I’m a little all over the place this morning. For some reason I thought this would be a quick post to write. It says no design right? Yeeeahhh. So, sorry in advance if it seems like I’m throwing info at you all at once. At the same time, all these little details are great ways to give a blog a quick update without having to worry about a new design or learning how to code.
Even with all of Jennifer’s helpful coding tutorials, it still takes me an unnatural amount of time to make updates to my blog. Some of us are just like that, I think! So even though I have a long list of design tweaks I want to implement at some point or another, there’s also tons of little things that don’t require an entire website rebuild or even any coding at all—that I can do to give my blog a facelift when needed. Realistically, I recommend checking in with all of these every few months or so to keep things fresh. Time flies and it’s easy to look at our blogs 6 months later and realize there’s a ton of outdated things on display for all to see. Here goes.
Update Images & Links
Possibly the most time consuming of all design-less tweaks, but totally worth it, is updating images. This means going through post by post and making sure each image is exactly what you want now. (To save time by just go through the popular posts or a few that have great written content that maybe didn’t come through in the image.) If you’re using different fonts than you were before, you can change old text on images to be consistent (hopefully you saved PSDs!). If relevant, make sure everything is titled correctly in WordPress, or at least make sure to reupload with a good, SEO friendly title. Also—if you’re on WP, it’s good to make sure each post has a feature image! And if you want to optimize them for Pinterest, make sure you’ve got a vertical image for readers to pin (might be a good time to upload a new one!). This goes without saying, but if you come across errors, pixelated images, or ones that are the wrong size of your current blog width, those should be a priority! While you’re going through, this is a good time to check on your links. Click each link to make sure it’s not broken/inactive and add links to old posts if you have since created fresh content on related topics.
Clean Out Sidebar & Navigation
I am guilty of this. I’ll implement something on my sidebar and just… forget about it. Actual example: My blog’s sidebar right now! I’ve been meaning to update the popular posts slider on my sidebar forever, but instead there’s just a link to these posts I’m not even promoting at the moment. This is the type of thing that if I just cleaned it up and gave it an update, would make my blog look so much better. Another example is if you created categories for your navigation menu and stopped using those. Whether you’re in blogger or WordPress, you don’t need to know any coding to go in and change categories. Take a moment to click on each, make sure you still use it, and get rid of it if you don’t. Then, scroll through each and make sure you actually want each post in that particular category—stuff happens. It will make navigating your site so much easier.
Tags, Titles, & About Page
Now that you’ve updated the visual content of your blog, it’s time to move on to the written. It’s so hard to remember to update your about page. I realized I needed an update when it had my age wrong! That’s how long it had been—a birthday had gone by. We all live and learn a lot over just a few months so there’s usually at least some update to be made in the bio department.
It took me awhile to really figure out how to use tags properly so when I got better at it, there was a lot of old content that was either missing tags completely or could’ve made better use of them. So it’s never a bad idea to quickly go through and make sure your tags actually help readers find your blog posts. While you’re in the posts, you can check on titles to see if they need anything. I like to keep titles short and sweet on my blog because it looks better with my design, so sometimes updating a title just means coming up with something catchy, but also clean.
Okay, that’s all I’ll say on this subject for now. There are lots of other ways to keep your site in tip-top shape in between any design tweaks you do, from updating SEO to keeping your branding consistent. But it shouldn’t be a stressful, all consuming thing—hopefully you can make updates every now and then without having to set aside too much time at once.
Abbie says
Love these tips! I just moved my blog from blogger to wordpress so I’m slowly moving through every post and updating it and it’s taking forever but it will definitely help my blog! Great post :)
~ Carmen ~ says
Oh gosh. The thought of updating images is daunting but absolutely necessary. Thanks for the inspiration. :]
// ▲ itsCarmen.com ▲
Audrey | Brunch at Audrey's says
WOW this is exactly what I started working on this week! I started with design elements like enlarging my popular posts, changing my social images to icons, and then adding social icons to the end of every post. My next step is to update pages. I think the most difficult thing for me to do will be to update my categories. As a personal lifestyle blogger, it can get quite broad :P -Audrey | Brunch at Audrey’s
Sophie D says
Thanks for reminding me to update my about page! xD I’ll go and do that now // http://themintexpanse.blogspot.co.uk/
Ruth Meaney says
I’m in the process of moving to wordpress.org. Oy. I look at my old posts and want to redo so much! Have been updating images and working on consistency with fonts etc. Absolutely helping! Great post, thank you :-)
Amber says
I always forget my About page! I need to update it just because it’s so… amateurish. Thanks for the tips!
Robin says
Gosh, this is really good advice, thanks!