I do put blogging maintenance off but its kind of important.  There are things you can do to help improve your blog.

Things of course I had absolutely no idea about when I first started. But I have learnt as I have stumbled along in the blogging (under) world fuelled on tea and cake late into the evening!

Removing Broken Links

You can run a free search then painstakingly go through your blog removing any with bad hosts or 404 messages (page cannot be found) that it found.  Bad hosts are usually from companies that have sadly ceased to exist.  If you regularly review for different ones the unfortunate thing is not all will be successful. They do vanish! The free search I used was not completely comprehensive because when I manually checked my posts over one year old it had missed some. When I find a better solution I will let you know.

Work on your Internal Linking

As your content grows go back and strengthen your internal links.  Its one easy way to help with your own SEO (search engine optimisation!) and lets your readers navigate your site more easily. If your want more info on what is SEO do a search online.

Grow your social media

You can do this a number of ways, use hashtags to draw people interested about a particular theme over to your feed or you can host competitions and encourage people to follow you on twitter and instagram as methods of entry. You can get companies to help you grow your social media following, but I like to check reviews first. For example this Ampfluence testimonial mentions that they don’t use bots. It’s always best to opt for real human engagement as then comments are tailored rather than risk being flagged as spam. Instagram recognizes unnatural activity so its not worth jeopardizing your account.

I have found it hardest to build up instagram followers, some prefer to use sites like nitreo which can help you grow your account and expand your reach organically. However I am doing it myself by finding like minded people to follow.  Who hopefully have the courtesy to follow you back. I guess there will be bloggers and influencers using sites like that so it would help level the playing field if you join them. But for now I am happy to take my time and see a slow increase over time. Although I do like the fact nitreo offers growth tools that help you develop your instagram account correctly.

If you are a blogger seek out other bloggers.  Apologies I have not followed everyone back I used to be quite good if you want me to just send me a direct nudge and I am happy to oblige!

I have noticed that a fair few bloggers follow you on instagram then discreetly unfollow a short while later.  I recommend getting crowdfire or a similar app so you can keep an eye on that (especially with the instagram followers being a scoring element of the tots100, you do wonder their motivations!!!). Although crowdfire might be the reason instagram continually needs re-authorizing on klout!

Try and get more External Links

Many bloggers go around commenting on other blogs to try and increase their external links.  If you do this make sure you write a big enough comment otherwise you can be seen as spam. Ideally pick out relevant blogs that would be a natural match to your own site. You could also consider writing guest posts for other bloggers who link back to your site.  This also seems quite popular in the blogging community. If your very fortunate the companies you review might link back to your site.  Hopefully wanting to share what you have written about their product with their own fan base.

Be Weary

In the early days I used to publish press releases because I naively thought I was building a relationship with PR companies, but all I was doing was giving them free link backs and nothing else ever transpired! Some are of the opinion duplicate content is not ideal from a SEO aspect so I soon learnt to stop being quite so generous with my blog space!!!

I am still learning and expect to continue to do so. Value your blog, you have spent time and energy building your space.