11 Ways To Spring Clean Your Blog

The weather has been WEIRD since spring hit — it’s either been super wintery (like snowstorm-on-the-first-day-of-Spring wintery or we’ve had hot summer days that feel like we might bypass Spring altogether but today, as I’m writing this, it’s been typical Spring — 60’s and rain. Now I feel like I’m really in a Spring cleaning mood — I’ve been going through lots of Riley’s clothes that no longer fit her, being ruthless about my own closet (especially because my new postpartum body makes me hate everything I own), cleaning those areas of our apartment we really should clean more often. The next item on my to-do list says: “SPRING CLEAN YOUR BLOG!” In all caps. In red marker. Because it’s important. So I schedule it.

One of the biggest things Spring Cleaning items I like to do is spring clean my blog. I mean, I could do these things ANY TIME. But, in order to remember to DO these things and actively make time for them, I schedule some time in April to spring clean my blog up a bit.

I thought I’d share 11 of the ways you can spring clean your blog though I could probably write a post with like 50 things on it (because there is always a lot we can do for a blogs that to clean it up/freshen it up) but we will focus on 11 ways to spring clean your blog today. Maybe next year I’ll share more.

[Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links which means that if you click on a link and purchase something I’ve talked about or recommended, I’ll receive a very small percentage of the sale. Please see my disclosure policy for more info.

1. Clean up old posts that still get traffic:

Sometimes I will look in my Google Analytics and see, SURPRISE, this post I wrote 6 years ago is still or has been recently getting traffic and OH MY GOD IT IS SO UGLY I AM SO EMBARRASSED THAT PEOPLE ARE COMING TO THIS PAGE. I don’t have time to clean up every post from the 8 years of blogging (especially since I used to post 4-7 time a week during most of those 8 years) but I pick the ones that people are still coming to and I clean up any weird formatting or ugly graphics or add an update if needed. I also link to newer posts that might be related or more relevant.

2. Take a look through old posts that COULD still be relevant and get new traffic to it:

Do you ever clean your closet out while spring cleaning and rediscover something you love and totally still works for you? That’s how I am with old posts! There’s a lot of posts I wrote years ago and was like HEY that’s still a really good post. It might just need some sprucing up before I put it out there again but it’s a really awesome post. I’ll clean it up, optimize it and reintroduce it to the world. You could do this in a number of ways:

• share it on social media platforms to reintroduce it to people
• make a brand new Pinterest graphic for it and repin it to relevant boards, to Tailwind Tribes (huge boost for me when I do this!) or any group boards you are apart of that are relevant. You’d be amazed at how great posts can have new life breathed into them just by doing this. I do this using Picmonkey or Canva (I use both for different reasons).
• completely update the post and then share it again. Maybe it’s outdated in some way but the post itself is still really valuable and you can share with your readers the updated content and then do the two above things.
• update the post and republish it! I haven’t done this one yet but it’s something I’m planning to do after reading this article about it.

3. Clean up Categories and Tags:

This one has been especially important for me since changing the direction of my blog. I am fixing up my main categories for all my new topics and deleting all the ones that I had made when I didn’t know the difference between Categories and Tags that are seriously pointless. Cleaning up my categories will be nice to not have to wade through the categories I’m looking for. This isn’t a fun task but one that is worth doing for simplicity sake and for ease of navigating for both myself and my readers.

4. Do an inventory on what is working and not working for you on your blog:

I think this is such an important way to spring clean your blog and keep it fresh! I had reoccurring posts I would do and had done for years only to sit down and realize that I didn’t LOVE these posts anymore or they felt like work or they just didn’t jive with what. I take stock of which kinds of posts I still love doing and which ones don’t bring me joy when I do them or just don’t really seem to fit anymore. I had posts that would take me forever, I didn’t enjoy them, they didn’t get a lot of reader interaction and to sit down intentionally and THINK about this fact that I knew in the back of my head all along was so great to keep my blog something that is beneficial for me and my readers. Because HEY maybe they weren’t enjoying it either or your readership has changed or they could TELL you didn’t enjoy it anymore.

And in figuring out what DOESN’T work you can make room for new things to work. You can focus on what you ARE enjoying and what you readers seem to want from you and come up with some things you are excited about and might reinvigorate your blogging journey.

5. Update your About Me:

Seriously, a very important way to spring clean your blog! Anywhere you have an ABOUT ME (this includes your social media accounts for your blog)…you need to be updating that every year at least. I just looked at my bio/about me and it was EMBARRASSINGLY out of date. And the time before that it still said I was 24 and had a boyfriend when I was in fact definitely not 24 and I had a husband. I realized I hadn’t been updating my bio that WordPress populates under my posts either so DO THAT.

6. Update your menu/navigational items:

I just did this recently when I gave my blog a new look. I completely reorganized the menu categories and all the dropdowns I had within them. I had a lot of things that just weren’t relevant anymore and I’m pretty sure nobody ever clicked on. I reevaluated all them and decided on the ones that were still relevant, useful/helpful and make navigating my site easier.

7. Give that blog a fresh new look:

Sometimes in the midst of spring cleaning I will just realize something needs a complete facelift whether that’s rearranging all our furniture or where things live or just adding a simple little update to an area. I feel that way in the Spring with my blog and why completely changed my theme and got a whole new look with my theme from Restored 316 (they seriously have some of the most gorgeous themes out there) and am still working on my header (time, oh time, I need more of you). It doesn’t have to be something as huge as WHOLE blog redesign. You could:

• Change up your sidebar
• Change all the photos on your blog with NEW and updated photos
• Get a new header
• Change the fonts on your blog
• Change the color scheme of your navigational menu and all that (if it still works with your overall color scheme).

8. Get your blog email inbox in tip top shape:

My blog email is a DISASTER and it stresses me out. Not only am I going through and deleting emails to cut through the clutter but I’m also unsubscribing to things I don’t care about. I am ALSO adding better organization but utilizing folders. I added folders for posts/collaborations that are in progress (for my own blog or guest posting), a HAPPIES folder (where I stick all the amazingly nice emails I get that I pull out when I’m feeling bad), a TO RESPOND TO folder, etc.

9. Delete old posts:

One way to REALLY spring clean your blog is PURGE. I know some people don’t like to do this but every now and again I will delete old posts that are pretty pointless. Especially in the beginning of my blogging journey I had some really silly posts, filler posts I didn’t care about that are kind of junky or did those annoying announcement posts for every little hiatus or every little thing I did (or a couple of those “so sorry I haven’t been blogging posts”…YOU DON’T NEED TO APOLOGIZE). It’s a definitely not a task that is high on my to-do list so I try to tackle looking through a few months worth of posts and seeing if anything needs to just GO.

10. Curate your blog reader:

You might thing this isn’t relevant to spring clean your blog BUT reading other blogs and having community with them is really important to me so this is on my blog spring cleaning to-do list. This one always makes me feel sad but once a year I like to go through my blog reader (I use Feedly) and clean up things. It’s never anything personal. Sometimes a blog isn’t active, sometimes I fell out of love with it and am not the reader for that blog anymore, sometimes they changed directions in some way and it’s not of interest to me, or sometimes it was a “temporary” sort of interest when I subscribed and now I’m not into it or doing that thing (ie I used to subscribe to work related websites to keep up).

11. Create better systems:

Sometimes when I am in the midst of spring cleaning I realize that I could do something BETTER. It could be a better way to organize or a better way to tackle something. That’s one thing I intentionally think about with blogging. What systems can I do better? You could create a better system for brainstorming posts or writing posts. You could think of a better system for organizing all things blogging (I have a post in the works about how I use Evernote for that). You could think of how you could automate some things that you forget about or to make your life easier  (like how I use Tailwind to help automate some of my pinning since Pinterest is huge for my blogging life as 90% of my SOCIAL traffic comes from it or scheduling some of my tweets/FB posts that I don’t want to do ~in the moment~ which is pretty much anything promoting a new post.

Do you spring clean your blog as part of your spring cleaning ritual? If so, what are some of the ways you spring clean your blog? If you haven’t ever done a spring clean of your blog, pick one to tackle this month!

P.S. I shared my absolute kickass arsenal (from over the past 8 years) of all the things I’ve used to make blogging easier and to grow my blog!

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