10 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog

Whether you just started your blog or you’ve been plugging away at it for years, there are always things you can do to improve your blog.

Around this time EVERY year, I do a full analysis of my blog. Why? So I can continually improve my online business/blog, plus set goals and plans for the upcoming year.

AND it’s important for you to do the same. So–

10 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog or Online Business

Here are 10 actionable items that you can do RIGHT NOW to improve your blog or online business.

1. Know Your “Why” and Serve Your Audience.

Why did you start your blog?

It’s always important to decide WHY you’re blogging because knowing why you’re blogging will help establish and keep the tone and voice of your blog.

How are you serving your audience?

A lot of times bloggers just start writing about their day-to-day life; about their family, their home, their travels, etc. However, unless you are driving a ton of traffic to your site, this is a hard way to make money. If you want to make money blogging, you’ll need to start SERVING your readers!

Over time, you will discover the types of posts your audience wants from you (via Google Analytics tracking). In the meantime, keep your “why” in the back of your mind when writing your posts.

Extra Tip: “How To” blog posts are a great way to serve your readers.

2. Re-Evaluate Your Goals.

So often we get stuck in the routine of “just doing things” that we forget why we’re doing what we’re doing. Re-evaluating your goals will help you get things done and if need be, help you realize that you need to be doing things differently in order to get where you want to go.

Extra Tip: Write down where you want your blog or business to be a year from now. Think about the following when doing so…

• traffic number
• sales number
• earnings number
• number of followers
• number of subscribers
• your lifestyle

3. Visit Your Homepage for the “First Time”.

Your site’s first impression is OH SO IMPORTANT! You’ve got about 3 seconds to engage a new visitor to stay or else they’ll leave.

So here’s what I want you to do…

Pretend to be a new visitor on your site’s homepage and give it a quick assessment by answering the following questions:

1. What do you notice first?
2. Do you understand exactly what the site is about (without scrolling or clicking anything)?
3. Is the site easy to navigate?
4. Are there any pages not working?
5. What seems to be missing?

Your answers to the above questions can show you the types of things you can do to improve your site. Maybe it’s as easy as adding a tagline to your header, making some fonts larger (or darker), or perhaps it’s taking away some annoying advertisements.

Extra Tip: If any of these changes take less than 15 minutes, do them RIGHT NOW! Otherwise, add them to your to-do list to complete in the next month or two.

4. Update Your “About” Page.

Read through your about page and see what you can add or change.

A great about page gives readers an introduction about you, where you live and why you started your blog. It also clearly states your blog’s purpose. It’s best to keep things short and sweet – no one has time (nor wants) to read a long dissertation.

And don’t forget a quality photo that represents you/your brand! Here’s a great example from our client Style House Interiors:

Most new readers, if they like what they’ve read, will visit your about page sooner than later. So make it a good one!

Extra Tip: a great idea is to link to a few popular posts on your blog.

5. Grade Your Website.

A great way to check the “health” of your website is to have it graded by Website Grader. It’s free and generates a nice, easy to understand report grading your sites ‘performance’, ‘mobile’, ‘SEO’ and ‘Security’.

Extra Tip:  You don’t have to enter your email address if you don’t want to.

Note: I discovered that I needed to combine some files and remove some java script to increase my performance load time and to submit xml sitemap to other search engine sites (besides Google). Always good to check… and then update!

6. Install Yoast SEO plugin (if you haven’t already).

The Yoast SEO plugin is free and makes it easy to optimize your posts for SEO. Once installed, you’ll find the ‘Yoast SEO’ box at the bottom of every WordPress post. This is where you’ll input your keyword and see how well that particular post is optimized for that specific keyword.

7. Install Google Analytics (if you haven’t already).

Google Analytics is also free and helps you track the effectiveness of your site.  You can go Here to help you set up and install Google Analytics to your site.

8. Grow Your Email List.

A highly engaged email list (aka dedicated readers and followers) provides higher conversion rates for sales and is the most intimate connection with your audience. Plus, you can contact your audience whenever you want!

Extra Tip: Offer a freebie incentive (that give your reader extra value) for subscribing to your email list. Here’s an example of one that Melyssa Griffin did:

9. Update Old Blog Posts.

Head over to your Google Analytics and write down your top 10 blog posts. Then one by one go update them. You can:

• create a new image for the post (and pin it to Pinterest)
• add affiliate links
• create a freebie for that post to grow your email list (see #8 above)

Extra Tip: Update one old post per week and then re-promote the post in your social media channels.

10. Learn Pinterest.

A huge amount of my traffic comes from Pinterest. After each blog post goes live pin a few of your post images to your boards.

Extra Tip: Many of my clients use a pin-scheduling tool called Tailwind. This paid tool will help you save a lot of time AND generate even more traffic to your site.

Every Blogger Can Improve Their Blog or Online Business

EVERY blogger – new or experienced – can improve their blog! I’ve given you 10 things you can do to improve your blog or online business… so start improving your site today!

Which one of these tips are you going to do first to immediately improve your blog? Please share in the comments below!