Hello there, welcome, if you’ve stumbled upon this article then I believe you are in a bit of a conundrum. Setting up a blog can be tough especially when you don’t speak the language. Fear not, today I’m going to be sharing with you a few DONT’S when it comes to setting up a blog.
1. Selecting the right theme
The most important step is taking the first step towards establishing an online presence, this is the most important decision you’ll ever take. I have witnessed with my own two eyes people selecting themes for their blogs which are absolute suicide. Now where ever you choose to start your blog is your business, be it blogger or Word press, choosing the right theme is an over whelming process so it is important to ask yourself the following questions;
• What am I blogging about?
• What color scheme do I want?
• What should the feel of the website be?
These are a few important things you need to figure out, if you’re going to be blogging about technology advancements then selecting a pink theme makes less sense whilst if you’re going to be a fashion blogger, pink would be an acceptable choice.
Having said that, don’t go for a pink theme. The rule number one for me is to go for light sober colors, like pastel pink, tiffany blue and so on. The lighter the theme color the more inviting your site will look and make the content on your blog shine.
Select a theme, which is professional and fits the content you are going to be posting.
A few examples of well put together sites are;
2. Easy navigation
Easy navigation is key, if you want to enhance the reading experience of your viewer you want to enable them to easily scroll through your blog and read whatever they are looking for. Now this can be tricky especially if you are new to the whole HTML game, but a lot of themes offered by blog hosting sites have more or less an easy step by step setting up process, keeping it real you will need to go out and search how to set stuff up if you are new, but once you do I kid you not your view per post will increase tremendously.
Categorize your content and link each post to the related category.
3. The more visual the better
Now a blog isn’t complete without content, and the most important part of the content being the visual i.e; pictures, lots and lots of pictures. Now growing up we have learned that seeing is believing, which is quite true, so if you don’t show what you are going on off about chances are no ones going to bother reading it.
It is highly important to insert pictures in your posts, it not only gets you more visitors but it also helps improve your website ranking and on a good day gains you followers.
4. Quality of visual
The quality of visual is equally important as the visual itself. I have seen a number of bloggers who hide their faces in pictures they post. That just prompts me to never read the post, I hate faceless blogs and I’m pretty sure a lot of the viewers do too. When you set up a blog your main aim is to gain readers who find your content interesting and engaging, if you don’t try to connect with your readers by posting faceless photos you sir will never build an audience. So in short it is highly important to put up good quality pictures which would capture the reader’s attention and would prompt them to read more of what you are offering.
However it is highly important to resize the images you upload to your blog, they key is to keep the image smaller than an MB, this is important because the larger the size of your image the longer it will take to load, so anyone viewing your site will experience slow downloading of your content which will drive traffic away, so its always important to resize your images
5. Titles of posts
Another important aspect of blogging and gaining followers is to have intriguing post titles. Consider what your are going to be talking about, take blogging as SAT except this time you’ll be a 1000 times more motivated. Keep the length not too short not too long. A good post is about a 1000 word long, it drives the message across without being too long that your readers will get bored.
6. Create links
Many new bloggers are not familiar with how important it is to create links within the site, in your posts refer your readers to another relevant post that you have previously done, this will help you in gaining more views and blog hits, 80% of the time readers tend to clink on the links, this also helps in boosting up your SEO ranking!
7. Write like you talk
It is important to be yourself, I cannot stress this enough. Blogging as a place where you can truly be yourself so the only way your personality is going to shine through if you write what you feel is how you would talk to your friends in person, the more quirky and fun you are the more people will read what you have to say. No one likes to read the paper, well unless you are old, have nothing better to do or your job depends on it. There is a reason why most of the people like reading the gossip section because it is more up close and personal and lets be honest fun to read. That is how you should present your content; Just be your natural self.
8. ALT Tags
Another thing which helps with rankings are ALT tags, these are basically tags that you give the images you post on your site. Name each and every picture you post which is relevant to the picture of course. This helps search engines find the post quicker
These are a few things you should keep in mind when you start up a blog and trust me it will be something you will never regret.