7 5-minute Tasks to Improve Your Website

byPaulWatson

3.8K followers

Updated 4 years ago

Hey guys,

I hope you are safe and well in this crazy time. Recently, like many many round the world our 'daytime' business was shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions. Luckily we were able to adapt and keep just enough income coming in to keep us going. What it did do however was also given me plenty of time to get stuck into my site to the point where I was releasing a post every day.

Now that we have re-opened and my time has been severely sucked up by trying to get everything moving again, my post writing time has evaporated (only 15 out in June). What I have been doing however is reverting back to an old lesson that I learned from a boss years ago when I complained about too many meetings taking up my time (Government jobs are like that).

His advice... "do up a list of things that you can do in 5 minutes that will make a difference to your daily work"... It worked for me then and it is something that sticks with me now. So, I wanted today to pass that advice onto you if you are struggling for time with your website... Find things that you can do that will take 5 minutes and make a difference to your site...

Here are 7 of mine...

1. Update Internal Links

As we write posts, one of our SEO tasks is to add internal links to other posts within our site. This works well as you write as you can put wording in that matches a previous post - such as a product type or name that you have review recently - and link to it within your current post.

Old posts however do not always have the latest posts linked within them so your first 5 minute tasks is to choose an old post and then run through it to see if it can be linked to any newer posts. This not only helps SEO as Search Engines love posts that are refreshed and updated but can boost the ranking of the old post if you are able to link it to a higher ranking new post.

2. Create a Pinterest Pin

Pinterest is a great way to increase your traffic flow for two reasons:

1. It gives you a back link - Search Engines love back links.
2. It provides another avenue in which to add your low hanging fruit keywords (which should be in your title).

Adding a post to Pinterest takes 2 minutes so you could actually add two in the time frame.

Learn more about Pinterest here

Tip: If you have 10 minutes to spare, try creating a video and/or animated pin in Canva - these have been generating so much traffic for me lately.

3. Add posts to FaceBook (or Instagram etc.)

As with Pinterest above, take the opportunity to add back links and keywords to another traffic generating avenue by uploading posts, pictures or information to other social media channels that you may have. Even if you have few followers now - in time this will build.

Got 20 minutes? Shoot a video and upload to YouTube - after all, you do know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world don't you? There are Super Affiliates in WA you generate massive amounts of traffic and sales via YouTube alone. You will need:

1. A Mobile/Cell phone
2. You

Press record and talk about your post - it really is that simple.

4. Add Comments to Other Posts

I have mentioned back links a few times already within this post - that is because they are (to quote the great magistudios) absolute Google juice. Adding comments to the posts of others is a great way to generate some extra back links to your site and increase search engine ranking. The process is as follows:

1. Do an online search for posts that are similar to yours (this is so you are able to talk to them).
2. Look for comments sections at the bottom that ask for a website address (this is a must).
3. Enter comments and website information as required.

As your comments are insightful and knowledgeable (that is why you searched for posts similar to yours) they will be approved and boom! A back link is earned!

5. Check your Menu Structure

This is an interesting one and something that I did recently. In many cases we build our site and then go nuts writing and writing and writing. We add categories, tags and different post types which in time tend to outgrow our menu structure.

If you have 5 minutes to kill, sit and run through your menus and check for the following:

• Do they still meet the post structure of your site?
• Are there posts that cannot be accessed via the menu?
• Is it simple and easy to follow? - i.e. do you need to actually create over arching categories for your posts (this takes longer than 5 minutes, but at least you will now be aware).

After all, you don't want to be leaking traffic and sales simply because readers cannot navigate your menus.

6. Check and Fix Broken Links

Broken links are links within a website that are directed at URLs that are no longer active. This can be for a number of reasons with the most common being:

• An external link in a post to a website that no longer exists.
• An internal link that has been renamed and not updated.
• A manually entered URL link that is misspelled.

There are a number of tools and plug in available to check broken links, I use the ATOM SEO Chrome extension myself - it is free and appears pretty accurate.

Once the report has run (which may eat up your 5 minutes) you can come back when you have more time (but make it soon) and fix each one from the report.

7. Old Content Update Register

Ok, so this last one is not going to take only 5 minutes, but as you are running through your old posts adding more internal links (as per task 1 above) what you can do is take the time to work on a 'content update register'. The process is quite simple - read through the post and find areas that are:

• Out of date.
• Short on information.
• Don't read as well as they may (this is common with older posts where writing skills are still being developed).
• Can be updated based on information located for future posts.
• Add keywords that are ranking well (I will cover this in another post soon).

This is not only great 'Google Juice' but can also lead to increased reader traffic due to the fact that the content is potentially meeting the needs of more people.

Conclusion

Anyway guys, my 5 minutes is up and I need to get back to writing some posts. I hope that was helpful and please do not hesitate to comment below if you need more information on any of the 7 steps above and I will see if I can whip up some training if it is not already there.

Have fun and most importantly, stay safe.

Paul