I’m taking some liberties with the Friday Five linkup topic hosted by Eat Pray Run DC, Mar on the Run and You Signed Up for What!, but I don’t think my “back to school” theme is straying too far. Think of this blog homework as a fall preview of how you can make your blog better! 🙂
5 Easy Steps To Make Your Blog Better
1. Visit your blog. Hopefully everyone proofreads their posts in the published format, but have you visited your blog when you are not logged in? Have you made sure it looks OK in different browsers? Can you read your posts on a smartphone without having to scroll from side to side?
2. Assess readability. Is your blog easy on your readers’ eyes? Is the font large enough? Is there enough contrast between the font and background? (Am I showing my age?) Do flashy sidebars crowd your content? Are pop-up ads or sounds chasing readers away?
3. Adjust photo sizes. I try to make all of my photos the same size, taking up almost the full width of my content window with some white space on each side. I think this gives pictures more impact and makes other images more pinnable. If you are taking great pictures but posting them in a small size, you won’t be grabbing your readers’ attention as much as you could be.
4. Update widgets and badges. If you have a widget pushing data from another platform (like DailyMile), are you still active in that platform or is the information stale? If you have badges for blogger networks, link-ups, blog conferences, awards, etc., are they current? (Keep scrolling to see my new Sweat Pink badge!) If you have a category/topic list, does it highlight relevant content or are some of the categories outdated or orphaned (with few posts)? Your sidebar real estate is valuable–make sure it’s working for you!
5. Check comments. Log out of your blog and try to leave a comment. Is it easy to do? Is there a name/url option for people like me who are self-hosted on WordPress.org and don’t want to use their Google account for blog commenting? Do you really need captcha? (The only correct answer is No!)
[Twee: “Blog Homework – 5 simple ways to make your blog better”]
For blogging tips from a real expert, I like to follow Rita’s posts on Blog Genie. Her Summer Blog Challenge posts would be a good place to start, even though summer is almost over!
![The Ultimate Coffee Date](http://got2run4me.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ultimate-Coffee-Date.png" "The Ultimate Coffee Date")
Good tips as usual. I know you read mine too so if you have any specific tips for me, I’d love to hear them. This all got kind of crazy very quickly 🙂
Great tips! I especially like the commenting one. Often I don’t comment because it’s too difficult.
Great tips especially to check how your blog reads on different browsers and mobile devices!
All great tips…. something I try to do on the regular, but that is most likely the designer side of me.
excellent tips! it’s so important to look at your blog when you are not logged in – i think this is one lots of people forget!
Great tips – I have been doing a couple of those lately with the issues I’ve battled with my blog (checking it without being logged in a lot these days!).
great tips!!! I always check out my blogged when i’m logged out… more because my browser never saves my info and I have to! lol 🙂
These are all great. I think I have done all of them at some point, although I would like to clean up some side bar clutter soon!
This was great, Coco! Thanks for the tips. My theme crashed a couple of months ago when I updated it, and it’s been a work in progress finding a new theme that works the way I want it to, ever since…
great tips! I have noticed some bloggers disabling their captcha… yess!
Woohoo! There’s a business site that I have to use for work that has it – ugh!
Good tips. Especially checking commenting, I HATE those captcha things.