Life of an Internet Entrepreneur

Blogging is hard work, and I’m not just talking about the writing part. Keeping your blog looking good and running smoothly is a real challenge, and I thought I would share some improvements you can make to your blog to make it more effective and easier to read.

1) Make sure to use paragraph headings, and just being bold isn’t enough

Headlines need to be darker and larger to stand out – people jump from section header to section header.

2) Show your best posts

Most bloggers show their best posts (if at all) on the sidebar navigation or on top. this is the wrong place, it should be at the bottom of your posts. Reason: whatever brought the visitor to your page in the first place, is why he is there. He first wants to deal with that, then he can turn attention to other things (but he doesn’t want to have to remember that you had some good posts up top and therefore scroll back up. Your best posts have proven to overall get you the best engagement with visitors, so you should always bet on them (would you bet on the horse that never ran a race yet you like? Or, on the horse that ran 50 races and won 35 of them?)

3) Timely relevance is key

Group similar posts for various occasions (e.x. – holidays, winter, breast cancer awareness day), put them in a table with an outline, add an image which delivers immediate understanding, and urge visitors to prepare themselves for the occasion by reading some of those posts.

4) Call to action

When you link to other posts within your post, try to use action words (such as “learn about blogging”) instead of just plain nouns. You’ll get a higher click-through rate, since the reader knows what to expect to receive from clicking the link.

5) Get a custom wordpress theme

Let’s face it – Ferraris are memorable because they are rare. In my testing, the default theme had an 80% bounce rate, while my custom theme instantly lowered my bounce rate to 50%, gave me 15% higher pageviews per visitor, and increased the amount of time spent on the blog by a whopping 98%.

6) Show them your good side

Add a photo of yourself on the main page or the about us page. People are reading your blog. People like looking at people a lot more than at text. Make people happy. It lets them attach a face to the name and the writing, and they will remember you better.

Please feel free to add additional tips in the comments below.

Bookmark It