Say it with me, completing blog maintenance is an easy way to gain traffic to my website. I’ve previously detailed a blog post template, now this article will explain how to review and update your content. If you’ve been blogging for years with hundreds of posts, this guide will refresh you on tactics to boost traffic. Additionally, for those new to blogging, you will learn valuable habits to initiate sooner rather than later. Regular maintenance is necessary to ensure your posts are optimized for long-term success. Add these reminders to your calendar to remain organized and automate the process of reviewing your work.
Establish A Social Media Schedule
The article draft has been copied and pasted to WordPress. You’ve added the final touches to make the post typo-free and aesthetically pleasing. After a deep breath you click publish and enjoy the wave of satisfaction knowing your hard work is complete. To ensure people actually read your content, you decide to post about it on social media. This is website maintenance. The initial marketing after publishing an article is not the only time social media should hear about your blog posts. Think about it, your blog post will live on WordPress for years so it deserves more than one social media campaign.
Having a predetermined marketing schedule is a great way to automate your blog’s maintenance. Whether you’re tweeting, posting a story, or creating a pin, utilizing a monthly schedule helps increase blog traffic. Personally, I try to incorporate non-blog content on my social media as well. This way I am not constantly sharing links, but also building my brand and engaging with my audience.
Review Your Sources As Blog Maintenance
Another important task in keeping your website up to date, is reviewing all internal and external links. Could you imagine having a successful website with thousands of monthly viewers that read your blog posts. Now think about how EMBARRASSING it would be if your link to another article doesn’t work…error page not found. Or even worse, what if your affiliate link URL has changed and you haven’t updated your post. That’s money you’re missing out on because you aren’t regularly completing blog maintenance. A simple calendar reminder to check your links at least one time a month solves this problem.
Furthermore, ensuring each and every link opens in a new tab is another great way to optimize your site. This is a hack I learned after having already published multiple blog posts. Luckily, logging on WordPress and editing my previous links took less than 5 minutes. This change can increase audience session time which is an important metric as you scale your website.
Update Keyword Research For Your Website
Trends change and your posts should be updated in alignment with these changes. This can be accomplished with updating the title of your blog posts, editing subheadings, or revising the actual text. Either way, it is imperative to research what phrases are currently being searched on social media and popular search engine browsers. From this research you can then tweak your posts to gain new readers who may not have found your content with the previous keywords utilized.
An example of this form of blog maintenance:
A fashion blogger previously published a blog post on her WordPress site. At the time, she focused on key phrases such as “preppy,” “posh,” and “classy style.” A few months go by and the author realizes the new trend is terms like “old money” “chic” and “wealthy aesthetic.” While the terms are new, the content of her post is still relevant. As a result, simply replacing her old keywords with these new, trending phrases could be all the blog maintenance necessary.
Republish Evergreen Blog Posts
Another reminder you should add to your maintenance calendar is to republish evergreen content. These are blog posts that are not time sensitive because they remain relevant over a long term.
Examples of evergreen content:
- Food bloggers posting soup recipes every Fall.
- Sports writers publishing championship predictions each season.
- Relationship niche content leading up to Valentine’s Day.
- Parenting authors blogging about back to school in August.
The beauty of evergreen posts is knowing that you essentially have a template for when it is time to republish. The amount of editing is completely up to your discretion. You can completely change the text but keep the same topic or make minor changes while capitalizing on current trends.
Pro Tip: republishing old content is a completely acceptable form of blog maintenance. To ensure best results with this tactic, also change the post’s URL. This will please algorithms when you market the post, regardless of how similar the republish is to the original content.
Manage WordPress Plugins
My final tip for website maintenance isn’t about the actual content you’re posting. You need to be mindful of which plugins you’re using on your WordPress site. It’s easy to forget you installed a plugin that has never actually been. This is a waste of space and can even slow down your site unnecessarily. Furthermore, keep track of plugin performance. If that SEO tool hasn’t helped you move up rankings it might be time to try a new one.
Evaluating your plugins should not be completed as frequently as the actual post maintenance. Instead, review this quarterly, if your website is for a business, or twice a year if you’re posting mainly for fun. If you’ve paid for any plugins consider keeping a spreadsheet of renewal dates. These tools should be at the top of your list when it comes time to evaluate expenses and progress.
Regular blog maintenance keeps your website running smoothly. Setting calendar reminders and documenting changes can keep you organized and streamline this process. Each of these five tips can be done in minutes yet make a huge difference in your blogging career. To review, I suggest the minimal maintenance of managing plugins, republishing posts, updating keywords, reviewing sources, and creating a social media schedule. Let me know in a comment below if there’s any other tips you think would help!
