This is a guest post by Bilal Ahmed from TechMaish.com, blogging today to tell us some basic tips to keep in mind while creating/managing blogs.
Blogging is a very profitable and stable business, but the competition has made it very difficult for newbies to enter in this field.
The reasons are so many, e.g lack of knowledge and confidence, less experience, desire of getting popular in short time, expecting things is short span of time, coming up with competitive topics, not reading and following recommendations of the popular bloggers, monotony and having no proper business plan and so on…..
The only way for a newbie in this competitive environment is to stand out of the crowd.
In order to stand of the crowd, newbie is advised to start with a effective business plan and continue with the right steps. In blogging, blog is the first thing that will differentiate you from the rest. Blog must be very creative and well designed so that your readers can enjoy while reading it.
There are some tips, if you keep them in mind while blogging, you may create magic in the readers mind:
1. Attractive Design: We like anything on internet, if the matter is soothing to our eyes. Hence, this is very important to design your blog well not only that but it should be user friendly also.
2. Font Style, Size and Colors: Fonts that you use in your blog must be clear and easily decipherable never use the fonts such as Old English Text MT, Magneto etc. Even remember the fonts are not very large or very tiny while you are writing a blog must use the 12-14 size. We are aware that light color suits to dark background and dark to the light.
3. Images: Always add some images in your Blog that gives visual effects to the reader as we know that only reading can bore you and your eyes.
4. Proportionate the Sidebar: Give equal weightage to each and every portion of the blog. Do not enlarge the sidebars it makes the blog look yuck. Always keep the important points in the sidebars. This also helps you at the time when you get any advertise to post on your blog.
5. Don’t Overload the Blog: While writing a blog, remember that you write point to point. Do not use long sentences. Never use excessive images or description.
6. Highlight the Links: Always remember that the links given in the blog must be highlighted well. Thus, the links will stand out from the other contents.
7. Let Readers Make The Choice: Never keep the auto start music or videos in your blog. Let you readers decide if they want them or not. The auto playing music and videos take too much bandwidth and slow down the speed of PC. Always keep your videos in the sidebar, so that they are in sight.
8. Generate Sitemap & Navigation: It is advisable to create a sitemap in your blog. By doing so your blog will enable search engine spiders to know where to go. You can provide a search box in your blog where readers can search for keywords and find the relevant matter they are looking for. Always set your archives by category and by months.
9. Approachable Contact and Subscription Links: If you want to have followers, readers and subscribers who can visit you on regular basis, locate your feed, social-networking links and subscription links easily approachable for readers.
10. Remove Captchas and Have a Favicon: Captchas can create a trouble for visitor in leaving comment as sometimes, the text is very small & unclear to read and sometimes it takes more than one attempt to follow Captchas procedure. So you should remove Captchas to get maximum visitors’ comment. More over your blog should have identity which facilitates readers to search your blog in a big clump. For this propose, creating Favicon is perfect choice.
I hope you would have found this article nice. Please share your comments below and let us know if you consider some more basic tips that a blogger should know while he is blogging.
Great work. The post is really a precious thing to a blogger who are in underdevelopment stage. They can use these tips to get their blog in a good page ranking position. social media is also one important thing to be in mind to spread all over the internet. Facebook, twitter, digg are playing vital role for bloggers.
thanks for the tips! I am in my blog already using data techniques because they are really working
Great tips. I agree with auto starting music. People have their own preference for music and I think most people would have a music playing in the background while searching the net.So it’s bets to just turn off that music on your blog.
Need to do all this as I have just migrated my blog from Blogger to WP.
Blogging is simply a form of communicating ideas to others. Read and learning opinions from others is an education we receive everyday. Kind of like being in school forever. The mind is a terrible thing to waste. Soak it all in and rinse…….Thank you for your thoughts.
Agreed re no captcha. They are annoying, and akismet is so awesome it catches 99.9%. I think gravatars encourage commenting as well.
I agree with mark. Those captcha are really annoying. I took it out from my resell rights site.
I want little to add: This article may be SEO friendly, but the article should still be easily understood by visitors
Thanks, your article is very useful.
of course you also have to plan out your contents ahead. content plan and scheduling is very important, particularly for new blogs. It’s best to showcase your expertise on the first month of the blog to generate traffic and to establish authority immediately. Choosing the plugins to use also plays a huge part in starting a new blog. You need to have the important once like all-in-one SEO, google analytics, etc.
Regards,
Jason
These are great tips. I’ll add that it’s not only good to have a plan, but actually set a timeline for your goals. Be generous with your timeline. Think in terms of months, not days. This way you’ve insulated yourself from feeling like giving up too early.