The Importance of Blog Design

While there are many unreliable blogs, offering inaccurate news information, there are some very useful blogs that provide valuable product reviews. Reading these help many people decide what products to buy.

The mass of traffic in the blog world provides fertile fields for internet marketers. On top of the existing traffic, the popularity of the blog concept is still rising, as more and more people are getting into it.

If you don’t seem to be getting the amount of hits you’re looking for on your blog, you could syndicate. Syndication is when you show some of your content on someone else’s blog, and in return, you get to show someone else in the syndication network’s content. People on the other blogs can click to read more on your blog if they are interested. This is a free, simple way to greatly increase the amount of traffic you’re blog receives.

As a blog writer, you want lots of traffic on your site. With high amounts of traffic, advertisers are willing to pay higher amounts for a spot on your sites. More easily put: Traffic = $$.

Once you have some good traffic coming to your blog, find ways to encourage them to come back, whether it be with new content, socialization techniques, or whatever you want.

If you don’t think you have sufficient experience or skill in the field of writing web copy, you can easily hire a web writer to write informative, article-like posts to your blog (for rates as low as .01-.02 c per word!) when you’re not feeling up to it.

Another important aspect to consider if you’re interested in making a powerful blog is the blog design. If you are using a blog service, such as blogger, then you are probably supplied with templates you can work with at no charge. Take note that popular website and blogs are like no other. IF you have the green, hire someone (such as Syed) to code you a great template, complete with spots for widgets, as well as a good banner for the top of your page.

If you are unable to have a unique template made for you, here are some tips to make the most of the free template you have:

A Professional Banner

A blog’s banner sits at the top of the page, and needs to tell your reader: This blog is important, you should read on.

Sometimes, a banner is the first and only chance you’ll get to change your reader’s mind before they click away from your page.

With some basic Photoshop skills, you can create your own, professional banner. Or, another option would be to hire a professional to design one. This usually will cost around $10 but can vary based on quality.

Personalizing photos

You should be posting unique photos on your blog. However, you can still “personalize” them. Most decent photo editing programs let you easily adjust the hue and saturation, and other variables in the picture. With some practice, you can learn how to optimize your pictures, and enhance their appeal.

Check out layouts, blog templates, textures, backgrounds, and skins from sites

Some sites offer free blog customization tools. Although these can be useful, if you have the money, I highly recommend paying a professional to make you a unique blog layout and template. Blog browsers get tired of seeing the same free templates provided by the blog host over and over again.

RSS feeds

RSS feeds are a syndication tool that allows you to show your content on other sites, and in turn you receive traffic for your blog from them. People click on these other sites to read more, and it directs them to your blog. Not only are you getting free traffic, but, also free exposure!

Audio

Audio can be a great form of content on your site. However, there are some important things to remember

• Don’t Auto-play it. Let the user decide to play the audio, if it automatically plays when they visit the site, they will most likely be turned off.
• Only use audio you have the right to use. Don’t play copyrighted music without permission. Don’t fret, you can record your own voice talking to the viewer, or, you could use some free programs on the internet to make basic songs from scratch, no recording required.
• If you can, format your blog and audio, so clicking on a link to a post on the blog, or anywhere within your blog will not stop the audio. Once the viewer realizes that clicking to a different link will turn off the audio, it can result in them being reluctant to click links (if they enjoy the audio).

Advertisements

If you are placing ads on your blog, here are some tips to increase the appeal to the viewer:

• Orient your ads to blend in with your normal content. If you’re viewers are reading black text on a white background, and then they see a black box with big red writing, they won’t click, because they will know it’s external ads. Make your ads’ borders and background the exact same color as the background of where they are on the blog, so they will just look like some useful links you put there.
• Don’t over do it. Don’t saturate your pages with ads. The primary reason people are visiting your blog is to see the content, not the ads. So give them content. If you give them good content that they like, they will click your ads.

What you must realize though, is that as a blogger, someone else can’t make your blog successful. It’s up to you. If you put in the effort to actually implement all the preceding tips, it will help you. But if you just read this and don’t act, your blog will just sit at the back of the internet closet and never be touched. So go out there and make you blog a great one!