Do a back up
When was the last time you did a backup? If you are hosted by Hostgator, they will do backups for you automatically, but if you ever need those restored, you have to pay a fee, while restoring the backup you did manually is free.
To do a backup, you just have to log into your cpanel and click on full backup. Five minutes of work and if your site ever gets hacked, you can restore it quickly.
Change your password
Speaking of hacking, is your password a little too easy? Spend another 5 minutes updating it to something with caps, numbers, exclamation points, whatever makes a hacker’s life more complicated.
Update your theme and plugins
Every now and then, you receive a notification saying your plugins have been updated, same thing for your theme. If you useGenesis like I do, or another theme with child themes, you may have to update both the main frame and the child theme.
That is easily done in WordPress, go to update and click all, but before that do a backup, in case plugins don’t work well with your new theme version.
Check for broken links
Broken links slow down your site and should be removed. For this there is a simple plugin called Broken Link Checker that will do the job for you, then give you a list of broken links. Some may come from other sites whose server is down that day, you can choose to keep them for now and recheck them later, some sites will be down for good and you should take the links down.
Improve your page speed
One reason why people do not spend a lot of time on your site is because it takes too long to load. Google has a nice tool called Pagespeed that will tell you how to improve your loading time.
Most of the time, you need to install a cache plugin, and to reduce your pictures’ size, if you are unsure about how to do that via plugins, you can hire it out on Fiverr. It is worth the effort as a faster page will mean more visitors.
Add picture credit and descriptions
Have you been using pictures that are not yours without crediting the author? Not cool. Add a credit to the image. While you are at it, adding a description to your image, or renaming it with a relevant keyword is also a worthwhile endeavor. For example you put a picture of a chart on your “Investing for 2014” post. Rename IMG0023 to “investing tips” or something, and you could get a little traffic bump from people searching for investing images.
Trim your RSS reader
If you enjoy networking around, you probably have a reader like Feedly or Bloglovin with your favorite blogs. Some may be extinct, some not your cup of tea anymore, and you may not have added a few new ones you read occasionally but enjoy more and more.
Spring cleaning your reader is pretty tedious but you will save time overall when you don’t have to skip 10 posts a day you are not interested in.
Rethink your networking
A bit part of blogging is networking, and at the moment you probably have a few blogging buddies within a mutual helping agreement. How efficient is your agreement? Is it even outlined or are you just linking to Bob’s posts in hopes he will link back to you, without saying a word?
You may have different goals and reasons for networking but here are some of the people you should look for:
Your peers. If you are a beginner, finding some beginners for mutual commenting, social promotion and linking to each other’s post is a good way to get a kick start together.
The biggest blogs you can. Some big bloggers are friendly, some are not, you’ll never know if you don’t try, thinking they are too big for you. They can be great help if you struggle with something your peers can’t help with. Don’t bug them with minutiae of starting a blog, only for more important matters, or they won’t pay attention to you.
The blogs with the best stats. Ideal for guest posting, linking, etc.
The most active in the community. If you are looking for comments, social promotion and the like, you may be better off targeting the most active members of the community than a big blogger who never tweet anything but his own posts.
People from your niche. There is a small early retirement website that is giving me more referral traffic than a much bigger general personal finance website who has me on it’s homepage’s blogroll. Why is that? Targeted traffic. Readers get to the small site looking for tips about financial independence, they get to the big one looking for much broader PF info. Your niche may be small, it is always better to get targeted traffic than general traffic that will stay on one page and leave.
The list goes on, but you only have limited time, so choose your friends wisely depending on what you are looking for.
Dust up social media
Haven’t tweeted in a while? There is a plugin to tweet automatically your last post. You can use dlvr.it of twitterfeed to tweet your friends’ posts automatically as well. Check out my post on how you can manage twitter on less than 10 minutes a day, if you aren’t that into it.
It is time to clean up your accounts, add your new friends, remove the ones you are not in contact with anymore, tweet and share your friends’ content and good reads you stumbled upon, etc.
Queue up some posts
I write up in sequences and then stop writing for a month or two, because of traveling, and simply life getting in the way. Having a few posts ahead helps me manage my schedule the way I want. At the moment, I am queuing up posts until mid May, as friends and family are coming to visit on top of Airbnb guests.
Whatever is going on with your life, you need some posts for those days you don’t feel like writing, you are busy, or something comes up at the last minute. Sure, your blog can go a week without post and few people will notice. But not a couple of months until you get your things together.
So try to have half a dozen non seasonal posts that could could put up at any moment, and try not to use them until you REALLY can’t do otherwise.
These are great tips – I try to make a habit of backing up my blog once a week after reading about what happened to many famous bloggers over the years that didn’t take these precautions.
Also, I’d checkout the wordpress plugin limitlogins. It makes it much more difficult for hackers to break in as it only allows 3 failed logins every couple of hours vs. unlimited tries to break into your blog.
MoneyAhoy recently posted…How To Save Money On Shoes
Do you think it is acceptable to delete old posts? The first posts are poorly written but they do explain a lot about how I got to where I am.
Still not feeling very springy here. It snowed last night and it is -13C here this morning. In like a lion out like a lion is not how the old saying goes.
jane savers @ solving the money puzzle recently posted…I Am A Twit, Silver Plate, Taxes Are A Go And Money Quickies For March 25, 2014
Great post, Pauline, and a good reminder! I have a TON of yard projects I hope to accomplish this Summer so it would be a good idea to knock some of this stuff out early. I need to clean up broken links, continue to work with my designer on the redesign (I take weeks to get back to him, so many other things to do), plan and write posts, and finalize contract renewals for my writers. There’s always something to do! I’m also bidding on a URL right now in an auction and I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get it. That means a new site!
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted…12 Tips for Beginner Couponers
All of these things are things that I need to pay attention to. I am currently working on queuing up some posts, because for me, that’s the most time consuming thing to do. I don’t check for broken links nearly often enough.
Daisy @ Prairie Eco Thrifter recently posted…US Airways Exit from Star Alliance Devalues Aeroplan
These are all great tips Pauline! I try and do the broken link check once a week so I don’t let it get away from me. I also have VaultPress, which cost around $50/year, and it does daily backups as well as some security scanning.
John @ Sprout Wealth recently posted…3 Simple Ways to Start Making Extra Money Now
I’ve been working on my picture description/titles, page speed and networking recently. The Google page speed tool is nice although the recommendations to fix some issues were a little over my head technically speaking.
Brian @ Luke1428 recently posted…My Fight Against Bandwagon Consumer Syndrome
Very timely post for me…I definitely need to put these in my to-do list. I was just thinking about backing up…just in case, but didn’t know how. I’ll have to do that ASAP. That and update all my plugins, etc.
Andrew@LivingRichCheaply recently posted…What’s an Extra Million Dollars or Two?
Thanks for the reminder to back up! I just did my first one in over two months. Sheesh! I need to make a habit of that.
Done by Forty recently posted…Opportunity Costs are Sunk Costs
All of these are great suggestions/reminders. I hadn’t done a back up in a long time and, ironically, decided to do one last night. I also agree about building up a queue of already written posts for flexibility. It’s been a goal of mine for quite some time, but I’m never able to really build anything up because I end up needing to post them before I’m able to write new ones.
Mr. Utopia recently posted…Understanding the Power of Compound Interest
I really need to get more posts in the queue. I was caught up for a while but am behind again. It’s funny how fast that happens.
Yes, super easy to enjoy the time while there are posts and end up with no queue again.
I’m the worst at adding picture credit and descriptions. I’m sure half of my photos have numbers as labels, whoops. I also haven’t done a broken link check in a while. Thanks for the reminder.
KK @ Student Debt Survivor recently posted…But I Was Budgeting So Well…
No problem! I am not perfect either but a good part of traffic on my sites come from pictures people find with keywords.
Good tips! It’s something I need to do. Right now I have to come up with a better system of reading and commenting. It’s taking up too much of my time. Do I stop reading some? Divide it up amongst different days? I still don’t know. I also need to check for broken links again. Do you know when they’ll do the next google pr refresh?
Tonya@Budget and the Beach recently posted…A Budget Traveler In Iceland: Part Two
I have drastically cut on commenting too, but enjoy reading often when I am offline, I just don’t drop a comment. Feedly makes it easy to scan quickly for interesting reads. No idea about the next PR update that seems like the world’s best kept secret!
Thanks for the list Pauline. Being a newbie blogger this list is very helpful.
Raquel@Practical Cents recently posted…Liebster Award and Other Mentions
Google factors Page Speed into their search results.
Leslie Beslie recently posted…Weekly Updates: March Madness + Half Marathon Training Modified
Hi Pauline,
Thanks for the tips and I certainly have a few I need to work on since the new blog design. I might have to email you to pick your brain though for some expert advice. Cheers mate
canadianbudgetbinder recently posted…How to keep the grass green on your side of the fence
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