Five Easy Ways To Refresh And Update Your Blog For The New Year.

P.S- This Post on ways to refresh and update your blog for the new year was originally published in 2015 and has been updated to reflect new information and more examples.

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What I love the most about the new year is the sense of ‘starting afresh’ it gives off. A sort of new beginning to work with. A blank page to try to rewrite your story and break new boundaries.

This newness translates to us as bloggers as well. You probably already have a million and one goals to achieve in 2018 like working with bigger brands, growing your follower count etc, but have missed out one of the most important things which is your site itself.

In this post, I’m sharing a few ways you can also update your blog for a new year of blogging!

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1. Analyze Your Site’s Performance

If you read my post on moving to WordPress, I mentioned how I didn’t know my site wasn’t being crawled by google bots (and therefore my stats weren’t reading on google analytics). Shame. The techy bits of blogging is something most bloggers don’t bother with, instead we focus solely on creating content.

I’m also not the best with the techy bits, but one thing I learned from that mistake is the importance of checking how your site is performing every now and then. And what better time to do that than the start of a new blogging year?

Go to your google search console and check if there are any error messages like crawl errors and broken links/pages that need to be fixed and updated. Also, you can use any of these sites to check how mobile responsive your site is, your site speed, SEO ranking and also ways to improve on it.

• SEO report card
• Website Grader
• GT Metrix

2. Re-assess Your Content.

To prepare for the new year, you might want to reassess how your blog did the previous year. I did a recap of my blog year in this post and it helped me review how I did and also opened me up to ways I’ll like to improve.

Check your google analytics or whatever tool you use for your blog analytics to find out what type of posts performed better, where you got the most referral from, what search words people used to land on your site etc

The Cassie Daves Blog Planner has an end of the month blog review page and that has also helped me keep track of my stats so far.

You can send out a reader survey to see what posts and segments your readers enjoyed the most and what they would like to see more of. The new year is also a wonderful time to introduce those new segments you’ve had dancing around in your head too!

Hey Bloggers! Check Out These Five Quick And Easy Ways To Refresh Your Blog For The New Year! Click To Tweet

3. Give Your Blog A Face Lift/ Re-Brand.

Basically switching up your blog design, getting a new theme, changing fonts, logo etc. If you can’t afford a blog re-design now, there are a couple of free themes you can get online (just google free responsive blogger/WordPress themes).

You can also switch up your header image, take a new headshot image for your bio page, clean up your sidebar etc

Another thing you can do to give your blog a facelift is updating your blog post images/ graphics. Maybe you now have a better camera or have mastered canva now. You can go through your posts and change the images/graphics.

Moving to WordPress and getting a blog redesign got me inspired to blog more consistently and could be just what you need to attract more readers or inspire you to put extra effort into every one of your new posts.

4. Create A Structure For Your Content – Content Calendar/ Blogging Process.

Last year, I finally mastered creating good content and part of this was due to structuring my blogging process. I blogged about my updated blogging process for quality content here (Inclusive of a free checklist)

Another key thing is developing a content calendar for the year – This is an ideal time to sit down and decide how many posts you’ll like to publish in a week, how your posts should be spread out and also plan your blog’s content ahead for at least the next few months.

You can do this all by going a step higher, ditching your numerous notepads and getting a blog planner!

A blog planner will up your organization level, help you plan out your content, create more strategic content and ultimately blog better this new year.

The Cassie Daves blog planner goes even a step ahead to also give you lots of blog tips and a guide to improve your blog. You can read more details on this blog planner and purchase yours HERE.

SHOP BLOG PLANNER HERE

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 5. Create/ Update Your Blog Manifesto.

A blog manifesto is almost like an about page except that its more detailed and is also helpful to you as well because it keeps you on track. It like a blog mission statement and you can read Krystal’s guide to writing one here.  The Cassie Daves blog planner has a blog manifesto page to help make figuring yours out easier.

If you’re also planning to work more with brands in the new year, you might want to create a media kit as well, which is a document you put together that gives prospective blog sponsors everything they need to know about sponsorship with you and why they should work with you.

There are lots of media kit samples on the net and you just have to google to find the one you like and tweak it to suit you. Also, check out these five tips to get started working with brands!