Spring is in the air and everywhere I look I come across spring cleaning blogging tips. I wonder, why wait for spring? I guess since that is when we do our spring cleaning.
All puns aside, you should regularly check your blog – call it spring cleaning if you like. I would prefer to clean it more often. The question is, what do you clean?
I have spoken in the past about blog plugins so I wont go down that track again. However one post I read recently suggested you go through your blog and delete any old post that are no longer relevant or no longer receive any traffic.
Sometimes it can be a good idea, however I think this can be fraught with danger. I can readiliy identify the following problems if you decide to delete old posts:
- Links 1: how many other posts have linked to that post. You will need to go back through those posts and edit all the links.
- Links 2: how many post has this post linked to and passed link juice
- Link Juice 1: what is the page you are about to delete worth when it comes to link juice
- Link Juice 2: have you capitalized on the pages link ability
The last point is important. Rather than deleting the post, can you use it to link into other posts that you want to promote? Can you revive the post by grabbing an excerpt and commenting or updating the information.
Perhaps I am being precious. However I don’t like the idea of throwing out something that is a part of me – particularly if I can still get some mileage out of it.
Spring cleaning is fine and a good idea – throwing out posts – I don’t think so – at least, not until I determine if there is more mileage to be had. Not all blogging tips are gems, at least, not until you have thought through them.
