Why You Can’t Ignore Your Site for Long Stretches

As a hobby blogger you may think it’s okay to put your site on ignore until you have time to get back to it. 

But, that could do unimaginable damage to your site and make it super hard for you to recover and gain traction again.

See how long periods of inactivity hurt your site and the minimum you need to do to keep it going.

Tackling the Bramble Patch

Years ago I had a shoulder injury from a little too much bone being in the wrong place.

The surgery to fix it was relatively minor, but it was during the late spring and I had to give up yard work for 2 months.

I so enjoyed outsourcing that task that I decided to continue with it even after my shoulder healed.

The time savings was remarkable and it freed me up to work on BlogAid more too.

About 10 years later I bought a new house. It has a gorgeous meadow in the back.

But that beautiful stretch of cleared land is surrounded by wild bramble that no one had tamed in years.

And then trees started falling due to the unchecked bittersweet root choking and killing them and eventually bringing them down.

I decided it was time to start doing my own yard work again and that I would also tackle a huge patch of bramble that was directly across from my deck – where I enjoy sitting with the dog and writing posts like this one.

I did not want to lose the stand of trees that were under constant attack by the bittersweet vine!

Your Site is ALWAYS Under Attack

In 2020 the cyber security situation worsened at an alarming rate.

By 2021 the entire internet itself was under constant attack.

Just like that bittersweet vine, the cyber attacks choke the system and can even bring it down.

All vendors, including hosts, themes, and plugins, have had to take extra action to combat the ever-changing attack vectors.

The #1 way sites get hacked is due to lack of updates.

You can’t just let updates pile up on you.

At a minimum – log into your site and do updates once a week.

It’s best to do it right after your automated weekly backup so that you don’t have to take a new one and stress your hosting resources with it.

READ: WordPress Backup Checklist to ensure you are getting everything you need in your backups to fully restore your site.

READ: How to Rollback Plugin Updates with WP Rollback for a update method that will save your bacon should a plugin update give you an issue.

PHP Coding Changes

PHP is one of the coding languages used by WordPress, themes, and plugins.

And it is always evolving.

In fact, support is cut off for older versions.

That could give your site a security risk not to mention making it slower.

READ: How to Check and Change Your PHP Level for details and a tutorial.

jQuery Coding Changes

Over the WordPress 5.5 – 5.7 release cycle, major changes were made to update older jQuery versions to run on the latest, supported version. 

That change impacted older plugins the most, and some sites broke as they updated WP.

If you ignore your site updates for too long, you could get so far behind that your site suffers a catastrophic break when you do finally update.

And you will have missed all of the fixes and tweaks needed to deal with the changes along the way.

Loss of Ranking

One of the issues I have with content on BlogAid is that it is not evergreen.

In fact, I have multiple posts with outdated tutorials on the site and on YouTube right now.

I’ve let them age to the point that they are actually doing me harm, as folks do find them and then complain they are not able to follow the tutorial anymore.

Plus, the lack of new content and new tutorials means that BlogAid is losing relevance and missing opportunities to gain viewers on topics that are currently hot or news.

Even on my Heartwood Art site that does have evergreen content, I’m losing the opportunity to control the ads shown on my YouTube videos because I’m not posting regularly there and actively driving up subscriptions and watch time.

Nor am I doing any type of social media promotion to drive seasonal traffic either.

That drops my time on site and engagement, both of which are ranking factors.

The fact is, your readers are busy people too. And they will forget all about your site if you don’t put it in front of them often enough.

Loss of Momentum

Everybody knows that you’re much more productive when you can get into a groove with your blogging.

Your mind stays in creative mode with it too.

New ideas come easily.

And you can build and sustain relationships with your audience when you’re consistently engaging with them.

Inertia is real.

It’s harder to get a train moving from a standstill than it is to keep it rolling down the tracks.

And the longer you don’t engage with your site and your audience, the harder it will be to get back into your groove.

Avoid a Zero Day

One of the best coaching suggestions I’ve ever heard is to avoid having a zero day.

Even if you can only spend 15 minutes on your site, you did something.

You stay connected to it.

You stay connected to the audience you have built.

You make some progress.

It’s a Long Game

I have a goal to clear the bramble in my yard to at least the biggest tree in the back of that grove.

It takes me 1 hour to clear the bramble back just 1 foot across the entire tangled expanse.

That equates to 4 wheelbarrow loads taken to the burn pile.

I’ll be at this until winter.

And then it will take constant maintenance until I can kill the heart of the bittersweet vine mother root so that it does not return.

Some of those vines are as big around as my arm! That’s how long it has gone unattended, and how it has the strength to fell 3-story tall trees.

And when the temps and humidity hit 90, and the skeeters and jiggers are biting, none of that work will be fun.

But, if I don’t want to lose more trees, it has to be done.

Treat Your Blog Like a Business

Whatever it is that is keeping you away from your site, you CAN find a way to remove that obstacle.

It really comes down to whether or not it is a business or a hobby for you.

It’s so much harder to let it go and then get back into the groove than to find 15 minutes to stay current.

I wonder how much easier it would be for me to maintain that part of the meadow if the folks who were here before me had put it on ignore.

And, I’m thinking about how much I’m going to enjoy that stand of trees once I do the work to get it cleared.

The Easy Way to Keep Current

Read Tips Tuesday

Read it every week.

It will keep you in touch with site changes.

And it will tell you when you need to make a critical update – and how to do it.

Plus, you’ll be able to easily keep on top of the trends and see what’s coming down the pike for us too.