Blog Clean-Up in Time for the Holidays

I really enjoyed the article “Kitchen Clean-up” in Tucker Talks Real Estate, (the little newsletter my realtor friend Katrina Basile sends me.  November and December, I was reminded, are good times for me to give a little love to my kitchen and prep my appliances for holiday entertaining.

Coming up on four and a half years as a professional ghost blogger, I couldn’t help thinking I ought to remind attendees in corporate blogging training sessions that blogs and blog sites may need periodic ”cleansing” as well.

1.  For example, “Kitchen Clean-Up” talks about going through your refrigerator shelves and removing every item that’s past its expiration date.

One function of any SEO marketing blog is updating and correction information.  Mistaken data may have been inadvertently published on your business blog. There may have been updates in a company policy, or in one or more of the products. Or, there might have been a recent development in your industry that makes one or more of your former blog posts “incorrect”. 

I explain to new blog content writers that they can go back to former blog posts and write an update, usually in bold type.  That way, when online searchers find that “old” post, they can see that the company is keeping its readers current.

2.   Leveling the refrigerator is a second suggestion in “Kitchen Cleanup”. That means adjusting the feet on the bottom of the fridge, I learned.

“Leveling” business blog writing, particularly in SEO marketing blogs, involves checking your keyword phrase list to see if you’re overusing some terms and forgetting to include others. Referring to analytics to see which search terms are actually helping online searchers find your blog, you can adjust the degree of emphasis you’re putting on different keyword phrases over time. Make sure your content is not straying from the central themes or “leitmotifs” around which you based your blog marketing plan.

3.   Checking your user manual for each appliance to see what recommendations for care the manufacturer suggests, is the third piece of advice in “Kitchen Cleanup”.

For business owners and freelance blog content writers, the ”manual” consists of the features available in the blogging platform (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr,and Drupal are examples; this Say It For You blog uses Compendium Blogware).

Are you aware of all the key features and capabilities of whatever platform you’re using?  An important part of your “clean up” involves using all the tools that can make your writing for business yield the results you want.

“Now that your appliances are nice and spiffy, you can spend more time focusing on that perfect pumpkin pie,” explains “Kitchen Cleanup”.  And once, I’m hoping, Indianapolis blog writers have“cleaned up” the kitchen and “spiffiy-ed” up the platform, it will be a snap to focus on “cooking up” a perfect series of readable, engaging business blog posts!