Through my furlough leave, I’ve found that one thing that has kept me busy is this blog! I shared in a recent post a few things that you can do during furlough, and as well as that i’ve been spending my time really focusing on my content and my blog maintenance that i’ve been majorly putting off. I thought this would make for a great blog post, to share some simple ways you can instantly spruce up your blog!
Simple ways to spruce up your blog during this down time…
If like me you work full time around blogging, there will always be vital bits of blog maintenance that you say you’ll do on the weekends and then six months later, you’ve still not ticked it off your to do list (oops!). For me, working on content and getting that content published is what I focus on during my spare time around work rather than doing those boring mundane tasks. Now that i’ve got all of this spare time, I have been throwing myself into my blog but i’ve also been focusing on trying to up my DA and to also make my blog more SEO friendly, so all in all positive steps to improve my blog. Any who.. here are a few things i’ve been doing and that you can do too!
Fix Broken Links
Ugh, broken links. Why? Why do they have to exist? And why do I have to fix them?! I’m sure I am not alone in how much I detest fixing broken links. So much so I think i’ve actively tried to fix broken links twice in my whole seven years of blogging. Broken links isn’t something people tell you about until you start to look at your blog DA, and everyone says that broken links play a big part in your blog’s overall DA. For me, my DA is probably the lowest it’s ever been but the content I am producing is the best i’ve ever produced (because I personally think it represents me the best) and you honestly cannot win. So during this time i’ve been trying to fix as many broken links as I can. If like me you run your blog via WordPress, you can install a broken link checker widget but I found that this only detects around 30 links here and there, and although they are super easy to fix it doesn’t delve into your old posts where a lot of broken links are likely to be located. As well as the widget, I’ve been using broken link checker of which scans up to 3,000 pages for free and i’ve found that this to be a fab way to detect and then fix broken links.
Update Your Blog Theme/Layout
For a while now I have wanted to get a new blog theme. I’ve had this one for a little over two years now and I feel like i’ve gotten as much as I can from it now, that I can’t make my blog look any different. Having said that, themes are bloody expensive and given that I am on furlough and i’m doing a no buy month, I have banned myself from purchasing a new theme. Instead, I’ve tried to spruce my blog up in smaller ways. Firstly you may have noticed that my header has changed. I’m not overly crazy about it, but it’ll do for now. I’ve also muted down the pink tone within my blog theme, just so its a bit more mature and not as ‘girly’. For now it’s fine, but if you can justify a new blog theme then go for it!
Privatise Old Posts
Whilst fixing broken links, it brought up old blog posts that 1) had so many broken links, but 2) just didn’t represent me or the kind of content I want out there. So instead of fixing the broken links, I’ve just privatised them. All old monthly favourites posts, gone. All Primark hauls, gone. Granted overall I have privatised around 180 old blog posts, which took a good day or so I must say, and it sounds a tad extreme but, I feel so much better for it. If someone were to delve through my blog into the archives, I feel like i’d be happy with what they are likely to see. So yeah, if you’ve got old blog posts that you posted for the sake of it then get them privatised!
SEO Optimise Old Posts
Also whilst fixing old links, I found that the majority of my old blog posts weren’t SEO optimised what so ever as Blogger doesn’t offer SEO support like WordPress does. To begin with I kind of couldn’t be bothered to update the SEO as it was another task that would be quite long, but then I thought that it would be a really positive thing to do. So whilst fixing broken links, I also then went ahead and worked on some SEO points, just to further push my blogs SEO. If like me, you moved over from Blogger to WordPress I would 10000% recommend going back and optimising your old post’s SEO. If you’re still using Blogger, I do think you can SEO optimise blog posts but I personally have no clue how, so google may be your best pal in this situation.
So those are a few ways that i’ve been sprucing up my blog and you can too! If you have been doing this and have any other ways you can spruce up your blog, please leave them in the comments below!
What are you doing blog wise during lock down?
