What is it that determines whether a blog design is good or bad, friendly or unfriendly? We all have our own opinions and no one will ever completely agree on every factor. When it comes to the basics, the following seven factors effect everyones views on a blog’s design.
Appearance
The first thing that any visitors sees is the overall appearance of a blog. The design of the blog should complement the blog’s content, not overpower it. The blog design should also match stylistically with the message and the purpose of the site.
Usability
For a blog to be successful, people need to be able to use it. A blog generally has lots of text so it will need to provide excellent readability and good navigation between articles.
Purpose
You need to blog for a purpose and that purpose needs to be clearly defined and easily understood by the reader. Your blog’s purpose also helps you to concentrate on the future direction of the blog.
Clarity
If your blog does have a ‘purpose’ how clear is it to your readers. Can your readers easily see ‘what is in it for them’?
User Focused
Does your blog focus on the reader and the readers needs or is it more focused on your needs - for example, income. Focus on your reader and the rest will follow.
Accessibility
Does your blog work in every browser and for different screen resolutions? Having a blog that renders well in one browser but breaks out in another robs you of a good portion of reader.
Navigation
Finally, navigation. Can readers easily find their way through to other articles on your blog? Clear menu’s with straightforward categories helps your readers to find what they are looking for.
First impressions count. You need to remember that the moment your blog appears on screen, you are being judged. That is human nature. Before a visitor even gets to the content - they have made up their mind as to their like or dislike of your blog - how well does yours stand up.
If you have trouble developing internal links on your blog then you can use of many different blog plugins to do the job for you.
One of the better plugins is the WordPress Related Posts plugin. This plugin adds a short list of older posts to the end of your current post. This is achieved by matching tags. Each post in the list is linked to the posts individual URL.
A second plugin that is a little difficult to follow at first is the Cross-Link Plugin for WordPress. With this plugin you define a set of words or phrases and matching URL’s. The plugin will then automatically insert links whenever it comes across one of those predefined words or phrases.
Unfortunately you can only have one URL for each word or phrase. If your targeted phrase was “WordPress Blog Plugins”, then that phrase can only point to the one URL. Each URL selected can have as many words or phrases associated to it as you would want.
It has some limitations. With this plugin you cannot spread the ‘link juice’ to several different pages for the one keyword. However, if you are targeting only a handful of pages and using keywords specific to those pages then the plugin could be very useful. A handy blog plugin to add to the collection but don’t rely on it for your internal link strategies.
If you are a lazy blogger, or simply don’t have time each day to write a full post, this handy little tip may help to at least keep your blog looking fresh with new content every day.
You need a del.icio.us account first. Once you have your account, as you visit other blogs bookmark their posts that you find interesting each day. Once you have set up your auto post below, del.icio.us will create a post on blog from each days saved bookmarks.
These instructions are from theory.isthereason - he has a full post on other options on his blog:
- Sign up or Login to your del.icio.us account
- Start bookmarking and tagging favorite web pages.
- In del.icio.us, click Settings and look under Blogging, then click on the link that says “daily blog posting”
- Click “add a new thingy” and some obscure form appears
- Enter the following into the form, and enter your relevant details in the [boxes]
job_name : WordPress Daily Post (or any title you want)
out_name : [Your WordPress Username]
out_pass : [Your WordPress Password]
out_url : http://[Your Blog URL]/xmlrpc.php
out_time : 4 (the GMT that you want the post to happen. 0 = 8pm EST)
out_blog_id : 1 (might not matter to WordPress)
out_cat_id : 1 (Regardless, it’ll probably post to the default WordPress category)
- Hit “Submit Query” and you’re done!
- Simply wait for the magical moment when you links magically appear on your blog!
All very simple and straight forward. Now if you find you are running out time to write a post, visit a few of your favorites and add their post to del.icio.us and you will have created a new post.
I don’t recommend you do it every day, however it could make a nice weekend roundup of what you have been reading and found interesting and would like to pass on to your readers. Make sure it provides some value to them and they will be appreciative.
You will notice that all the top bloggers - or ‘A’ listers - use a weekly - and sometimes daily - roundup of their favorite pages - you can too now.
With the speed of the internet came blogs and we all know that it is important to have a blog for your company but it is also as important to have good design on your blog. New blogs are springing up every day and the competition is only getting tougher to get noticed and stand out.
Quote Catcher can help you find that web design firm to help you with your blog and give it that wow factor. It takes more than just putting a template and writing a few posts here and there. To fully take advantage of a blog it is a must to have a custom professionally designed unique platform with daily posting. With so many design firms offering the latest and greatest it can get very frustrating trying to find the right design firm to work with. By submitting your information Quote Catcher can offer you up to 5 design quotes all catered to your specific budget and project details. Quote Catcher takes the time to isolate 5 design firms that best fit your needs and allow them to bid on your project in confidence. Your information will never be sold off to third parties and you can feel safe with submitting your project details to Quote Catcher. Don’t waste anymore of your time aimlessly looking for a web designer and let Quote Catcher help you.
For a free web design quote please visit Quote Catcher and submit your information today.
In the blogging world there are millions of bloggers, yet the majority of them never bother to stop and leave a comment on any of the blogs they visit. If most bloggers new the true power of comments I am sure they would leave more.
There is a real art to leaving to comments which, when mastered, provide readers with an insight to your views and your writing style. The best approach is to treat your comments like mini posts. Follow the same ‘rules’ for writing a post. A start, a conclusion with of course the body in the middle. Short easy to eat paragraphs that add to the conversation surrounding the initiating post.
Leaving comments such as “I agree” do nothing to ‘add’ to the conversation and certainly do nothing to add to your reputation. Write meaningful mini posts as comments and other visitors are more likely to follow your link back to your blog to see what else you have written.
As you gain a reputation for writing meaningful comments, bloggers will not only welcome your visit, they are more likely to visit your blog to leave comments as a way to encourage you back. The reason, posts that contain valuable comments are almost as good at generating traffic as the post itself.
Comments are a powerful tool in the right hands, learn to use them effectively and learn to take as pride in the comment left as you do in your own posts and you will soon see your position within the blogging community rise.
This will lead to increased inbound links and with it increased rankings. This becomes a snowball effect, increases in rankings lead to more search traffic and of course, more links and more traffic. Total win for you the blogger, simply because you took the time to craft your comments.
Blog marketing starts right from day one when you decide on your blogs name. There are many blogs that have a ‘name’ that is different to their domain name. It is an interesting concept, but one that can lead to many problems.
If your blogs domain name is xyz.com and you name your blog ABC, there is the danger that first, someone will come along and register ABC or a derivation, or that ABC is already taken and you are blogging under someone else’s domain name. The other problem is that of confusion with your readers. If they remember you as ABC, they may forget your URL and never return. These issues are counter productive when it comes blog marketing.
Of more importance, is how you select your domain name. Most of the good dot com names are gone. You may find some variations still available, however many bloggers are now deciding on either long domain names, or using variations with hyphens. For example, rather than just xyz.com, they may try x-yz.com or x-y-z.com. A good or clever domain name can be a blog marketing blessing as the name itself becomes a marketing tool.
In selecting a name for your blog, you need to find a name that serves three purposes. The first is relevance to the content. The name of your blog needs to one that can, over time, be easily associated with the niche that you intend to operate in.
The second area to look at when selecting a blog name is the ease of use. Having a blog name that is a mile long with umpteen hyphens makes the URL difficult to remember, is even harder to type, and is a blog marketing nightmare. It can be more prone to typing errors as well.
The third aspect in a domain name is whether or not it can be used as a keyword. A long hyphenated domain name can be difficult to optimize in itself. You need to rely heavily on associated keywords instead of the domain name.
Blog marketing can be a difficult task. Add a poorly thought through blog name and the task becomes impossible.
Launching a blog these days goes hand in hand with an ecommerce strategy. A blog is a very effective choice when adding new content to your growing site. If you are planning to monetize your blog by selling some of your products than it is very important to have a consistent credit card processing system in place for both your website and your blog.
Electronic Transfer offers a great solution to your credit card processing needs. This e-commerce merchant service offers recurring billing, address verification and secure order pages to name just a few of its feature services. Sometimes it could be difficult to pinpoint and choose a cost effective and recommended credit card processing company. We have analyzed this company and find it to be one of the best in the industry. With packages ranging for all shapes and sizes you will be able to find this one stop merchant service the right solution to your ecommerce puzzle. Come and read through the customer testimonials and you will be impressed by the positive responses this organization has generated through it users experiences. Having the right credit card processing company is very important. You do not want to be stuck and not able to get someone on the phone if your shopping cart should fail one day. You’re Website and your blog could depend on it.
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Blog content has several issues that need looking at over time. The first is the problem of duplicate content and the second is the issue of new content.
Blogs are popping up everywhere and one of the common practices is to subscribe to RSS feeds and then just reprint any articles of interest from them as their blog content. They are even getting smart now and only taking the first paragraph and using the read more to link back to the source.
This can result in websites with duplicate blog content - in some cases 100% copies. Google now claims to be able to locate the original content and drop any spammed copied from their indexes. You can never be sure.
The second issue of fresh blog content is a little different. Fresh content normally means publishing something new on a regular basis, preferably daily. Sometimes this is just not possible. There are options available can be of help.
Have you ever seen those “Quote of the Day” widgets on blogs? They adds a random quote of the day to each page that the widget appear on. Some work on a time basis, updating every set time period; others update for each visitor that arrives on that page effectively changing the blog content for each visit.
The effect is that every time you arrive on that page, the page will be a little different. The search engine spiders see the same thing. Every time they come to read your pages, the blog content has been changed.
If you can incorporate several different widgets on a page, you can make significant changes to the page which will result in frequent visits from the spiders and frequent reidexing of your pages. This is a great counter to the lack of fresh content on your pages.
It also makes your pages look different to the scrapped pages on another site. If you have incorporated any links back to site in that content (which you can do quite easily within the RSS feed) then Google and the other search engines will see your site as being the original publisher of the content.
Images can often make a difference to a blogs overall look and certainly add reader value to an individual post - if that is the image is suitable to the content and the image itself optimized. These blogging tips are directed more towards the look of a post than to any SEO affects.
Many bloggers fail to look at the most basic blogging tips when it comes to images. I often come across pages where an image has been placed and the effect actually destroys the flow of post itself. It can be very disconcerting to a reader to the point that the post’s message is lost.
Simple blogging tips like left or right aligning the image with text wrap. Placing white space around the image for clarity - there are so many blogs where the text is hard up against the image. Borders can be a useful affect as well if you know how to use them. Blogging Tips has an excellent post on How To Add Borders and is well worth a read.
Apart from borders, you can very quickly and easily add white space and change the alignment of your images with a couple of short commands.
White Space:
To add white space around an image - add the following command inside the <img src=”???? hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″> line in your html editor. The number 5 represent the number of white space pixels.
Image Alignment:
Add the following command <img src=”???” align=”left> - you can use ‘left’ ‘right’ or ‘center’ in the command line. The left and right options also allow the text to wrap around the image.
These are very simple blogging tips, however the overall affect to your post can be quite startling.
For some bloggers, getting traffic can be difficult particulalry when they first start up. For some, blog networks offer a flow of traffic that helps to kick-start their blogging life.
Blog networks have several advantages and disadvantages. The main idea of a blog network is that, once you sign up, for every blog you visit you will receive credits which are used to bring visitors to you. The general pattern is one return visitor for every two blogs that you visit. Visit 50 blogs and receive 25 visitors to your blog.
That can be time consuming. Visiting 50 blogs takes quite a while. Some blog networks have paid options where your visiting ratio become 1-1. You may even be able to buy credits so you don’t have to visit other blogs at all.
One of the benefits to new bloggers is visiting other blogs. You get a feel for blogging and what is involved, how other bloggers set up and perhaps monetize their sites. This can be a quick learning experience for the new blogger.
Most experienced bloggers find it hard to justify the time and cost of joining a blog network. However, for new bloggers, it pay provide a steady stream of traffic and help to introduce them to a great many blogs they would otherwise not have seen.