It feels like 2013 at my desk as I dig into the archives of this website.
After receiving a handful of broken link notifications and bumping into old posts with outdated formatting and imagery, I decided to tackle some spring cleaning.
Frequent updates keep your small business website running smooth for users and gives you the opportunity to enhance the SEO of older articles with new links and updated information.
Consider adding a few of these website spring cleaning ideas to your task list this week.
Replace Outdated Images or Graphics
When I first started this website, I used lots of royalty-free stock photographs. As the years go by, the sites hosting these photos have gone out of business (remember SXC.hu?) or publishing permissions have changed. This can lead to broken links and more importantly, unattributed photos that could land you in hot water with the artist for copyright or usage violations.
Last week I spent time updating the imagery on several posts with free graphics from Canva and photos I’ve snapped myself. Need more visuals on your website? Screenshots and embedded social media posts are also great options.
Acknowledge Defunct Services or Products
As I was updating imagery, I came across a post that gave a prominent shout out to Klout, a service that used to measure users’ social engagement across multiple platforms. I decided to add a sentence that acknowledged the closure of Klout, but also the importance of this type of software and its continued relevance today.
Do you have any blog posts that could be updated in a similar way? Do you mention a product or service that’s no longer available, but can update the content to make it helpful once again for readers?
Update Broken Links to External Sites
Finally, I looked at the handful of broken links on both of my websites. These included niche sites that have been taken down and articles that were deleted by the publisher or writer.
Most notably, if you work with any affiliate programs (such as Amazon Affiliates), you’ll want to be sure your product links are always working, otherwise, you won’t earn any commissions. I use a plugin on WordPress that alerts me to link errors, so I never go too long without that earning potential.
Are you also polishing your website(s)? Tell me about your spring cleaning tasks in the comments below. Be sure to also check out 5 Digital Spring Cleaning Tasks for Freelancers for even more ideas!
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