Make your Blog Professional
Having a Professional Blog Structure
Blog Logo
Somehow, amateur bloggers tend to have no concern to brand their own blogs, and probably that is because they are using the default "Text Title" logo for their blog, if you want to make your blog unique from others then make a blog logo, it's easy you won't really need somewhat like a graphic designer to design your logo for you, all you need is to search for an Icon that reflects on what's on your blog or what is your blog all about, then try to add some Text Beside it or something like changing the icon's color and there you go! you have your own logo for your blog.
Blog Theme Color
When you design your blog, decide on a theme color that your blog will follow, Familiar with facebook?(Of Course) although Facebook is not a blog but you can get an idea out of it on how a theme color affects the overall professionalism or look of the blog or website, consider using at least two color variations that reflects your blog, such as if your blog is about nature, why not have a theme color of green and yellow green? it will greatly impact the "look" and the "feel" of your blog.
Blog Favicon
Aside from having a custom Blog Logo and a blog theme color, you should also consider having a custom Favicon for your Blog, A Favicon is the small website or blog icon that appears on a browser's address bar and tab bar, we will tackle more on blog favicons on future posts (So stay tuned), for the mean time, if you want to create your own favicon for free you can go to Favicon.cc or go to Blogger-Bookmark - Custom Blog Favicon for a short tutorial about having a Blog Favicon.
Post Titles Arrangements
This goes for both for your blog and post titles. This is a common mistake that most newbie bloggers tend to make. Why? Because when a user is searching for information they are looking for specific keywords that you may have written about — not your blog’s name. This will make a huge difference to your blog's professionalism and search engine optimization, This trick can be implemented on Wordpress using a plugin but on blogger, here is how to do it:
Go To Blogger->Dashboard->Design->Edit HTML and tick the box on ""
(Note: Always backup your blog's template first before doing anything, so that you might not end up messing your blog.)
Then find (CTRL+F) this code:
and replace the code above with this one:
and that's it!
Default Template Icons
When you try to install a packaged blog template on your blog, whether it is a blogger template or a wordpress theme, it usually has some default icons along with it, chances are, that the template you are using have been also used by a lot of other bloggers for their blogs especially if it is a popular template and thus making your blog common to the reader's eye, if you want to brand your blog and make it professional then try to change those default Icons to other icons that is similar to it and has the same size.
RSS Newsfeed Subscription
Always have an RSS Newsfeed subscription option or button for your blog, it lets your readers get connected and updated about your posts or articles, if you would like to have an RSS newsfeed for your blog, you can use Feedburner , it offers a free RSS content management.
Social Bookmarking Widgets
If you really want your blog to be more interactive, "talk of the town", and to be more professional, then you may consider adding Social Bookmarking Widgets, such as Facebook Like, Tweeter Retweet or Google's Buzz This to your blog posts. These widgets will make your blog have an edge in the raging competition on the Blogosphere, there are a lot of free Social Bookmarking Services out there such as Addthis, ShareThis, and Add To Any.
Clean up Cluttered pieces
Being simple and clean does make your blog more professional, always try to arrange or clean up pieces, widgets, links and images on your blog so that it will not look cluttered and amateur, also, avoid using or putting too much widgets on your blog, widgets use javascripts from other sites, and when the server is down, it will affect your blog's loading time and slow it down.
Image Sizes
When you insert images on your blog, it is much nicer and professional to have a uniform image sizes, such as, Main images for posts are 350x350 pixels on size and advertisements images on the sidebar would be 250x250 pixels, it would make your blog look clean and much more eyepopping than a blog with scrambled image sizes inserted on their blog.
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