10 things for bloggers to do while at home

If you are a blogger, sitting at home and getting bored, here're some tips to work on your blog and make it better.

1. Review and Update old posts: Blog posts loose relevance at times. Review your old posts, where required update them to keep them relevant. For example

• You may have a better photograph now
• Cost of various things you mentioned in the post might have changed
• Places get closed or new places open,  
• You might have found a better place or a missing information etc.

Update your old posts. Delete old posts if the information is no longer relevant and traffic to that post is near zero.

2. Interlink posts: Review your old posts, if there are related posts that were published later, interlink them. For example, if there's an old post on Places to visit in London and a newer post on "Visiting Buckingham palace", then interlink both of them. It is good for SEO and also for readers to navigate from one post to another and stay longer on your blog.

3. Make your blog more SEO friendly
- Add alt text to images
- Rename file name from DSC01010 to something more meaningful
- Check for keyword density
- Add caption to images

4. Fix site issues & optimize
- Google adsense, google analytics etc often send reports advising you of minor issues or tips to optimize your blog. Go through them, implement what you can.

5. Learn a skill or two you didn't know well so far.
If you had no idea what is SEO, or if you were not good at editing images, or if you felt your grammar is not good, now is the time to learn those essential supplementary skills. Make use of online videos, tutorials to learn few new skills.

6. Remove dead links
In an article you would have linked to external sites. Sometimes a link goes dead if the destination website is down or a particular page is removed. Check outgoing links, if they are not functional, not relevant anymore then remove them. Add Nofollow where necessary.

Similarly embedded videos might have been taken down, 3rd party photos might be down.  Fix them.

7. Link to fellow blogger's post.
If you are aware a fellow blogger has a relevant post to what you have written, link to that post. He/she may return the favor and both can benefit.

8. Update templates
Give your blog a new look by changing the template.

9. Read More
Read your old posts again

• May be you will realize some mistakes or you might realize you've to update it, or you will appreciate how things have changed since you wrote them.
• Respond to any comments you might have missed replying to
• Read other blogger's posts and comment. Show some appreciation and support.
• Read more in general to help you learn more.

10. Analyse your traffic.

• What kind of posts are getting more views? 
• What keywords are bringing audience to your blog? 
• What is your audience demographics? 
• Where to you stand in search results for some of your popular contents?

Above traffic insights are readily provided by web tracking tools like Google Analytics. Gaining better understanding will help you plan your future content better.

These things will help you redefine your blog, make good use of idle time/home isolation and help you get better traction once situation improves.