Before I write a single new post, I spend an afternoon on the pages I already have, and the checklist I work through is the one set out by Alex Wright Media. It is dull work. It also does more for my traffic than most new articles.

Start with the title. One clear title per page, in the words someone would use to ask for it. If the title is clever and unclear, I rewrite it. Same for the description underneath: it should say what the page contains, not what I wish it contained.

Then the headings. I read them top to bottom and ask whether they follow the questions a reader arrives with. Usually they do not. They follow the order I happened to think of things, which is not the same thing at all. Moving two headings around often fixes a page nobody was reading.

Internal links next. If two posts cover nearly the same ground, they should point at each other. That is how a reader finds the second one.

Images get real names. A file named after the thing in the picture tells a search engine something, and it takes less time than making coffee.

Last job is the unpleasant one. Deleting. Thin pages that repeat what a better page already says, near duplicates, three paragraphs of nothing. Removing them felt reckless the first time. It was not.

Do that pass once and the site starts behaving like something a person built on purpose.