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Uncluttering your Blog: Keep your Clutter Bug in Check

Clutter builds up on your site quickly if you stop working on it. Each time you add something new to your blog, in the sidebar, the footer or the menu and header – stop and think about it.

  • Is it necessary for your blog readers?
  • Does it say something about yourself and your blog that you actually want to say?
  • Could it be moved to a subpage of your blog and not really be missed?
  • Is it slowing down the load time and, if so, is it worth it?
  • Have you located it in a way which it’s function is easy to understand?
  • Don’t keep any broken links, including images.
  • Consider moving archives, link lists and categories/ tags to their own subpage.
  • Condense and prune your tags and categories. Use a general category for things which don’t fit into the main theme/ topic of your blog.
  • Consider using plain text links rather than image files, widgets and etc.
  • Downsize and/ or double up when giving your own links to be followed on social networks.
  • If you run ads, limit them to ads which are actually performing well.

Tidy Up Your Blog’s Sidebar

Focus on your readers. What are you keeping in your sidebar for yourself? What do you actually read and like to see in a blog sidebar when you read another blog? Let that be your guide to deciding what to keep on your own blog sidebar.

Work out the most important thing in your sidebar and on your blog.Create a list of everything in your sidebar – list them in order of importance. If you have more than ten things choose a few to be voted off the island. See if you can limit your blog sidebar to 5 or fewer items.

Remember, less is more. Put away anything you want to keep but don’t really need on your sidebar. Use features like pages and even your footer to tuck and tidy away extra items.

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