Ways to Improve your Blog

7 Feb, 2008 Blogging Tips

Lately, Mike and I have been talking a lot about what we can do to improve our blog from the reader’s perspective. Before now we have been tweaking the inner workings of our blog, focusing on ways to optimize traffic and get our site out in the open. Now, I want to focus on what you, the reader, want to see when you visit our site.

In order to improve a website you have to know what’s wrong with it and how to make it better. Seeing as I don’t know about what a reader may need in a blog, I decided to see what other blogs were like. My goal was to find out what we need to improve in terms of ‘look’ and ‘content,’ and how reputable blogs recommend we do it.

Article Titles – If you’re like me, you want to come up with a really clever title, a title that will make the reader chuckle and read on… or so you think. An article on copyblogger compares clever titles to descriptive titles. The article says that a descriptive title is your best bet to attract a reader’s attention, confirming my lack of knowledge when it comes to the reader. But, I’m trying to improve. Back to good titles, they’re crucial to readers who subscribe to your blog via RSS feed. Your titles need to sell the main point that the reader will hopefully read in your article. Obviously, the readers are the most important part of any blog so I hope you’re coming to our site and reading our stuff.

Links – Links are probably one of the most useful tools you can use in your blog, and they can benefit your blog in a variety of ways. Lifehack.org, a site based around the theme of productivity and making your life easier, while providing information on just about everything, recommends linking for a few reasons:

1. It’s extremely helpful to readers, especially if they’re trying to better understand what they’re reading. Having the luxury of the writer’s source one click away is a very comforting notion.

2. It looks great to search engines and will only benefit your site’s traffic. Optimizing your chances of being listed at the top of a Google search result should always be a top priority.

3. Linking to other blogs can lead to great relationships with intelligent people. This should be more than a goal, more like a necessity when it comes to blogging in today’s world. I hope that, from these links, the writers from those sites, who I see as very knowledgeable in this business, come visit this site and see what I’ve gotten out of their articles. The best scenario I could hope for is that those writers write a comment on this site, a comment that will most likely help us make a better site. Constructive criticism is our friend here.

As important as content is, I feel like the look and feel of a site can make or break it before a single word is read. A lot of different components factor into your site’s identity:

Sidebars – A site’s sidebar really serves one main function. Navigation. Don’t let anything interfere with your sidebar’s function. Chris Brogan, a social media guru who specializes in the collaboration of business and technology, recommends a clean, organized sidebar that doesn’t clutter the reader’s screen and hinder their ability to navigate your site. Our sidebar is definitely under the knife, especially after taking a look at Mr. Brogan’s article, and you can expect it to change in the near future.

Pictures – Something we definitely need to start doing here at SAN is post relevant pictures alongside our content. It’s just something I always look forward to seeing when I’m reading something. Great pictures that jump off the page and help focus your thoughts in the direction the writer intended. Look for some pictures in our future posts and maybe some in past posts if I can figure out how to place them tastefully.

I hope these thoughts from myself and a few bright minds on the web help you. Leave a comment anyway, even if you knew all this already. Tell us what you think! We want to know!

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