It is quite simple for a new blogger to get carried away with their new site and completely make a mess of their website. Though you are working from the free theme, there is still a large danger of several mistakes making it go wrong. Read this guide to stay away from easy mistakes.
Even if you are using a theme, a blogger is going to personalise the new website in a few ways to make the layout the way they want it to look. But, this is where the layout can go wrong in a big way for users of WordPress, by doing nothing!
How loads of websites have I seen that say “Just another WordPress blog.” Go through the options of your new site and check for that now - get it looking right straight from the start!
As for actual layout errors, one of the first elements of the page design that a lot of bloggers are playing with is several advertising. It is always nice to earn a little extra money from your site, whether it is just a hobby or intended as a cash making system. So adding some affiliate banners, Google Adsense blocks and so on is quite common. And you are allowed 3 Adsense blocks, a Google search block and more.
This means that the temptation is to throw a large add unit into the post and some round the sides along with scattered half relevant affiliate banners. But this is a huge mistake. Look at professional web sites and you will notice that they keep their advertising to a few key positions. By having advertising everywhere readers must wade through the adverts to find the content. This is not what they want. The average reader wants to find the content, not feel as although they are only wanted for their monetary value to you.
So to keep away from the more than advertising mistake, merely keep adverts to one or two positions and include only those adverts that do really well.
The next design mistake is to have broken links. Not merely are these bad for search engines, but they annoy visitors. Yet they are straightforward to detect. If you are using WordPress look for a broken link plugin that suits your way of working, install it and fix those links. Broken links lose your credibility very quickly.
Still with navigation, the opposite is also true - not linking enough. Most website themes will show a list of your recent posts, but that is not always what new visitors want to see. They want to see your best and most popular writing. So get hold of a plugin to help you display most popular posts - either by the most read or the most commented. Also, link to related posts so that when a visitor has finished the existing post they have something else to go onto. This means that new traffic are steered about your web site, staying on it for longer and maybe becoming regular followers.
Lastly, don’t get carried away with your post titles. Remember that some visitors might be going through your RSS feed and all that they see round your new post is the start of its title. Make it good so that they click the title to read the post. If the titles are meaningless, they will very quickly delete your RSS feed from their visitor.
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