You need to know how to give your blog a fresh new start at least twice a year.
Even if your blog is doing great with traffic and search ranking, you can make it better.
In fact, you should strive to improve every aspect of your blog as a standard operating procedure.
If your blog is sputtering
Okay, so you probably thought about how to give your blog a fresh new start if it has been sputtering.
That’s a good idea.
If your traffic has been tapering off, your blog posts are dropping in the search rankings, or people are not buying your products or services… then your blog is sputtering.
If you are not getting good engagement with things like social shares and comments… then your blog is sputtering.
There are several things to look for here.
First, you have to keep a keen eye on your statistics.
What is your typical traffic flow?
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How many comments and social shares are you getting?
What kind of income is your blog earning on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis?
These kinds of things will give you a good baseline to work from.
If you don’t know your numbers, then you have no baseline to improve on.
One of the best ways to get a good grip on your blog’s statistics is to install Google Analytics, and use it.
Set some kind of schedule for you to do some analysis of how your blog is performing in key areas, and then stick to it.
If the indicator numbers are dropping over a period of time, then they are sputtering.
It’s a great time to give your blog a fresh new start.
If your blog is doing great
You can clearly understand that if your blog is sputtering, you need to do something about it.
But even if your blog is doing great, there are certainly parts of your blogging business that could benefit vastly from getting a fresh new start.
In fact, every blog benefits from this process.
Your blog might be
- a failure
- perfectly consistent
- improving steadily
- going through a sudden growth spurt
Regardless of what’s going on in your blogging business, a fresh new start should be your standard operating procedure.
I know many very successful bloggers.
And they all go through this process several times a year.
In fact, every single day is a new chance for you to improve your business.
Every day you start your business anew.
Whatever you’ve been doing, you can do better.
Build “Content Upgrades” + “Landing Pages” Into Your Blog Posts, Seamlessly & Fast
If you’ve been procrastinating from doing some things that you know you should, today is the day to get started.
Your blog is an ever-evolving work in progress.
It’s not a static enterprise.
Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is just a thought.
Think of today as the first day for improving or even totally overhauling your blogging business.
How to give your blog a fresh new start
There are many ways you can actually give your blog a fresh new start.
But it all starts with establishing those baseline numbers.
Know how your blog performs in key areas, then you have a good idea of what things you need to do to give it a fresh new start.
Traffic
The most important thing you want, of course, is traffic.
If your blog is not attracting enough traffic, then you won’t be able to make it succeed on any level.
You need to know what is attracting people to your blog now.
Then you have to do more of that, do it more often or do it better.
That will bring additional traffic.
Traffic sources
You also need to know where your traffic is coming from.
Is it coming primarily from search results?
What keywords are working best for you?
Is it coming mostly from social media?
So what’s your best traffic source there?
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest?
Maybe you get it from other blogs or referral sites.
Which ones are sending traffic your way?
When you know where your traffic is coming from, it will give you a good indication as to how to find new and additional sources of traffic.
Then you need to have a strategy for connecting with those sources in an effective manner.
This will give you an excellent chance to increase your traffic, and establish a constant, steady flow of traffic to your blog.
Engagement
Now, many bloggers find that they are getting good traffic flow, but their readers are not engaging with them.
To start getting better engagement, you want to make sure you are addressing people’s biggest concerns.
If you blog about exercise, do you know what your audience is really looking for?
Do they want to know how to use exercise machines, or buy proper equipment, or lose weight?
Find out who comprises your audience.
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Get to know them.
Join some forums or social media groups.
Talk to them.
Ask them questions.
Determine what their biggest problems are.
Then, write blog posts designed to help them solve those specific problems.
Post the links to your blog posts.
As your audience comes to know you as the problem solver who helps them improve their lives, they will increasingly gravitate to your blog.
Use clear, simple calls-to-action
Once they are there, you should actively prompt them to take the precise actions you want them to.
Ask them to leave a comment.
Invite them to join your email list.
Let them know that you’d really appreciate their social share to Facebook, Twitter or wherever you want to direct them.
Make your calls-to-action simple.
And be very clear.
If you are building your email list, create very simple squeeze pages that promise something of real value to people.
If you are getting traffic, that’s great.
But you must prompt and entice them to engage with you.
Traffic earns you browsers.
Engagement gives you a long-term, loyal audience.
Conversion
Once you get people to engage with you, your blog should be primed for conversion.
In other words, you should be able to convert your blog visitors into buyers for your products, and clients for your services.
If that’s not happening, or not happening in a big enough way, you have to review your sales process.
Do your blog posts have affiliate links to products your readers would be interested in?
Are you making good use of sales banners in your articles?
How about squeeze page links and banners to get people onto your email list?
And when you get people to click on your links and banners, or join your email list… do you send them through an effective sales funnel?
These are the things that you need to very carefully assess on an ongoing basis to keep your blog operating at it’s best.
How to give your blog a fresh new start
Now that you’ve seen how to give your blog a fresh new start, I hope you put these strategies to good use.
To get some help with this, I invite you to join my ongoing 30 Day Challenge to Reboot Your Business.
Over 30 days, we dig into exactly what’s working in your blogging business… and what’s not.
Then we develop an exact blueprint to make the changes that will make your blog get the results you are looking for.
So, now that you have a better idea of how to give your blog a fresh new start, let’s get down to business.
What kind of “fresh new start” do you think your blog would benefit from?
How do you plan on implementing that “fresh new start?”
Leave a comment below and let me know.
And don’t forget to share this article on your social sites.
Thanks so much 🙂
-Donna
Hello Donna,
This time also you have pitched powerful content. From my opinion, if you want to engage people, you first need to know who you are engaging and that means writing a blog post that speaks directly to their needs and their values.
Content marketing isn’t only about teaching, you also need to inspire your readers to change their beliefs or to take action.
Eventually, thanks for sharing these wonderful facts with us.
With best wishes,
Amar Kumar
Hey Donna,
Advance tips and exhortation here. Regardless of whether you’re a veteran or a novice blogger, this article serves you well. By assessing your blog, you will get a complete comprehension of how well your blogging business is performing. At the end of the day, upgrading your business will enable you to make the vital changes for a new beginning in scaling your business.
Much obliged to you for sharing!
Twitter: JitendraBlogger
July 23, 2019 at 12:06 am #
Hi Donna,
So long to read your post. Really, you have crafted a masterpiece. Sticking to the blogging and making it successful isn’t that easy, we have to always put efforts in order to be consistent with the post. Sometimes when we see dropping our rankings on the SERPs then there’s thought comes in mind, can we restart again. Yes, of course, we can do it. You have mentioned such great points that can help us giving a new fresh start to our blog without losing our audience.
Thanks for sharing such a great post.
Jitendra Vaswani recently posted.. Steps To Do Keyword Research Effectively in 2019
Twitter: Astutecopyblog
July 22, 2019 at 4:11 pm #
Hi Donna,
An awesome blog post as ever!
It was Socratis, the ancient philosopher who is credited as saying that the unexmined life is not worth living for any human being. Not only is regular self examination advisable for individuals, attempting to freshen up one’s blog should, in my humble opinion, be a requirement for every serious blogger. The reality is, no matter how successful one is, there’s always room for improvement.
At the moment, I am looking at ways to make my blog posts rank even higher than they currently do. It means ensuring that Astute Copy Blogging is fully optimized in every area.
Thank you for this timely reminder, which has come at an appropriate time.
Off to share on Twitter 🙂
Best regards,
Pedro
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July 21, 2019 at 1:38 am #
Hey Donna,
Why does it seem like you can read my mind or probably know what’s happening? That’s eerie 🙂
My pages dropped a few notches in search rankings, I just realized that I’ve been losing traffic for a while (due to the demoted rankings), and I also realized that my blog has over 1306 images that seem to have slowed down the site (not to mention Javascripts and plugins).
This housekeeping is now going to take several hours, and it’s a back-breaking job 🙂
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Hi Ash,
What you are experiencing… every blogger experiences in one way or another.
Maybe you need to compress your images.
Sure, you could use a plugin… but that slows down your site.
Best solution is probably to compress them before uploading them to your site… use something like my favorite – tinypng.com – which is free.
Other bloggers may have different issues to deal with.
But we all have something that is standing between us and perfect optimization of our blog… the goal we always want to be moving toward.
That’s why we need to regularly evaluate our business, and always look to fresh-start troublesome and counterproductive aspects of our blog.
-Donna
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July 21, 2019 at 9:59 pm #
Hey Donna,
So, I spent all of a Sunday doing just that. Compressed images on my site, moved some CSS (inline or under the footer), and did some other housekeeping to make it all better. Phew, that was some work.
You are right, the goal is “to keep moving forward.”. Talking about “counterproductive” — I see there are several blog posts that don’t get traffic at all (more than 6 months to several years old).
Does it make sense to delete those? Do you recommend that?
Ash recently posted..Linkiro Review: Use Social Media For Results
Twitter: joyofhazel
July 19, 2019 at 3:20 pm #
Blogging is a game of continuous improvement, both from a technical and content perspective, in order to grow traffic from search engines organically. However, I think sentence is key to growing a regular audience:
“As your audience comes to know you as the problem solver who helps them improve their lives, they will increasingly gravitate to your blog.”
Hi Hazel,
Yes, continuous improvement.
That really is the purpose to fresh-starting.
The more you help people solve their problems, the more your blog will improve.
You’ve just got to find creative ways to do that, and a means to let people know you are doing it.
-Donna
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July 19, 2019 at 3:10 am #
Hey Donna Mam,
Great post with great tips to give a fresh new start blog.Giving a fresh new start to blog post are also necessary to generate more traffic and for better search ranking. I like the points that you have listed. Providing a fresh new look to blog and starting blog in new directions will helps to improve and grow the overall business.
Really helpful post with helpful tips and thanks for sharing.
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Hi Aardash,
If you need to generate more traffic and better search ranking for your bog, it’s time to give it that fresh new start.
Some people think I’m talking about “starting over” when I say “fresh new start.”
But you’ve got it right… it’s all about getting your blog moving in a “new direction” to improve and grow your business.
I appreciate your insights here, my friend.
-Donna
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July 18, 2019 at 7:46 am #
Hi Donna,
Advance tips and advice here. Whether you’re a veteran or a newbie blogger, this article serves you well. By evaluating your blog, you will get a comprehensive understanding of how well your blogging business is performing. In other words, overhauling your business will help you make the necessary adjustments for a fresh start in scaling your business.
Thank you for sharing!
Moss Clement recently posted.. 10 Practical Steps to Increase Productivity as a Work From Home Blogger
Hi Moss,
Yes, we have to always evaluate and re-evaluate our blogs.
But more than the occasional modification or even overhaul of our “blog”… is the tweeking and updating of key aspects of our blogging.
For instance, I could have a great and popular blog. But if I’m not offering the right products an service to my readers, then I need to figure out how to get that done.
It doesn’t require that I revamp my entire blog, but certainly that part of it.
I’ll only know what needs work by carefully evaluating my blog, or having someone I trust evaluate it for me.
Sometimes only a third-party can get a good grip on what improvements are needed.
-Donna
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July 17, 2019 at 11:22 pm #
Hi Donna,
Sometimes it is good to start fresh than just hanging and struggling with old things. Blogging has changed a low in past few years. It is not just about writing articles but about becoming a brand.
It is the time when every blogger should think about the fresh start.
Thanks for sharing!
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Hi Gaurav,
The thing about “struggling with old things” is this…
People hear they need to be persistent and stick to their goals and dreams.
True enough.
But when you keep doing the same old things and just aren’t getting the results you hoped for, then it’s time to “come clean” and explore some new strategies.
That’s what running a blogging business is all about.
Fresh-starting those aspects of your business that are flat or broken.
As you say… “It is not just about writing articles.”
You got it my friend!
-Donna
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July 17, 2019 at 9:44 pm #
Hello Donna,
Great post. When your blog gets sputtering then you have to reanalyze your efforts and what you are doing with your blog. Making a Frest Start with little or moderate changes can revive your blog. Change is the law of nature and the same rule apply to us and our everyday jobs including blogging. You have to work on new ideas and implement them on your blog to make it more useful to the users. Very helpful tips.
Regards,
Vishwajeet
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Hi Vishwajeet,
Change certainly is the law of nature, as you so well put it.
And it doesn’t take big changes.
You don’t usually need a total overhaul of your business or blog, but just tweaking some tiny things can have an amazingly positive effect.
Yes, moderate changes are what you’ve usually looking to implement… but while the changes may be moderate, the effect on the profitability of your blog can be astounding!
-Donna
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July 17, 2019 at 3:41 pm #
Always timely Donna. I had a clear, fresh new start a few months ago and got hyper clear in the past week. It feels really good. We all need a fresh new start at least each year and twice yearly makes perfect sense too. Big time freedom in cleaning this blogging slate frequently. We let go baggage, feel clear, good, and have oodles of fun with new starts.
Ryan
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Hi Ryan,
Good to hear your story.
A fresh new start doesn’t mean that you’re starting over.
It means you’re starting in a new direction to improve your overall business.
And “letting go” of stuff that doesn’t work, as you say, gives you a whole new sense of freedom… and I’d add… enthusiasm about your blog.
-Donna
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July 21, 2019 at 10:05 pm #
By a fresh start, you mean a redesign or something? You had years of history Ryan 🙂
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July 17, 2019 at 12:39 pm #
Oh, that sounds exciting Donna! I agree with you on the value periodic “fresh starts” and try to do that myself. In fact, I’m taking August off to focus on some really important projects with the goal of coming back strong in September for the Fall and into the New Year. I’m sure anyone with a blog would benefit from your 30 Day Challenge, happy to share!
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Hi Marquita,
Good to know you are taking August off and focusing on some projects. I’m sure you will come back strong in September until the years’ end. Sometimes a step back can go a long way!
-Donna
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