If you haven’t heard the Bill Gates quote “Content is king” by now, you haven’t read enough. This is the advice given to newbie web editors. And it’s good advice. In order to increase readership and have returning visitors, your blog content needs to be on point.
Blog content
Google loves unique, quality content to serve up to searchers. Make sure your articles are informative and spell checked. Give Google what they want and you rank better in their search engine when you rank better your readership increases. It’s a nice symbiotic relationship and it starts with your blog content.
If you are just starting out your main issue will be what to write about and how to structure your site. If you are blogging about one topic it’s pretty easy, you won’t have to worry about setting up various categories and menu items.
If you insist on talking about a lot of different things, then make sure your categories are meaningful and reflected in your menu bar. Being able to navigate around your site is important as it can turn short visits into a long stay. You should have an about page and a contact form on your blog as standard.
Easy on the eye web design
Aesthetics goes hand in hand with content. You may have written an amazing must read article but if people come to your site and it’s unattractive and slow to load they will bounce. Hasta la vista, bye-bye!
Web design is just as important as content in keeping your readers. A garish website with lots of unnecessary clutter can be just as off-putting as an article with lots of spelling mistakes.
If you are blogging on WordPress.com, you’ll find that there are many free and premium themes to suit your needs. Applying a new design to WordPress.com is really easy, just choose a theme and click apply.
If you are using the self-hosted version of WordPress choosing and applying a theme is just as simple. The difference between the two versions of WordPress is the ability to customise your theme and to choose themes that are outside of the standard selection.
With a self-hosted version of WordPress, you can get really fancy and hire a designer to create something special and unique to your brand. If you want to go down the personal design route, Fiverr, Elance and Freelancer have a large selection of WordPress designers to choose from.
KISS (Keep it simple sunshine)
Unless you are writing a medical blog or technical manual, you should keep your content as jargon-free as possible. My pet hate is acronyms. People use them willy-nilly and assume everybody knows what they mean. If you use acronyms make sure you spell out the meaning at least once in your article.
If your target audience is English speaking, try to write to the Plain English standard. This means using everyday English and short sentences among other things. If you are a natural rambler it might be hard to remember the rules but they are worth thinking about and applying to your writing.
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