Great Ways to Refresh Your Blog For 2017

Is your blog looking a bit stale? Have you had the same layout for years? Are you stuck in a bit of a rut when it comes to attracting new visitors? Or are you getting visitors, but struggling to convert them into subscribers? A new year is a great excuse to give things a polish. Here are some tips to help you make sure your blog starts 2017 on a high.

Change Your Design

Web design, like everything else, has fashions. They change. Often when we first start blogging, we’re not as confident with design, or our photographs aren’t as good, so we stick to simple layouts. As you progress you might want to change this. Large images are a great ideas as they help to attract and keep visitors. Internet users have very short attention spans, and nothing turns them away more than a big page of text.

Change Your Logo

Is your logo still meeting your needs? If your blog has grown a lot, you may now be using it on business cards and letter heads. Is it professional and smart, while still expressing your personality and the themes of your blog? If not, it’s time for a change.

Clean Up Your Social Media Profiles

Firstly, make sure you are using the same branding (logo, colors etc.) across all your websites and profiles. You want to be instantly recognizable to your viewers. Next, have a tidy. Go through your Pinterest boards, make sure you have branded covers on them all. Check that all your pins are relevant to the boards they are on, and that they all have live links. Delete any that don’t meet these requirements. Tidy up your Twitter feed, building lists of people you interact with. Follow some new bloggers. On Instagram, delete any photos that aren’t relevant, and try to use the same filters to keep it all looking neat for new viewers.

Look at Your Content

What is your blog about? Would branching out a little help you attract a new audience? Or keep your current visitors interested enough to subscribe? For example, if you are a student of a nurse practitioner doctorate degree blogging about your studies, consider adding some healthcare tips or first aid advice. If you were a BSN to DNP online student like those at Bradley University, you could become a trusted source of information.

Assess Your SEO

Search engine optimization is incredibly important to bloggers. Check your old posts, make sure they use keywords effectively, and that all your images have titles and alt text as well as meta descriptions. Then make sure your site is completely mobile optimized. There might be more things you didn’t think of when you first started out, but now is a great time to go back and make any changes you need to improve your blog.

A great place to start is to make some blogging resolutions for the year. Write a list of where you would like to be this time next year. This can be anything from how many Twitter followers you’d like to get, to specific brands you would like to work with. But it has to be personal to you and your blog. Make action plans for each target, tick them off as you meet your goals, and add more throughout the year if you would like.