Making Your Blog Shine

Blogs are generally created from customizable templates. This is incredibly advantageous for blog owners as they can start from a format that displays consistently across multiple browsers and that is easy for them to personalize. Making your blog stand out requires you to customize your blog in a way that follows conventions, manages to innovate at the same time and that adheres to the basic principles of good web design.nnMost blogs feature a header, which usually consists of an image and a logo which sits on the very top of the page. This should be a corporate or personal logo and needs to be formatted so that it downloads quickly. Most people are on broadband Internet connections these days and, if a site loads very slowly, they can be pretty certain it’s a design flaw. This screams incompetence and instantly makes the blog look amateurish. Make sure your graphics are small and fast loading.nnThe space on the side of your blog is a great place to advertise. You may either advertise through affiliate programs and place various company banners in that space or advertise your own products. Either way don't overdo it. Two to seven banners on the side of a blog is plenty. More than that tends to make the site look like a spam site and the flashing graphics can make reading the content unbearable for the reader.nnUse good sense on your fonts. Remember that not everyone has the best screen or the best eyesight. A 10 to 12 point font is best. Black text on a white or light colored page is vastly preferable to any other design. White text on black is readable, but can be exhausting to the eyes after a while. Keep it simple. If you use multiple fonts, make sure they don’t clash. Keep point sizes fairly close, as well. For example, don’t make your headlines 24 point size and your entries 12 point. The difference is jarring to the eye.nnIf you include pictures in your blog, size them to display without stretching the width of the blog itself. An easy way to do this is to make a small version of the picture and link it to the full-size version. This also allows people to simply view the smaller version if they so wish.nnCustomize your blog, but make readability a priority above design!nnHave a blog, but struggling for traffic? In my “Fast Blog Traffic Report” I reveal some proven, seldom revealed in public kind of techniques to driving massive traffic to any blog. n