5 Simple Ways to Make Your Blog Better Than it Already Is

How do you make your blog better? That’s something I’m constantly thinking about. I wrote in a previous post about how I see my website as a product that I constantly want to improve and build so that you, the customer, has the best experience possible.

Until now, I’ve stayed away from ‘How to blog’ type posts. Not for any particular reason other than I was focusing on other things.

However with the new look This Dad Does launched recently I wanted to share some of my experiences with you.

I’ve been inspired in part by Gabe Johansson (check out his site here) who has been writing about his own experiences online. So this is my take.

I’ve tried to distill this knowledge into 5 ways that you can drastically improve your website: from ‘good’ to ‘great’.

I’m aware that a lot of you already have blogs and websites which are well established. I love reading your sites so keep sending me links. If you think this post is about any one of you, it just might be….

Go Self-Hosted

Before I knew what it meant, I thought ‘self-hosting’ sounded pretty scary. After all, I want someone else to host my website. Or do I?

With self hosting you have complete control over your website – how it looks, who can access it and what plugins (small ‘apps’ that bolt on to WordPress and help you customise your site).

Blogs that are have a .wordpress.com or .blogspot.com domain have free hosting. Among other things, that means that you don’t own your site.

It could get pulled or deleted at any time.

It’s not your property – you can’t sell it on and you’ll be limited to what you can change, edit and customise (more on this later).

That might be OK when you first start out but if you want to develop and grow, you’ll be pretty limited before long.

Early into my second attempt at blogging (this site), I realised that a self hosted site was an inevitability. But not knowing where to start, I used the excellent service at Badnet (not an affiliate link).

They set up your site exactly the way you want and if you have an existing .wordpress.com blog, they’ll move all your content across for you.

Oh and it’s free of charge – you just pay your hosting fees up front. Kinda what you would call a no brainer.

Use a Premium Theme

If you have a WordPress or Blogspot hosted blog (there are others – Wix, Typepad and Tumblr to name a few) then the chances are you started out with one of their free themes.

For the uninitiated, a ‘theme’ is a nice wrapper that ‘covers’ your site and makes it look all pretty. In WordPress, themes are interchangeable without making major changes to the site layout.

Free themes are great and there are literally thousands to choose from. This website used a free theme called Hiero for almost a year and it was simple to use and had a great look to it.

But it had limits in terms of what I could change and how the site looked.

Again there are thousands of premium themes out there. Popular themes include Studio Press and Thrive but I’ve personally chosen Marketers Delight.

Why? Well for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s very easy to use which is great for technology simpletons like me.

I don’t have huge amounts of time to play around with site design. Plus I’d rather be writing than noodling around with the ‘back end’ of the site.

Secondly, Marketers Delight has a strong focus on list building which I’m also looking to do right now.

Marketers Delight is also optimised for mobile straight out of the box – which is where a big chunk of your traffic will come from. Sites that are not mobile ready are near unreadable.

It also looks very clean and sharp which is not to be underestimated in our age of information overload.

(Get Marketers Delight here)

Which brings me neatly on to…

Get Rid of Advertising

Internet advertising and banner ads in particular is one of my pet hates. First off, it makes any website look like a big pile of crap.

And it slows load times down to a crawl.

But that doesn’t stop many bloggers covering their sites with trashy ads. And parenting bloggers are some of the worst culprits.

However if you want to experience truly horrifying ‘death-by-advertising’ you could always visit the Good Men Project.

On second thought, don’t. You might burn your eyes out on some of the lamest, worst written content on the web.

Ads are horrible. Don’t use them. People hate them and you are losing readers because of them.

Don’t believe me? Think of a successful blogger.

Now go read that site, come back and tell me how many banner ads you saw.

None, right?

The only reason you would have ads is to get the revenue (unless you just prefer a slow load and annoying images). But to get any kind of ad revenue, you need big visitor numbers. And I mean BIG.

Think tens of thousands per day. You will take years to reach that – particularly if your site looks like a pile of poo from all those ads you stuck on there.

Build Your Email List

Read almost any list post for bloggers and you’ll see ‘Build Your List.’

Why?

BECAUSE IT’S IMPORTANT!!!

A list of emails is your most valuable asset. The This Dad Does email list is the hard core of my readership: The men and Dads who are committed to the cause and message of TDD.

They are my crack commando team of Dads who do more.

They are highly engaged group and we have a special relationship. I can ask them for feedback and get it honestly. I know what they’re interested in and what they are not.

And if anything happened to my website, they’d be the first to know where they could find me instead.

But it’s a two way street – they give me total commitment and I give them the good stuff – first in line for special offers, notifications of the best posts and bonus content that non-subscribers will never see.

Starting a list is easy. A simple form on your site will capture emails. Services like Mailchimp provide free hosting for your list up to 2000 subscribers so there’s really no excuse.

Write for your Readers, not Machines

Do you ever catch yourself saying this:

“I write for me, not for anyone else.”

That’s great. But you have an online diary. Not a useful website that people will keep coming back to because it gives them great value time after time.

At the other end of the scale is the SEO Blog (SEO means search engine optimisation – where content is written to appeal to the search engine computers). These are popular but also a bit hard to follow. Plus, why do they keep writing the product’s name in full…?

Is there a better way? I think so.

Instead of writing for yourself or for machines, write for your readers. How do you do that? Find out who they are. What they like. What they don’t like.

Don’t compromise on your values but at the same time give them what they want to read.

I write a lot about fitness because people want to read about it. Do I want to write about weight training and fitness my whole life? Not really. But its something I know about and its something you like reading about.

We complete each other!

Closing Thoughts

This finishes my list of the 5 simple ways you can make your blog better than it already is.

I say that because I’ve read many of your websites and they are good – well written and well thought out.

But there are always ways to improve and to be better. To do more.

Do you have any suggestions or thoughts? Leave a comment below.

Neil

P.S. Building a list is important. As is signing up for mine. Do it here.