We take our cars in for 30,000 mile maintenance and inspection, right? Well, your blog should be no different. We all spend huge amounts of time every day ON our blog, but how many of us really spend time LOOKING at our blog in detail – through a reader’s eyes? We may run a feather duster over the edges, but when do we really deep clean?
So Week 1 is all about performing a little housekeeping on your blog to make it look and run better – an inspection checklist for your blog. You can do one, several or all of the items. It’s TOTALLY up to you and how much time you want to devote. Let’s go!
1.Review your primary navigation pages: take another look at your main navigation pages (about me, contact, etc.)
- Re-read the content on each page with fresh eyes. Are there typos, grammatical errors, or information that needs to be updated?
- Assess whether you need additional pages. Do you have a page that features some of your best posts? Do you have one that outlines your policies for doing giveaways or working with PR, if you do those things?
- Assess whether you need fewer pages. Does it make sense to collapse two pages into one? Remember, the fewer clicks a person makes to get the information they seek, the more likely they are to come back.
2. Follow yourself. It’s so important to sign up for your own content! Take a moment now to subscribe to your RSS feed, email subscription, GFC, and any other follower tools you utilize. You can 1) ensure that they’re all actually working properly and 2) see your content as your readers see it. This will help you tailor and structure your content in a way that will be most reader-friendly.
3. Assess your category structure. Categories should be general topic areas that most of your blog posts can be grouped into. Tags are more specific descriptors for blog posts.
Categories often will appear in navigation bars or sidebars (particularly in WordPress). The more categories you have, the longer those navigation bars and sidebars will become.
- Can you eliminate any categories by re-grouping posts into another similar category or renaming a category into something more broad?
- Do you need additional categories? Perhaps you’ve added a new topic area that you’re blogging about. Be sure that it has its own category to make that topic area easier to find.
- Are your existing categories worded properly, or should they be re-named? Maybe you started blogging about “baby items” but now your kids are older and you want to talk about toddler items. You could switch the category name to “Baby and Kid Gear” and re-assign that new category to all applicable posts. {yes, this can be time-consuming!}
3. Quick-scan your old posts. Sometimes I forget to add a category, tag or SEO info to my posts. If you have time, go back through your old posts and do a quick-scan to make sure your info is updated. Or commit to looking at one old post per day and updating it.
4. Check in on your commenters. Cycle through your last 60 days’ worth of posts. Are there commenters that you ignored, owe a response or need to visit? Do it now. One visit to their blog with a comment may mean the difference between a faithful follower and someone who never returns.
5. Review your blogroll. {if you have one!} Does it reflect all of the blogs you recommend? Update it now. Take out the blogs you don’t read, and add the blogs you love.
6. Perform a site link check: check all of the links on your home page to make sure they a) work and b) link to the right pages – especially your social media icons for Twitter, Facebook and the like!
7. Inspect buttons and badges. You likely have some other blog badges and buttons on your site. Do a once-over on them:
- Do you still have relationships with all of the site badges you display? If not, remove the ones you no longer affiliate with.
- Make sure they all link to the proper places.
- Consider organizing your badges under appropriate headings like “communities,” “blogs I love” or whatever makes sense.
- Keep ads grouped together.
8. Update your BlogFrog community. If you have a BlogFrog community, make sure you’re advertising it somewhere on your blog sidebar. Use one of their available widgets. If you don’t have a BlogFrog community, consider setting one up!
9. Review your footer. Oftentimes, the footer can be the “town dump” of our blogs, where anything goes that we just don’t know where else to put. Assess your footer material, re-organize it if necessary and delete any unneeded items.
10. Evaluate your advertising. Are you currently advertising? Assess whether or not your current advertising is worth your time, and/or your visual space. If it’s distracting your readers AND you’re not making money, consider removing the ad. I finally just did this with Google AdSense.
11. Take stock of your plug-ins and widgets. Every tool or widget you use should ADD something to a) the user experience on your blog or b) how your site functions. Have a look at your plugins and widgets. Do you need ALL of them? Deactivate or uninstall the ones you don’t need. Are there better tools available that you can replace existing plugins or widgets with? Remember, plugins can slow your blog down, so keep it as streamlined as you can.
That’s the 11 Point Inspection!
Writing Task for this week: Your task this week is to find a COOL, little-known plugin or widget and tell us about it. It should be one that most of us might not have heard of. When we share these in the BlogFrog, we’ll have a great resource of plugins and widgets to draw upon! Writing task is due by Thursday!
Now, head over to the other reading assignment for this week which will help you learn all about working with web designers. Extra Credit reading is also available!
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{ 48 comments }
Great ideas. I wish I had more time to get through this kind of stuff. Have spent the afternoon trying to understand RSS and Google Analytics. It can really be confusing!
Catch the Kids´s last [type] ..Spice Girl
Awesome tips! I love how you framed it up as an inspection. That’s exactly what it is! I’m guilty of letting some things slide but I’ll use this as a good checklist to work from. Thanks!
Melissa {adventuroo}´s last [type] ..A Letter to My Sleep-Fighting Baby
I need to do it too. I’m a slacker! The redesign was the best thing to force me to look at some of this stuff!
I’m so very excited, this is just where I need to start.
p.s. My name, email and website info doesn’t save on your blog. I have to type it in each time.
that’s weird about your info. I’m just starting to dig into my new Wordpress theme so I’m relearning a lot of stuff myself
Oh man I am going through the category mash up now and it is so hard. Ideally they say to have 7 categories and man will that be tough but I am committed!
I also want to build a custom footer to hold some of the stuff that I specifically feel like is taking up too much room in my sidebar so we shall see how that goes…off to the Thesis forums!
Inspections are a great things to do on a regular basis and I am excited to dig into my blog over the next few weeks.
BTW do we need to post on the plugin or just go to Blog Frog? I don’t necc. want to devote a post to a Wordpress Plugin. Thanks!
Brittany at Mommy Words´s last [type] ..Violet’s First DIY Tutorial for Babies- How to Sit Up
it sounds like you needed to host this week. Want to do a tutorial on building a custom footer?
just kidding.
if you don’t want to do a post about the plugin – it’s totally up to you. Would be great if at a minimum, you post it in the blogFrog so people can benefit from your knowledge. I”m finding that my “technical” posts are doing really well traffic wise and so the reason I suggested it as the writing task was to help people who want to drive traffic to their blog.
Everything is optional in the challenge!
So, I’ve been contemplating this very thing as well because my readers have absolutely no idea what WordPress or plugins are.
What I think I am going to is set up a page but not have it show to the public. I can do this in Thesis. Then I can paste the link in to the BlogFrog forum so it will still drive traffic to my blog and everyone can see it and those who don’t know about it, won’t worry about it.
I just went through my blog a couple of weeks ago and did a lot of this. I have a little more work to do though! Thanks for the awesome info!
Kat´s last [type] ..Wordless Wednesday and Follow Me- Im CanadianSeptember 8- 2010
Woo hoo! You’re a step ahead!
I’ve been meaning to organize all my posts and tags. Yet again, thanks for the kick in the pants…
ash´s last [type] ..“Buckle up- Buttercup”
you’re welcome!
The blog I’m using for this challenge is fairly new. But now that I have a good bit of posts on there, it definitely needs some organizing! This couldn’t have come at a better time!
I’ve recently starting looking into adding an RSS feed for both of my blogs. Any advice or tips on how to set that up would be awesome!
Evonne´s last [type] ..I have my days
I’ve had a few people ask about RSS feeds. I honestly didn’t realize until I started this challenge how confusing it is for a lot of people. I probably won’t get to it this week, but I’m considering writing up a post about it for week 6, which is going to be Blogging Buffet week – the week of a lot of different topics.
Happy Sunday! Happy B2S/B2B Week 1! I found you thru the fabby Liz over at BelleBeanEtc…..
This is a great way to get my school year started! Let’s get schooled…..
Thanks for doing this!
alyson: common sense, dancing´s last [type] ..Wake me up when September ends
Liz is fab
Glad you could join us!
Great ideas! I’ve been thinking about doing some organizing, but it’s such a daunting task. This assignment will be my motivation.
Christine´s last [type] ..Never Forget
The best suggestion I have is to not feel like you HAVE to do it all at once. Then it feels so daunting one ends up not doing anything. So even if you commit to doing one of the inspection items, it’ll give you some momentum!
Awesome assignment, I am pumped!
Gigi do you want questions here or would you prefer all questions on blog frog?
When you update an old post does it go out in your RSS feed as a new post? (and if it does how do you prevent that from happening?)
And a suggestion (ignore if you were already planning on talking about this later) but here is a fab post on avoiding plagiarism, http://www.mommywantsvodka.com/everything-i-needed-to-know-from-blogging-i-learned-from-the-internet so maybe blog challengers can consider putting a copyright in their footer?
Sorry this was a short novel-sized comment
Yuliya´s last [type] ..No Nuke Cuke Soup
Thanks, Yuliya!
I think it’ll be easiest to do questions in BlogFrog, but since you asked about rSS (which is going to hopefully be a topic in Week 6)…
I’m not sure about blogger, but in WordPress, if you update a post it will go out in your RSS feed as a new post. However, I believe one way around this is to backdate the post. So, let’s say you’re editing a post today? Before you hit “update” you change the date of publication to a date in the past. I am pretty sure that then, it doesn’t show up in the feed. But I’d have to confirm.
Great suggestion on the copyright thing..it was on my “I should cover” list but I may not have time for it during these 6 weeks. Can you post that in the blogFrog?
What a great starting place! I have some research to do with the extra credit regarding widgets as I’m wondering if that’s what I need to use to add tabs on Blogger? Adding tabs is one of my main goals, and maybe I’m just missing where you do that on there. Thanks!
NotJustAnotherJennifer´s last [type] ..A Note on the Importance of Siblings
my info doesn’t save and commentluv doesn’t work. just an fyi.
I have some work to do here. In the redesign install haste I lost our blogroll buttons. and some other deep cleaning issues. work!
Great advice, Gigi! Now, these are things that we’re supposed to work on through out the week, right? Just want to be sure.
I’ve already started working! I’m *SUCH* a good student!!
Yes, you can work on them all this week – or whenever you want. I can’t issue detentions
For #6 I suggest the Link Checker plugin for WordPress.
Thank you once again. This is probably common-sense stuff, but I was missing at least half of it.
Exactly. It really is common sense stuff, but that’s the easiest stuff to overlook sometimes (i’m guilty of it myself and haven’t done my own inspection yet!)
Oh gosh. I don’t even know what a plug-in or a widget is, so will really be interested to see what more experienced folks come up with. I’m in the process of revamping my entire blog and moving it over to wordpress at the same time, so this course comes in handy. Still nervous because it seems to take me three times as long as everyone else to understand things.
iv’e been giving a lot of thought the the blogroll thing. i get too emotional about removing buttons, even though i know in my head it makes sense to do so. and i need to revisit the nva bar because i have considered removing 1 page and adding a different one in its place.
liz´s last [type] ..Word Up- YO!- Edition 14
I agree, blogrolls are a sticky subject. I am on the fence about what to do with them too.
I’m so excited to start the challenge! With the pre-work completed, I need to add social media icons for Facebook and twitter. Are you going to cover social media icons at all during the challenge? If not, then I’ll muddle through the process today.
I have got to work on my categories for sure- I have slowly been trying to condense them lately! I also love the tip to subscribe to yourself- I actually only started doing it recently, and it helped me discover when my feed was not updating properly!
Footers are so often wasted space- they can be a great place for the plugins you prefer for your blog (such as a stat counter), but don’t necessarily benefit readers. I have set this up for many clients, but have been slacking on my own blog lately- this is such a great motivation to start!! Of to widgetize my footer right now!
Ashley @ Just Another Mom of 2´s last [type] ..Saturday Spotlight- Schrocksters Live
Great ideas. I’ve reorganized a bit but am thinking of converting to WordPress since I’ve heard nothing but good things about it + would like to own our domain instead of praying blogspot doesn’t crash & burn someday…things to think about!
Jackie´s last [type] ..Sunday morning
Loving this post, Gigi! It’s easy to forget or let too much time pass by before “freshening up” around the blog. Headed over to take care of some of this now!!
Can’t wait to look for fun new plug-ins!
Linds
Almost finished with my inspection. May go over to BlogFrog and get a buddy – the thought of reading through my posts for typos, etc., makes me want to weep.
Great tips! Thank you!
Missy @ Wonder, Friend´s last [type] ..Sunday School No Kidding
Great inspection! I look forward to working through it all this week!
Amy´s last [type] ..oohilove or not
I need to clean up my blog. I actually set-up a BlogFrog account awhile back, but I never linked it to my blog.
MamaOnDaGo´s last [type] ..Official First Day of Preschool
I did get rid of Google AdSense after I found it it was slowing my loading up by 6 seconds. Went down from 10 to 3 seconds loading getting ride of that.
ALSO: yes, yes , YES to the 60 day reveiw of commenters. Just pick one out a day, at least, and catch up. Make it a daily thing.
All good advice, Geeg. You are working so hard for us. Thank you.
Ooh lots of tasks; but I’m excited to get going!!
Wow, that’s some list. I know I am going to learn a lot in this process. Thanks for all the work you have put into this. I already have questions, but I will post them over at blogfrog. Thanks!
City Share´s last [type] ..Brisket with Vegetables- Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
I have no idea how to add SEO tags to my blog. I can’t scan that to max sure I’m using it properly. guh.
Jessica @Debt_Princess´s last [type] ..Time for a Time Out
Dude! I’m such a slacker! I’m so far behind on blogging that I haven’t even started my 11 point inspection! Guess what I’ll be doing tonight? Acutally, I’m exctied about this…it looks like fun!
Natalie´s last [type] ..Random Randomness
Good one! I’m in the process of getting a new blog design to make it more user-friendly. I’ll take all these points into consideration. Thanks!
Lucky Dame´s last [type] ..A Bump in The Blog Road
Great post. All good points. Thanks!
Wahoooo done with week 1!!
I wanted to publicly acknowledge that one, I only did half the homework and since I migrated to wordpress AND my own URL (oh the nightmare) I’m going to have to do the homework all over again. But that is okay.
Thank you so much for doing this. Making me go back and review some old posts with objective eyes made me sit up and take notice what what worked and what didn’t. You’ve also inspired numerous posts.
Thank you from my tired eyes, weary brain and numb fingers.
You’re so sweet. I”m glad that the challenge is helping. Don’t worry. The pain of migrating to WP will subside…I promise. give it a week or two and you will love it!! Let me know if you need any help.
Look forward to a great writing post from you this week
hint hint
Great list. I’ve just starting picking a post a day to update tags etc. Never heard of blogfrog community. Will look into it, thanks!
Catherine Johnson´s last [type] ..Friday shout out crusaderchallenge
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