Common Blog Design Mistakes

The things you should not put in your new blog

The design of your blog plays a great part in the terms of bounce rate for your blog. Bounce rate is the extent of how long visitors stay. Almost new blogs should have a simple and easy to navigate blog design. And because it has still few gadgets and contents it aside from easier navigation, it will also load faster. You can also download and install templates you want but make sure you can manipulate the codes and do not leave broken links, or links that points to the template source but not the attribution link of the creator. They can report copyright infringement to your blog if out remove their copyright urls.

And here are other things you should not put in your blog:

Too many flash animations

Don’t fill your blog with too many moving objects, flashing or moving letters etc. Only use them for header for example and just minimize using animations. We know animations distract readers eyes and may not concentrate to your content anymore. Other ways to put animations is in post title, buttons, but still it should be the ones you want to emphasize to your readers. Unless for ads you may not remove or disable animated ads because they are the ones generating income for your blog so I suggest you to minimize ads instead.

Too many external links

Refrain from placing many links to other sites in your blog. Aside from negative effect to the SEO of your blog, this also can make your bounce rate higher, visitors will be easily driven to other sites of you put many links anywhere in your page. Just like animated images, only add links if it is entirely necessary for an article or for any affiliate sites you might associated with. But for links to your own site or also called internal links, you can put many of them in your posts, internal links make search engine crawlers to travel to all pages of your site.

Too many ads

This is actually related to the first one, flash animations. Too many ads can irritate visitors, they will just think that your blog is only for making money and they can’t really get some valuable information there. There should be at least 1-3 ads in a single page, minimizing your ads also can greatly increase your ad CTR meaning more income for your blog. If a visitor see many of these images that obviously look like advertisement they will more likely not to click them so if you are thinking that adding many ads will generate more income for you, think again this time.

Remember your blog is still new so you must not add anything to drive away readers, make it as simple and attractive as possible. If the time comes that you already get a lot of regular visitors from search engines, you can now improve your design and add more gadgets, feature, and other stuffs your visitors can enjoy.

Basic Layout for a Blog Post

Even your blog posts should look nice and organized to make it easier in the eyes of the readers. A good post layout will decrease the bounce rate of your blog, bounce rate is how long a visitor stays in your blog. And well arranged words can keep them interested with your content. Good content alone certainly rank high in search engines but if they arrive from google for example to your blog, they found out that the title  of the article is exactly what they are looking for but when they look at the layout and found it messy they will eventually click back and look for another source that has a clean design and more organized post layout.

So I will show the basic layout of a good blog post. First thing is your post should at least have one image attached. Images will make your article more realistic and not too boring to read. But don't also limit the number of images to just one. You can add 3 or more images but don't fill it with pure images also. Words still have the most important part in SEO of a blog. For photo blogs surely you can add many photos as you want but make sure you also add caption for them.

Don't forget also to add some highlights to your headings or paragraph titles. Readers also will get bored to read an article that is one straight paragraph. You should divide it to 3 or more paragraphs this can help them sort it out and pick a certain point of your article to read. Before every paragraph is the best place to put your images so think of images to add that is related to that paragraph.

And lastly don't forget about simple paragraph layouts you must have learned in primary school. The introduction, main body, and conclusion, that's at least three paragraphs in all. You may not label them as such but do this make it more organized

Google: Bloggers’ Best Friend

To be more specific with our title, Google is the best friend of all bloggers and we should keep that in mind. In this article I will let you know the benefits us bloggers can get from Google itself. Google firstly is the main source of visitors of our blogs, and if you still don’t know google or google search specifically is the most trafficked or most used website today and the second is facebook, so you must more concentrate on SEO or getting your blog ranked higher in search engines specially google than any sites. I’m not saying facebook is not a good place to market your blog because as I have said facebook is the second in the line to google when it comes to worldwide ranking.

Every experienced blogger should by now have an idea how important it is to do all steps to rank high in google. Especially for those blogs that are used to generate more traffic and income of course. If there is no traffic no income also, we bloggers know that. From the title this article will show you the importance if google for our blogs, and further more I will explain in later articles the steps to make your blog rank high in google.

And for bloggers that use blogger we should always attribute our blog to blogger.com of course, because bloggers is free to use and we can earn with it without investing a single penny in web hosting even in domain name bills, blogger deserve to be attributed to all blogs using it. Simply not removing the powered by google link in the footer of our blog template can show our gratitude to blogger.

Do not forget also google adsense. It is by far the most used, trusted, and highest paying advertising company. And also owned by google so all bloggers that are using adsense should also thank google for the online earning opportunity that google gave them. There may be a lot of alternatives to adsense but come on, we all know and all those who tried to use these felt the superiority of adsense in many terms like for instance: ad relevance to the content, higher earning potential, and reliability.

I personally have no affiliation to google but all bloggers must consider the fact that google has the most important role in the success of blogging.

Does Blogging Require any Skill?

Is there any skill or talent needed in making a blog?

Well blogging alone can be considered a skill, but i mean by that is a good blog, and a successful one too. But for those who are asking if you need any skill or talent to start a blog I will try to answer it in this article.

You do not need any skill actually to make and manage a blog. If you will use blogger.com, I can say it is self study already and you can do it in no time. You just have to create a google account and make blog. Almost all instructions are there. I can say you only need basics of computer and internet operation and you can already start a blog.

But if you are planning to user wordpress instead, this time you must be at least familiar with web hosting already, you can take time  to learn it on your own or read some tutorials on installing wordpress on a web host. Wordpress for me is for those experiences bloggers only. Mostly wordpress users used blogger before and decided to host their own blog and content instead. Every first time bloggers should try blogger first to see if they can be successful then they may decide to use wordpress.

The only simple requirement for blogging aside from internet knowledge is creativity, open mindedness, and basics on english grammar, these are at least the things you must have in yourself to be able to run a blog.

Common Mistakes of New Bloggers

Common mistakes that new bloggers do

All things that I will write here in our article today are those that all new bloggers always do that they think will help their blog get more traffic or increase page rank instantly. And you should never these as it does the direct opposite.

Joining auto link or auto traffic exchange sites

First thing is joining link exchange or traffic exchange sites, specially those that are automated. It's true that having many links to your site will increase your page rank but if these links are from auto link exchange site, google will disregard them and eventually give your blog a low page rank instead. I'm not saying link exchange is not good but you should pick the sites to exchange your link with. A better way to have good back links is to find high pr blogs and contact the author directly via email or via his/her blog's contact menu.

Money before content 

Another one is thinking of earning money immediately even if they have just started blogging for a few days or weeks. If your thinking like them, you cannot expect to be a successful blogger. In blogging you can't make money instantly, i'm sure most new bloggers are like this. To be a successful blogger in the future you just have concentrate on writing articles first, And if you reach at least 20 posts you can now start to monetize your blog. Normally you should start making money after a month or two. That time you should already wrote a decent number of articles and your blog is fully indexed by search engines.

Copying content from other blogs

You can't consider yourself a blogger if you are just copying articles of blog authors. And you can't also all it a blog. As we know copied contents get a very low page rank and meaning no visitors at all. Some may still get visitors if they manage to spin the words and make it unique but the original content will still rank higher in search results for sure. And if you're thinking of applying to the famous google adsense with copied contents only, never expect to be approved. Well that's it for now. Comment your reactions and queries.

How to Promote your Blog and get more Traffic

The very first thing to do with your blog aside from writing at least 3 contents is to market or promote it. Trust me if you will see traffic increase in your blog you will  certainly be inspired to write more articles. This is because while you are writing you will also at the same time think of the reaction of those who will be reading your articles. Unlike before that you have no visitors yet you can write freely without any worry about your readers.

By the way back to the main topic here. The best place to promote your blog is in social networking sites, mainly like in facebook, tweeter, and google+. There are a lot but these three are the most effective social networks to promote any content you want. And to do this you might just share it your friends, facebook pages and groups or make a page for your blog and let people like it. Just remember a single is very important when it comes to facebook promotion for your blog, Just think for this if a person likes a page that link will be shown to all his/her friends so it is so viral should I say.

You can also create social profiles on different social networks and add a link for your blog then share them of course. Social networks have high and almost perfect ranking in google or i'll just say page rank, and as we know if your blog has a link on a website with a high page rank some of the "juice" as many call it will be passed to your blog. Facebook's page rank is 9 so facebook linking to your blog will give you much benefit already, but don't forget about other social networks also and not just social networks research for high pr websites and find your way to add your link to their site.

First Gadgets to Put in your New Blog

If you just created a new blog and you can't think of gadgets to make it look professional and help the readers navigate easily, you might want to check this gadgets i will introduce to you here.

Here are the gadgets or also called widgets that every blog should have

Popular Posts

This is very important for the blog owner and for the readers. You can use this to monitor the high performing posts when it comes to viewers and think of other posts related to these and write more of them. Readers eyes also can be easily caught by popular posts, I for myself everytime i land into a blog i will always look for the popular posts. Simply because we all want to see what most people view also.

Categories/Labels

It is also very wise to categorize your articles so that readers can choose on what certain category to look for and prevent them from leaving immediately just because they see unorganized articles. Specially for those blogs that have almost general topic, adding categories or labels gadget will help your blog a lot.

Sitemap/Table of Contents

You can put this as a new gadget or a static page instead. All reader will certainly want to see the old posts that are hard to find in the homepage. A sitemap is also easier to navigate and find a specific article because it is just a list of links without description or image so it is compact.

Search box

This is also a very important gadget for any blog with number of contents. It is much easier to type what you are looking for in  search box than browsing all the articles and categories, that's for certain.

Numbered Page Navigation

Most blog templates specially the default one so not have page navigation installed. Numbered page navigation also helps your reader to browse articles specially the old ones also. Visitors who are returning to your blog and already read the latest articles might want to browse the older ones.

Social Sharing Buttons/Widgets

Social sharing buttons like facebook share, like, tweet are certainly also the most important things to add in your blog. Any blog today have them, these will definitely increase the traffic of your blog. As we know social networking sites specially facebook is second to google in terms of users. So don't disregard having these golds in your blog.

If you don't find these gadgets in your blog by default you can search the web for them. There are many professionals that create amazing gadgets for blogs.

Choosing Between Blogger and Wordpress

If you are planning to start your own blog or have a blog and want to see the difference of blogger and wordpress. These are the two leaders when it comes to blogging platform. Many bloggers recommend and are using these for blogging and there is never been a major problem.

And to start the comparison let me just clarify between wordpress.com and wordpress.org if you are talking about wordpress alone we might be confused so I will briefly explain the difference also of these two. Wordpress.com is just like blogger, it's free but unless you buy a premium account ads will show on your blog but these ads are not yours wordpress.com will be the one to earn with the ads that will show. Free account have many limitations, including inability to edit template, add you own widgets and many more, in free account you will also be using subdomain of yourblog.wordpress.com.

Wordpress.org on the other hand is a blogging software where you have to download and install in a web hosting service like bluehost, etc. It's free to download the software but you will have to host it so buy a good web hosting service. Web hosting services also include a free domain so you will have no problem about your domain name for your blog.

And for the other one blogger.com. As you can see I'm using blogger for this blog and for the other blog that I own. Blogger for me is the best and most trusted free blogging platform. It provides all your needs, many say it is the easiest and best blogging service since it started so almost all bloggers aside from wordpress users are fan of blogger. Blogger is free so you will also use it with a subdomain yourblog.blogspot.com if you want to have your own domain you can buy directly in your blogger dashboard or buy in another domain hosting service and Simply redirect it to your blogspot domain.

Different Ways to earn Money in Blogging

There are lots of ways to earn money with your blog. And the most common these days is with ads. How do we earn with ads? It's very simple you register to ad serving companies and they will find advertisers for you. And when the ads will be shown on your page you will earn money fro the number of visitors and clicks on the ads.

The most used advertising firms are adsense, chitika, infolinks, adbrite and many more, you can do a research for your own and select what's best for your blog topic.

Another way is by affiliate marketing. This is done by placing product links on your blog and when someone buy there or register with that website you will receive commission. These products are mostly online shops or web services so that it will blend being placed on blogs.

There are also two kinds of ads. Direct and indirect. Direct ads are you will contact or search for advertisers and do not need to use advertising companies to find advertisers for you so will receive the full payment from the advertisers. While indirect ads are those what i said about in the first paragraph. You will get 60-75 percent only of the payment given by the advertisers and the advertising company will get the remaining earnings.

Why do we Blog

If you do not own a blog right now and want to know why many people are blogging. The main reason is to earn money. It is very practical for us to look for ways to earn money and a very easy way is blogging. Many successful bloggers nowadays are earning more than 20k USD monthly already. This is why blogging can be considered a business and a job. Your boss and employee is yourself.

Another reason is for fame but this is still second in the line to earning money in blogging. If you have a very informative blog reader will eventually look for the author and know more about him/her, this is for them to ask something or suggest ideas to the blogger.

And the third reason is for fun, some blogger just blog for personal amusement and a past time. But blogging can also be the best past time just because while you are enjoying you are earning money and making a name in the blogging and internet world.

Choosing a Domain Name for your Blog Wisely

Domain name is the address of your blog, example www.yourblog.com and deciding a good domain may sound easy but there are also many things you must consider first. Your domain name should be as short as possible so that it will be easier for those readers that want visit back your blog to remember it. You should also make it related to the title and topic of your blog it will make it more professional and realistic.

If you are using blogspot and planning to buy a domain later you can concentrate more on your content rather than your domain name because you are still on a sub domain (yourblog.blogspot.com) and you can think of a better domain name after you already decide to buy one. But if you are using wordpress.org and start to host it you must create a domain name already because you will host it on your own and most hosting services do not provide free domains normally.

There are also some things you may not want to add in your domain name like the year, some put 2012 in the end of their blog but I don’t recommend you doing this specially if it is not a sub domain because just thinking about it if 2012 have passed your blog will be like out dated for the eyes of those who will read it.

First Things to Consider before Starting your Blog

Before you start making your own blog you must consider a few things first to make sure you will be successful with it. 

The first thing is you topic i already explained this i the previous articles. Another is your time, blogging doesn't really need a very long time everyday. But for beginners writing a good article might at least take 1-2 hours. If your blog is still new you should post new articles everyday 1-5 is very much better. 

Having a Personal Blog

If you've been thinking of making a personal blog or you currently own a personal blog I can't say that it's not good but you can call it more of as a diary instead. Specially if what you are posting are about what you have been doing in a day. This is because you will not get visitors to your blog. Unless you are well known celebrity or politician you might actually get people to visit and read about your blog.

And when it comes to monetizing your blog which i'm sure is the main reason why a lot of people are blogging there is a very small earning potential for a personal blog. As we should all know how much you earn will depend on the amount of visitors of your blog so if you can't make at least 100 unique visitors for your blog a day. You can never expect also to earn money.

I'm not saying here that you can't make or a personal blog is useless, my point is there are many other topics that you can choose from. And those topics can also give you opportunity to earn big money with an informative and well made blog. If you have a personal blog right now you can still continue writing on it but i advice you to make a blog that kind of something that people can get lot of information and entertainment.