Cleanup You Website

This month is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). This is where you get a little more serious about your blog and put up content for the month. We at Social Media Club Madison are trying to do the same. But it’s not only about posting new blogs, it’s about realizing the blogs that keep people coming back and improving on them.

Yes. You can improve on an old blog post. I do it all the time. Just today, I was re-editing a post on Geekazine about Blockbuster. If something changes, or if a small addition is needed that doesn’t need a new post, then I’ll clean up my old posts and add content.

Watch your Stats for Trends

The first thing I do is go into my stats pages and see what people are reading on my website. If you do not have a stats page on your blog, you should really get one. I suggest JetPack for WordPress.

There are 3rd party site programs for those who are on other content management systems. Something like Woopra will give you an idea who’s coming to your site, where they are from and what pages they visit.

Read and Correct

I am not an English major. I make grammatical mistakes all the time. However, when I re-visit a post, I can see it with “fresh eyes”.

I like to read the post aloud. When I stumble on a point, I review it. If I see redundancy in the post (ex: if you see “…that the…” in your writing, you have redundancy. Take out one or the other. It will depend on the situation of which one, however, you will not need both.), I remove it.

A new reader will not know I had mistakes on my site for so many months (or even years). I can also add SEO and other links as they become relevant.

Turn Spellcheck into a Learning Tool.

Here’s a little trick: If you get a word you misspelled, don’t rely on the computer spellcheck right away. Delete the word and re-spell it. Try it a few times, then when you are stumped, let the spell checker do it’s magic. You might find that your spelling will start to improve because of your attentiveness to the words.

Adding Content – Adding Edit notes

Some people will add a footnote saying something was edited after the post was published. This is a great idea if there was a correction. It’s even better if someone calls it out and you correct, referencing that person’s Twitter, Website or Facebook profile. You never know if someone will re-tweet an article if their name shows up as an editor.

You never know when an old post can become new again. I have had posts re-surface because of a news article, or a special on a product (in which they read the review I put out months ago). Cleaning up the post grows your SEO and could gain fans to your site. It’s not cheating – it’s rectifying a situation.

Jeffrey Powers Questions on this article? Feel free to twitter me @geekazine or email me directly at geekazine@gmail.com. Jeffrey Powers is a Video Content Creator, and Social Media Life Coach at Geekazine.com. He has been working in social media for over 5 years. He is also an IT Administrator for over 15 years and a Madison native.