Okay. This post is short and sweet, but INSANELY important. Why?
I literally just spent about an hour going through my blog posts because I realized it had been FOREVER since I had gone through them and made sure they didn’t have broken links.
Have you done this?? Do you do it regularly?
This is something, I'll admit, that I've 'preached' to others. "Don't forget to do blog post audits to make sure links are working properly!"
But, for some reason, when we think about our own businesses, we just assume, nah, I'm good. All my blog posts have working links. Duh!
WRONG!
Things change, your URL's change depending on your services, the links you point to other websites changes, thus rendering some of your blog post links as errors or 404 broken pages. Not only does Google pick up on this and penalize you in the search engines, but it also comes off as unprofessional and unorganized.
I couldn't BELIEVE the number of links I had to change on my blog posts, especially links to my own services (since I changed the URL for them without thinking about it)! That's so much missed potential. Web viewers are impatient skimmers, which means when you have a broken link or something’s not working, they’ll already be gone to the next website or just x out in general.
And if you don’t believe me, don't you feel the same way as a consumer?? If you go to a website that you're interested in making a purchase from, imagine if you try to hit buy or go to a product page and it doesn't work. What do you do?? I'd hit that X SOOOO quickly. That’s lost business for them. And chances are, that didn’t only happen to me. It happened to other web viewers, too!
So, I want this blog post to serve as a reminder to you to make sure ALL of your website links are working properly. Don't assume that because they were once working, that they are now.
I recommend doing blog post audits every month, but if that’s too much, even quarterly is good!
Not only is this a great way to check for broken links, but you can also:
Update content that’s outdated
Get inspiration for future topic ideas by expanding on something you’ve already written
Add in new opt-ins or offers that could be integrated into older pieces of content.
A lot of marketers out there will tell you all about how you need to produce new and relevant content. Push through new pieces! Which, obviously, is a great thing!
However, there’s so much missed potential from content you ALREADY have on your website. If you go back and look at your most popular pieces of blog posts, can you update the content a bit? Can you add in an opt-in offer or a different call-to-action that you can test?
There’s a reason why blog posts are so great and it’s because it can achieve exponential growth over time (EVEN if you change some of the content on the page).
Now, I realize we’re all busy and we’re not perfect. I know that all of my past blogs aren’t perfect - I have tons to work through. But, every little change makes a difference. Even if you get 10 minutes today before you forget about this blog post, go through and check some links on a couple of blog posts.
Each one you update could be accessed by a new client!
For more tips on blogging, head over to some of my other related blog posts:
18 Creative Blog Post Ideas for Dog Walkers & Pet Sitters (we have some for other types of pet businesses, too).
Happy blog post auditing!
P.S. My Blogging For Your Pet Biz online course is here! This course will walk you through the steps of getting in the right mindset, producing enough blog post topics for a FULL year, writing your blog posts, implementing SEO, and more! To learn more about the course and enroll today, head here or click below.
