10 Top Tips for A Better Blog

A blog is a destination to put all of your thoughts and opinions relating to yourself or the niche in which you write. Blogging has been growing since early 2004 and it has now reached the point where you there are cutting edge blogs and there are blogs that wouldn’t cut through paper even if they tried. What makes YOUR blog the authority?

We have all heard that a blog has to be unique, but being unique can only go so far. Today I provide YOU with the top tips to improve your blog’s design and functionality. This is one of my specialty areas because I like blog’s to be organized and not all over the place.

1. Organize Your Content: You have to learn how to provide readers with information (by these I mean old articles from a long time ago). You can show reader’s old articles by having a Popular Posts section or having some ‘flagship’ articles.

2. Have Good GreatNavigation: It is no use having a blog if no one can get in and around your site, this is why you have to have not good but GREAT navigation. You can optimize navigation by showing your most important pages at the top or in a prominent location and having your frequent posts, recent comments etc… in easy to reach places.

3. Don’t muck up design with ’stuff’ everywhere: Okay, Now this is the one I get angry the most with, you go to some blogs, you get to the front page and guess what? You got your chicklets floating everywhere, up to three or more ad blocks in the post, some affiliate products on the left and the right sidebars, another banner in the top section of the blog and why not throw in some Kontera and some more affiliate links…this really gets me angry and makes me leave a blog. I think it would give anyone else the same reaction.

4. Having a presentable blog: Presentation is of GREAT importance. No one wants to be visiting a blog daily that does not look that great…ok maybe once or twice I will check it out but it will probably be less and less. Make sure everything is aligned, you have lots of white space and your font is justified.

5. Make sure your blog is set to ping: This is one of the simplest things that people forget to do, especially if they are new bloggers. You have to make sure that your blog is set to ping the services out there. For WordPress users go to Options, Writing and fill the bottom box with lots of ping services.

6. If you are displaying 125×125 ads: Have a dedicated area, above the fold where they are all displayed, there is no point displaying these kinds of ads if they are at the bottom of the page.

7. Have a CONTACT US section: So, you have a new blog or a reasonably frequented blog, but someone wants to get in touch with you…but they cannot, this is a very common feature amongst many blogs nowadays. They don’t have a contact us form…well how do we contact you now then?

8. Make sure you don’t have broken links, if you do have a custom error 404 page

9. Support commentators and include the DoFollow plugin!

10. Be a good blogger, post daily, even twice daily! It helps Google ping you faster each time you post a new topic.

All of these tips are highly important, after all your blog is your front door, you don’t want them to see shoes and rubbish lying around all over the place…if you do that’s just pretty crazy! 

Posted on November 25, 2007
Filed Under Blog and Site Improvement |

 Did You Enjoy Reading This Article? If Yes, Subscribe To My RSS Feed!

COMMENTS

Quick Comment Policy: Small Fish Big Money values the community contribution you make to the site, we ask that you make comments that add value to the post. This could be by means of sharing or relating to the post in one form or another, or providing your own opinions relating to the post topic at hand.

Spam Policy: In the interest of reducing spam and useless content, we ask that you refrain from using 'one-liner' style comments or comments created for the purposes of attaining links (they will be purged from the site during comment quality upkeep periods). Thank You For Your Time.