Yay! I’m finally a “serious blogger” according to Paul. (Boost Your Blog Traffic). I've added Feedburner, joined Technorati, del.icio.us etc and submitted my blogs to a couple of other networks. I've been reading for the past day or so on how to increase traffic to blogs and needless to say there are tons of different opinions. But while sifting through all the information out there, I eventually came upon a few people saying roughly the same thing. I'm not going to get into what's been said already except for emphasizing that people ultimately view a site for value. Whether that's entertainment, information, news etc, it doesn't matter - If the blog isn't valuable, it isn't going to be read.

But something that isn't often mentioned is that before somebody even reads a single word on the page, they've already formed a first impression. I.E. the visual impression of a blog is really important. There are billions of web pages out there and if you're so lucky as to have someone land on your page, you've got a really small amount of time to capture their attention. There should be no excuse to using the standard layout when you create your blog account. There are way too many sites that look exactly the same as the next. Finding the correct balance between that garish neon flashing banner advert and plain text can be difficult for non graphic designers but there are so many preexisting templates around that it is not difficult find and apply a nice looking one. And if you're into graphic design, they all enable customization. So, come on - go change that default layout!


Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More