Every year, we spring clean our house, right? Well, okay, we think about doing it. Your blog is another place you want to think about spring cleaning.

Like your home, your blog ends up with some unnecessary and unwanted cobwebs. You’ll have old posts that are no longer relevant, links that don’t work, and even categories that have become unused. SEO changes may not have been applied to old posts and just leaving them as they were can hurt your ranking and your credibility.

So, it’s time to do some spring cleaning. Spend some time working on these 10 top tips — I’m going to be doing the same, as they’re steps I take at least once per year. I’m going to keep the post short, though, so you can just get on with this task!

1. Analyze your theme: Does it still work for your needs? Is your site still what you want it to be or work for your audience? While you don’t want to change every single time or too frequently, every now and then, your site needs a facelift.

2. Review your old content: Make sure it’s still up to date and says what you want it to say. You can unpublish some of your blog posts if they’re completely out of date or irrelevant now. However, you’ll want to be wary of broken links. While reviewing old content, update your images and check your tags/SEO/links.

3. Check on all your affiliate links: If you use Amazon bounties, you’ll know that they come to an end after a certain amount of time. You’ll want to make sure your links are still working and are even still your links! The last thing you want is to think you’re sending people to posts through your links and find out you’re missing a digit.

4. Remove the unused categories: Make sure each of your categories is right for your site. Do they regularly have posts added in? There’s nothing wrong with removing them if they’re no longer relevant for your posts. Just remember to put old posts (if you’re keeping them) into another category.

5. Update the images on popular posts: Old or new, make sure you keep an eye on your most popular posts. You’ll want to update images on them now and then. Part of spring cleaning your blog will also involve making new images. Pinterest doesn’t want you to reuse the same pin over and over again, so start making some new pins for your popular blog posts.

6. Go through your drafts: They’re just clogging up your blog and just sitting doing nothing. However, they could be perfect for when you need something new to write and are stuck in a rut. Look through the drafts. What’s still relevant and could be worked on? What’s needing to be trashed?

7. Go through your comments: Even if you once moderated the comments, spring cleaning is a good time to look at the comments on your posts. Is there anything that you should have followed up on? This could be a good time to get the conversation going again. Then there are those that are just “great post” or “thanks for the post.” These aren’t doing you any favors, so just delete them.

8. Update or remove your plug-ins: Make sure your blog plug-ins are working for you. If they’re not, you need to start removing them. Look for updated or new ones that do a better job. Make sure your plug-ins are regularly updated to avoid breaking something in your blog.

9. Refresh your About Page and Landing Page: You’re so busy putting new content on the blog part of your website that you likely forgot about your standard pages. Your Home Page, About Page, and other similar stock pages are likely outdated. During your spring clean, give them a spruce up.

10. Get your email list in order: This is my biggest guilt. I know I haven’t emailed anyone in so long and it’s time for me to change that. This is actually going to be my number one action in spring cleaning my blog. I’m going to start emailing more! What about your email list?

Spring cleaning your blog is a great way to get rid of the old and start afresh with the new. You’ll get a new lease of life with your site and find more of what you want to do.