6 maintenance tasks for your blog

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When it comes to blogging there are some tasks that you want to keep on top of in order to make sure your blog runs smoothly. Now I am no expert and I am learning everyday and there may be better explanations out there, but if I can help in anyway I can I wanna try.

Maintenance tasks are important when it comes to improving your DA (or known as Domain Authority) score, wanting to work with brands in the future and also your SEO. Therefore, making sure your site is running efficiently should be a priority, especially if this is something you want to do as a full time job in the future.

There have been a lot of great posts that explain what DA is and the importance, I personally love this one by Jenny from “Jenny in neverland” so go check that out and her blog! Also there have been some posts about SEO if you need some understanding on that, which of course Jenny has also wrote about here. Those are just a couple of posts if you need to learn more about what DA and SEO mean, because I am not focusing on the definitions in this post.

Anyway, I have put together a list of some important maintenance tasks you should be doing (and things I wish I knew) which will benefit your blog.

Let’s get into it…

1. Tidy up old posts

This one will probably be time-consuming (if like me you are only just starting this) but worth it in the long run. There will be blog posts that you may have wrote when you first started that maybe don’t fit with your current theme/blog so it might be worth checking and deleting them. If not then going back through the old posts and reading over checking links in the post or pictures etc and altering where needed. This just keeps everything up to date and relevant with your site.

Like I said this will be time-consuming but once you have done this it will benefit your blog so much!

2. Check for broken links

Checking for broken links is important for the overall running of your site, improving your DA score and SEO. If this is not sorted then it becomes a problem for any new visitors to access certain areas of your site. Also it will affect your DA score and SEO because these links are not deemed reliable by other sources (google etc).

I am currently attempting to sort this out, but there are a couple of ways to do it. I have seen there is a Plugin called “broken link checker” which I have heard is useful. You then just edit the URL and fix it.

You can also do it manually and use this site here, which is free and shows you what links are broken. However, this can be time-consuming especially if you have a LOT of broken links. But this may be the option if you cannot add Plugins!

Once you have all your broken links (if you have any) sorted just make sure to check this regularly to keep on top of it.

3. Link back to previous posts

Another one to help increase your DA score is linking back to relevant and previous posts within your blog post. You want to make sure that what you are saying makes sense and don’t just link back to posts for the sake of it. *Here is one of my previous posts for example*

However, linking back to previous posts drives that traffic and maybe new viewers to other posts you have wrote- which can also encourage new followers as well as benefiting your DA score. You can also link to posts that other bloggers have wrote which will help their DA score too.

4. Create Pinterest images

I have been constantly learning and playing around with Pinterest (you can check mine out here). However, it is known that Pinterest is one of the best ways to drive traffic and new followers to your blog. Therefore, it is so important you jump on the Pinterest app if you want to increase your traffic.

I recommend playing around with the app “Canva” which has loads of downloadable content and ideas already, but it can help you create your own pins. I do also just love creating my own flat lay’s and using these images for my pins as well.

It helps to just play around with these images until you find a theme that you like that will fit with your blog, and make them in advance so you can pin daily. However, do be patient with Pinterest because it does take time to work on and grow.

5. Add ALT text to your images

This is something that I have been recently doing and again can be time-consuming if you have a lot of posts to go back on. But the earlier you start doing this the better. Again this is beneficial for improving your DA score, and for driving traffic to your blog.

By ALT text to your images I mean when you choose a picture you want to insert into your post click on it to edit, and along the side you should see “block” and then the title “ALT” and a text box (like I have shown in the picture).

In the text box you want to describe the image in a clear way, as if you are describing to someone that cannot see the image. However, you do not want to write paragraphs but try and say it in a concise but short way.

This is great for if your image fails to load on someone else’s screen, and allows search engines to better rank your site. Therefore, it is definitely worth doing it if you haven’t.

6. Back up your blog

This may be self-explanatory but every week I like to just manually run a back up from my settings. This is just in case anything goes wrong and keeps my mind at rest.

Anyway these are just some tasks that I have been learning and attempting to do and I wanted to share. I am a beginner at all of this and technology may not be my strong point, but I am getting there.

Let me know if there are other tasks for blogging maintenance in the comments?

Thanks for reading,

Gemma Jayne x

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