Increase your traffic and income with a seasonal blog tune up

Christmas can be a difficult time for bloggers. Traffic drops over the holiday season as more and more surfers log off to spend time with their families. As winter approaches now is the ideal time to give your blog a tune up to make sure it is firing on all cylinders and in tip top condition.

Before we open the hood and start poking around be sure to back up your blog. FTP everything from the server and backup your databases where applicable. Make a few duplicate copies and store them in separate locations just to be on the safe side. Once that’s all taken care of you can happily get your hands dirty without worrying about doing irrevocable damage.

Ok, now everything’s tucked away safely we can begin.

Start by taking a good look at your host. If you’re not happy with them for any reason close your account and move to a better host. If your using Dreamhost be aware that their servers always fall over at Christmas as their support staff levels drop as they go on holiday. Their family and friends running a hosting company idea falls over at times like this. A successful blog needs a solid host. Switch to AN Hosting and get world class support, 500gb of space, 5tb of bandwidth, one click installs, free domain name for life and much more. Use coupon code UPSTARTBLOGGER and get 3 months for free. And, if you use any of my links to sign up you’ll get a free copy of the Upstart Blogger 30 day blogging course.

Next step, check for broken links. You have two choices here, the easy route or the easy but time consuming route. If you want someone else to do all the work visit http://validator.w3.org/checklink and enter your url. The results are usually pretty reliable but not always. If you prefer to do things by hand you going to have to take a good hard look at every page of your blog. Click on all the links and make sure they work. Fix the ones that don’t work. If you can’t make them work, or if you are linking to sites that no longer exist, the delete button is your friend.

All the links checked and working? Good. Next step, upgrade to the latest stable version of whatever blogging software you are using. The important word in that line is stable. Don’t use beta versions or bleeding edge releases of any kind. You wouldn’t use experimental bricks to build a house and you wouldn’t drive a car using experimental tyres, so why trust your blog to experimental software? Next, update any plugins that you use to make sure they are all working as efficiently as possible.

If your blog carries advertising then look at the revenue those adverts have generated over the last six months. Ditch the adverts that aren’t working. This isn’t the time for indecisiveness. If an advert isn’t making you any money remove it without delay.

Finally, consider a redesign to give your blog a quick extra traffic boost. Make a good job of it and you might find yourself listed on a handful of inspiration sites.

Tune things up now and don’t get caught out later on. Do it now, before time starts to spiral inevitably away towards Christmas, and make your blog as clean and lean, and successful, as possible.

Ashley Morgan is a UK jazz trumpet player and owner of independent record label 447 Records. Ashley Morgan is the trumpet player with Enormous.