Updating the Blog: Archive Edition

Hello, lovelies! I hope you’ve all had a good day so far. Ever since I went self-hosted at the beginning of the year, I have fallen more in love than ever with this blog and where it’s currently at. Between being obsessed with the graphics (from the every lovely Kat @ Novels and Waffles) and the layout (from Studio Mommy) and all of the personalizations I can do with plugins, I know going self-hosted was the right move for me! Yet, migrating a blog that was eight years old into this new form meant almost 800 posts were transferred over. Now that I feel confident in the blog itself, it’s take to take the next step: updating the blog, focusing on all of my archives.

Goals for Updating the Blog

I’m so grateful to have not only been blogging for so long (2022 will make TEN YEARS?!), but how much growth I’ve experienced. Since starting, I’ve grown to just over 900 hundred followers at the time of writing this post (!!). Much of this growth has happened over the past two-three years, with my blog being mostly unread during my first stint (over sixish years, lolsob).

This means that I have literally hundreds of older posts–from rants and ramblings to book reviews and more–that no one has actually read. Plus, since moving over to the self-hosted format, most of those posts are a) outdated in formatting, b) lacking any of the cohesion and current style of this blog and c) missing any SEO optimization and other marketing strategies I’ve since learned.

So, my next big project is to update all of my archival posts. Yet, how am I going to tackle updating 700+ posts?

Next Steps

Like I outlined above, I have three major areas I want to focus on, when updating the blog:

1. Formatting
2. SEO Optimization
3. Image Cohesion

So, my game plan is to update each post to those goals in mind. Updating the formatting to utilize the WordPress blocks (that I’ve fallen in love with after hating it initially) and even potentially rewriting bits to match some of my current style; utilizing any SEO knowledge to help older posts become evergreen content (learning from Kal @ Reader Voracious’s example); and creating featured images and utilizing graphics that tie the blog into a cohesive theme and feel.

All together, it’s my hope that not only will I get to highlight some older content I’m proud of, but make everything on the blog feel connected. Plus, it also gives me the opportunity to take down any posts that don’t fit my current vision, clean up old content and double check that important posts–like reviews–are cross-listed on other sites and areas I want them highlighted (another project of mine, as I want to make sure all the reviews I’ve written are all cross-posted on Goodreads, StoryGraph and Amazon, to help out authors as much as I can).

On the Horizon

This is a pretty big project, I won’t lie. Yet I’m really excited for it! I’m utilizing Notion to help break down my posts into categories (book reviews, writing updates, life musings, etc.) and doing a category at a time. Breaking it down into smaller, more manageable chunks makes it feel less daunting. Then, I’ll reshare posts on social media using the #FromtheArchives hashtag.

Initially, I was worried about doing this because I didn’t want to “annoy” followers by highlighting older content, but then I realized:

1. I put in a lot of work on this blog
2. It’s okay to be proud and share it
3. If people hate it, they can a) mute the hashtag or b) unfollow me 🤷🏻‍♀️

So, I’m trying to overthink less and promote more, because I’m lowkey proud of this blog!

On top of updating all of the blog to tie together, other future goals include:

1. Continuing to learn SEO optimization
2. Updating posts for accessibility (including alt-text on images)
3. Learning how to promote this blog more
4. Creating paying affiliations, opportunities or connections to help balance out self-hosting costs!

I’ll share what I’ve learned and my journey throughout, but I just wanted to give you all an idea of where I’m at currently and my future goals. Thanks for staying with me and following this blog! It means the world to have you here. 🖤