With the mindset that content is king, many bloggers occupy themselves with creating and releasing new content almost every day while neglecting another important aspect of their blog, its attractiveness.
Although it is possible for your blog to have good traffic and subscribers with a mundane look, this can’t be compared to how well it would fare when it looks attractive. People are interested in the information in your content. But how do you stand out from the crowd of bloggers in your niche and other niches? How do you give your blog a personality that has readers coming back not just because it’s visually appealing but also because it leaves a great impression on your readers?
Well, the best thing is to focus on making your blog attractive. Are you ready to do that? Let’s move forward then.
1. Declutter
Yes, before you start thinking about making your blog attractive, you’re going to have to deal with the clutter, all those unnecessary stuff you have dancing around your blog pages just because they came along with the theme or for whatever reason. Regardless, not only do they make your blog look unattractive, they also make it load slowly.
So, to create a clutter-free and attractive blog environment that provides your visitors with a great user experience, you have to deal with organizing your blog.
Here are some of the things that need reorganization: your headlines, headline images, tagline, tags, categories, sidebar, pages, etc.
2. Limit Your Blog Advertisements
Let me give you a case scenario, you follow a link on twitter to a blog because of this topic you’re really interested in only for you to get there, attempt to read the content but unfortunately it is so interwoven with ads that it seems to have more ads than content. What do you do? If I were you, I’d leave immediately, someone else must have also written similar content so I’ll rather look for them than put up with annoying slide-in ads, popups and text ads interwoven into content that keeps distracting me.
Some experts will even encourage you not to put ads on your blog, although, this might not work for everyone, try to limit your blog ads so they don’t drive away faithful readers.
3. Examine Your Blog Design
Your blog design doesn’t have to be particularly elegant, beautiful, or sophisticated, instead, it should give your site a personality that is attractive yet special.
What are those things you need to optimize in your blog design: your header, website navigation, footer, widgets, sliders, fonts and typography, sidebar content, search bar, etc.
- Sidebar
The sidebar allows you to place information that might not fit well on a page and can be accessed on all pages and blog posts. It allows you to put a spot light on some choice content, share live feeds from your social media account, improve navigation of your site, build your mailing list and many other countless options.
- Search bar
The search bar, however small it is, can make a lot of difference in your blog reader’s experience. Imagine navigating a blog of five years or more that dabbles in content from different niches, you would surely need a good search bar so readers don’t leave your blog unsatisfied because they can’t find what they want. The search bar also helps your readers to maximize their time. Anything they need can easily be searched for in no time.
- Footer
Very few people understand the importance of their blog footer. Apart from the fact that it displays your technical and legal information, it also displays trust badges and security stamps to help customers trust your site more and keep the bad eggs away.
- Website navigation
Imagine you’re going somewhere with unclear directions, you will most probably get lost if you don’t ask for directions. On the web with thousands of bloggers spewing out content, unclear web navigation can help you lose potential leads who would have loved to read more on your site but can’t find their way around. Although it might seem like a small thing, having an organized website navigation is important for your website audience user experience in many ways and it reduces your bounce rate and increases visit duration.
- Font and Typographical style
Many bloggers use the default font that came with their blog theme which may or may not be ugly and difficult to read. Since the whole point of your blog is to produce educative written content, it is vital that you use fonts that are clear and easy to read. If you can’t seem to choose the right font yourself, you can listen to feedback and trends about font size and style in your niche or generally blog design advice.
Also, try to mix up the right fonts on your blog as header and content fonts. You can use a collection of google font pairings from Reliable PSD.
All these design features need to be edited not just to give your blog personality but also to give your readers a good experience that will make them frequent your blog.
4. Attractive Content
When I say attractive, I don’t mean aesthetically beautiful content, I mean readable content.
- Your writing
Many people have great ideas but they lack the writing skills to convey their messages. But at least, there are cheap writing services to help people write great content and if they are passionate enough, they can learn the blogging ropes and become great writers, after all, practice makes perfect. Also, they can read up on guides on how to become a better writer.
Back to my point, your content should be written in a way that it conveys your message in clear and error-free English to your readers.
- Your blog post images
Don’t just search Google and select images randomly, make sure your images pass the same message that your content is passing. It is also vital that you use Royalty-free images so you don’t face copyright issues later in the future.
Here’s a resource on finding royalty-free images: 101 places to find amazing, royalty-free images for your business.
- Your headlines
You have to choose attractive headlines that will make your content go viral. Don’t just write headlines and blog post titles, write attractive titles that will have readers clicking them because they just can’t resist them. If you have problems choosing titles, you can read up on how to write blog post titles.
- Your call to action
Your call to action determines the interactivity of your blog. An attractive call to action gets readers to make comments, subscribe to your mailing list or engage you on social media.
5. Attractive Social Media Buttons And Email Opt-In Form
Social media icons cannot only increase your social network, but it also helps with your blog’s search engine optimizations. This is because social media share icons can increase your blog’s engagement level, allowing your readers to interact with your content and share it with their friends.
A simple and attractive opt-in email encourages readers to drop their emails and subscribe to get updates from your blog.
In Conclusion
An attractive blog will not only attract more readers, but it could also convert them to faithful readers. Having an attractive blog comment form and email opt-in form, non-cluttered blog and limited advertisement that mesh well with the blog’s design and a theme will encourage your readers to interact with your blog socially and increase your blog SEO ranking.
Susan Saurel
An attractive blog will not only attract more readers, but it could also convert them to faithful readers. Having an attractive blog comment form and email opt-in form, non-cluttered blog and limited advertisement that mesh well with the blog’s design and a theme will encourage your readers to interact with your blog socially and increase your blog SEO ranking.
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