I’ve made a lot of little changes to the Geek Mamas blog the past month, from little things like adding a blue background, to big things like a total SEO overhaul. For the most part, probably nobody has even noticed the little tweaks. It’s something I like to keep track of so I know how the changes have affected my traffic, so I decided to make a list of all the recent changes.

1 – I changed the background color to light blue. You only get a hint of blue on the edges, and the main background is still white. I like a nice clean blog overall.

2 – New San Serif font for the main and title text.

3 – Added, removed and fine tuned a lot of categories. This was a big one and I’m still working on it! I write about a little of everything happening in my life and it’s hard to find a category for everything. So the categories have always been an ever-evolving thing.

4 – SEO improved with better titles and focus on keywords. I’m actually not doing most of the blog SEO stuff I’ve been implementing for this post. But I have been busy going back through old posts and focusing better on keywords. This has probably made the biggest impact, and I’m seeing much more referral traffic from search engines now!

5 – I closed MomtasticMommyBlog.com so I can just focus on one blog. I don’t know when I had time to create and run a new blog, but it got to where two blogs was just too much.

6 – Less badges and links in sidebars. I removed some outdated badges and links and just left the important ones.

7 – Links are now noreferrer and some are nofollow. When I updated some things on the website, all my links that open in an new window (so about 99% of them) were all changed to noreferrer and nofollow, so unfortunately that will affect companies being able to see the traffic I might refer. I’m going back through and changing certain links to direct links.

8 – Only an excerpt of the blog now displays in the reader feed. Before I had the full article displayed. I was curious if I changed to the just the first bit and then “Read the full article on GeekMamas.com” if traffic to the blog would improve, rather than it just staying in the reader. This was the newest change and I’m still seeing how I like it.

9 – Mostly original photos or copyright free photos. A friend was recently hit by a “copyright troll” and sued big bucks for posting an old X-files photo on his personal blog. This was on a post from several years ago and on a blog that does not generate income. So I decided to try and replace most of my “found on the Internet” photos with original photos I took myself, or photos from free photo places like Pexels.com.

10 – A new focus on Jacksonville. I expanded my “Adventures” tab to include more local events in and around Jacksonville, FL. I added categories for things like free events, mom’s night out and beach life.

I don’t feel like a blog (or any website) is something you can just create and then let it stay the same. Growing and changing is a good thing. I think I’ve reached a spot where I can sit back for a bit and see how these new changes work out. And then probably start tinkering with everything again! So have you made any changes, big or small, to your blog this year?