At Fi Darby Freelance we often find ourselves responsible for the content and appeal of several blogs at a time. As well as having two blogs of our own, we like to keep our clients happy. All of which means that a bit of blog spring cleaning is definitely to be recommended. (This should not, by the way, be muddled up with ‘bog spring cleaning’ which is much more smelly!) We have five top tips to help you give your blog the spring cleanup it needs.

1. Check your blog calendar

If you haven’t installed a calendar plug-in on your blog yet, we suggest that you do so at once. You should have a regular blogging schedule that keeps your website up to date and gives the search engines fresh content to check out. Use your statistics tools to work out which days and times are most appealing to your audience and get writing… or employ us to do that bit for you!

2. Conduct a link review

There is nothing that irritates a readership more than broken links or links that lead only to a big fat 404, and as we all know, an irritated reader is not likely to convert into a paying one. If you don’t post too often you can do this review manually, which often shows up other little changes that need to be made, or you can download free link checker tools to do it for you.

3. Go through your comments

Responding quickly to comments is one of the best way to build a loyal, organic blog following but we all know that this takes time. If you haven’t done so for a while, set aside some time to go through your comments and reconnect with a few prospective customers.

4. Freshen up your look

You don’t have to go for a complete website rebuild to brighten up your blog. There are a number of small changes that will improve your site’s overall appeal as well as making it clear that you are still here and still out to impress.

• Switch from stock images to bespoke ones that really tell your story
• Colour theme your images and text to give a fresh look
• Experiment with black and white or stylised images
• Develop a word theme for blog titles
• Add a logo based ‘we’ve worked with’ panel to your side bar

5. Add a related post widget

If potential customers are reading one of your blog posts, they may very well want to read another, and then you might just have them hooked! A related post widget selects previous posts to display underneath each new blog post and helps lead your readership further into your site.

Very few of us enjoy spring cleaning in any form but we all appreciate the results. Take some time next week to look your blog over and see how well it is working for you. If you need any help, you know where to come!