15 Step WordPress Cleanup
The holidays will be here before you know it! Now is a great time to clean up your website and make sure that it is in tip-top shape for the busy holiday season.
- Check for broken links. You can use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to make life easier.
- Clean up and optimize your database. I recommend WP-DBManager. It takes a minute to setup, but once you do, it’s pretty powerful.
- If you have an about page on your website, check all the information on that about page is up-to-date and changes don’t need to be made. If you do not have an about page this is the perfect time to write one. It is important to communicate your message to your visitors.
- Check your contact page information to be sure is not only correct but that it works. Use a contact form (I recommend Contact Form 7), make sure your address is correct, and be certain that your phone number is correct.
- If you currently have an email marketing list, ensure your signup form works properly on your site. If you do not have an email marketing list, now’s the time to start one. Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate with your customers – more than social media, webinars, etc.
- Update your social media links on your site. This means not only making sure that you have all the ones that you use on your site, but also clean up the ones you don’t use. There’s no use in someone following you on Twitter if you don’t tweet!
- Update your User Accounts. Are there accounts you need to remove? Maybe you need to lower raise permissions for certain individuals.
- Check into your Categories and Tags (and any other taxonomy area you may have created) and see if any of those taxonomies are empty and without any attached posts. Then decide whether or not to delete those non-used taxonomies.
- Remove unused/unactivated plugins from your WordPress site.
- Utilize an automatic links plugin. I prefer SEO Smart Links. Plugins like this link your existing content to parts of your site or external sites. This is good for SEO as well as for basic navigation for your visitors.
- Minify your Javascript. I like using W3 Total Cache.
- Minify your CSS. Once again, I like W3 Total Cache.
- If you don’t have a backup plan for your site, make one! If you do, make sure it works properly.
- If you haven’t already, add a testimonial section. If you already have one, be sure to update it. This also affords you a great opportunity to reach out to past clients.
- If your site has been running a while and you have a good amount of content, then this is a great time to add a related posts plugin for your site. I recommend WordPress Related Posts as a simple solution, although there are tons of these types of plugins out there. Don’t miss this opportunity to keep people on your site longer!
