How to create a blog people will love to read

Building a blog is more than acquiring a domain name and web hosting and installing WordPress on it. Creating a blog people will love is not as easy as many think. If your blog gives your visitors poor first impression they will leave and will never want to visit again. As far as creating a blog is concerned first impression is crucial. A visitor falls in love with the way you designed your blog before wanting to check out its contents.

You really need to create a blog that will get your visitors coming back often. Returning visitors become loyal readers and this is a massive traffic boast as you are sure a large part of your visitors will always return to your blog.  So it is imperative to make researches on the best blog creation methods that will captivate your visitors and help you create a brand online.

How to create a blog people will love to read

Before I became a blogger, I had a long learning period, I read a lot of things about blogging and I am glad I learnt the basics that have helped Netmediablog in just 9 months attain the level it is today. Its alexa ranking is a great indication of how far I have come. So today I have decided to share what I learnt about creating a blog people will love with you hoping you will also be able to apply it and build a successful blog as well.

Blog design and layout:

Your blog design and layout gives your visitors their first impression about your blog, and you know how much effect this could have on your blog’s bounce rate because it will determine if the visitor will go ahead to check your blog’s content or just hit the browser close button. I will always prefer a white background and black text for my blog, I know not many people will agree with me on this, but one thing I noticed with all professional blogs is that they all have white background and black texts.  Black and white seems like official blog colors and most visitors may not even notice its importance until they visit a “color-riot” blog with rainbow colors. So always keep your blog design and layout clean and neat with less colors. You can use color texts as your headings or links but it won’t go down well when you use it as the entire blog’s text color.

Sidebar should be simple and uncluttered:

I will always favor a one sidebar to a two sidebar blogs as two sidebars will make your blog look busy and clustered. Your visitors do not need to spend much time finding what they are looking for on your blog. Always ensure your sidebar is simple and uncluttered. In my opinion the best blog layout is one with the content section on the left and the sidebar by the right. Take a look at the layout of this blog so you can understand better what I am talking about here.  Visit other big name blogs and see if most of them don’t have this in common.

Use less ads on your blog:

Visitors hate to see ads everywhere on your blog. For whatever reason I just don’t understand why ads put people off easily. So reduce the number of advertising banners you have on your blog especially on your sidebar.

Do not use too many widgets, pop-ups, and toolbars on your blog:

Too many widgets, pop-ups and toolbars on a blog will easily turn your visitors off. It’s annoying to have pop ups every now and then when you are trying to read a blog content.  This could distract your visitors from the content of your blog. So minimize the number of pop-ups a visitors sees when he visits your blog.  It’s ok to have a pop up when a visitor first visits a site but when it keeps popping up on every page load, then that visitor will definitely leave never to return.

Use an easy to navigate theme:

A well designed blog will make its navigation quite easy. Use themes will simple and uncluttered navigation. That is why Thesis and Genesis themes are in the forefront of their business. I had to change to a Genesis theme when I learnt of this. If you have been a long follower of this blog you will notice I have changed my theme and my blog looks even better and now easier to navigate. Any blog that makes it difficult for its visitors to find what they are looking for have a poor navigation and visitors do not like this at all.

Make your blog’s speed fast:

No one likes a slow loading blog. It’s frustrating when you will have to wait for a blog page to load. The use of so many plugins may be responsible for this. Use minimum and essential plugins on your blog, don’t use unnecessary plugins as this will only slow your blog’s speed and I am telling you this is a huge turn off to your visitors. Your visitors will love your blog when its pages are fast to load on the browser.

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