There’s lots more to be done, and I’ll be posting updates over the next few weeks. My house hasn’t been completely decluttered yet and my website is no different. But both are sporting fewer dust bunnies these days. And I’ll welcome your suggestions for what’s worked for your sites too.
A little ongoing maintenance can save you a lot of headaches later on! Thanks for reading!
I’ve come to find that I tend to take a nice long look at my blog every 6 months or so, to see if anything needs changing or updating. This is a good tip for anyone who has been blogging for a while, or wants to start.