Ready for another One-Minute Blog Makeover? There are certain things that instantly make people want to stick around a blog just a little bit longer – great design, for one, except that most of us don’t have the cash to shell out for a top-quality blog designer. But there are so many little changes you can make immediately to make your blog look more put-together and professional.
Read on to see the screenshots larger after the jump to really get an idea of the impact I’m talking about and to find out how to streamline your labels in Blogger or your categories and tags in WordPress. Plus, at the end of the post, find my challenge for you guys, and then come back to share your results if you participate!
Organized, Efficient Blog Labels and Tags
Tell me, of the two screenshots below, which is more pleasing to look at? Why?
The right image feels a lot more clean and organized to me. Why? Because the post labels are not overwhelming the content itself and making everything look messy and disjointed. Labels, categories, and tags should be used as broad filters so that your readers can find similar posts. Use SEO tools and the post body for more specific labeling.
Today’s tip: Clean up your labels, categories, or tags.
How to Clean up Labels and Tags in Blogger and WordPress
- Blogger: While I haven’t found a super quick and easy way to do this, you can bulk-add a label to a set of posts and then bulk-remove any labels you no longer want to use. On your Blogger dashboard, go to ‘All Posts’ and then click the ‘All Labels’ dropdown in the upper right corner next to the search bar. Find whatever label you want to start with, and click it. Let’s say you used to categorize your tutorials under ‘how to’ and ‘diy,’ but now you just want the label to be ‘tutorial.’ Select the first one, ‘how to’ in this case, and then select all posts with that label by checking the box in the upper left next to the little tag icon. Now, click that little tag, and select ‘New Label.’ Add the label ‘tutorial,’ and then click the labels ‘how to’ and ‘diy’ to remove them.
- WordPress: Though I currently use Blogger, not WordPress, it looks like you can use plugins to bulk-edit categories and tags for WordPress. Here’s one that I found, but feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments.
One-Minute Blog Makeover Challenge
Go back to an old blog post — maybe one that’s doing well on Pinterest or that you want to share for the holidays. Clean up the labels and tags. Then, leave a comment on this post with a link to that post and a link to the post before it so that we can all see the difference between your blog posts before and after your ‘mini makeover.’
P.S. Here’s the post featured in these screenshots!
