How To Improve Your Blog (Without Better Writing)

Marginal Gains

Getting more out of your blog can be a difficult ask. Often blogging regularly is enough of a strain on resources that you don’t have time to take a step back and look at how your blog is doing, and if it is really engaging your readers. Well, here are some simple tips on how to get more from your blog without discussing the content itself.

Streamline The Screen

Try to keep your blog page clear of clutter so the reader can focus on reading. Don’t litter the page with too many distracting elements. CTAs are obviously important, but shouldn’t disrupt the reading process. The same goes for popups or sidebars/ navigation bars. While they’re important, and can be useful to a blog reader, they shouldn’t be distracting from the writing.

Limit Ads

The same is especially true if your site is running advertising. Ads are designed to attract attention, so having display ads running alongside your content is going to make it difficult to read. This is especially true if these ads need to be minimized, or closed, to see all of the content on the page. Users will find it irritating and will not engage as well with your site.

Format Your Posts

Break down your paragraphs. Add in headings and subheadings. Use spaces and images to break up the content. The worst thing you can do is just dump a lump of text on the page and expect your readers to wade through it. The more you break the text up the easier it is to scan, and the more likely readers are to digest what you’ve written.

Tag Your Posts

If you’re using WordPress you can add a tag to each blog post. This will then group these posts together making it easier for a blog reader to find similar content. This is great when they’re looking for more information on a topic as you might stop them from going back to Google to search for more info.

Make Sure your Search Bar Works

Related to the point above, a good site search will mean that users don’t need to navigate away to find something on your site. The number of times I have gone back to Google to search for a particular article on a website, then changed my mind and went elsewhere is staggering. Keep them in house by having an easy to see, functioning, site search on your blog page.

Can You Improve Your Blog?

Keeping people focused is becoming more and more difficult with all of the digital distractions people have these days, so streamlining your blog is an important part of creating good content. You need readers to read it, otherwise what’s the point?

Photo credit – Top: Pexels
Photo credit – Bottom: Libre Shot