9 Ways To Make Your Blog Suck Less

I work on a lot of blogs, especially my own, and here are my tried and true tips to make YOUR blog suck less (although I’m sure your blog is utter perfection, still, couldn’t hurt!)!

Stop Using Dropdowns and Lists in Your Sidebar!

Almost everyone does it. They see a drop-down widget for categories in their dashboard and slap it into their sidebar thinking it will direct more traffic to love of kittens | kitteny love | I love kittens and instead it does nothing. No traffic. No acknowledgement. Certainly no extra page views! The problem is classic. When a person is presented with a lot of choices, their brain freezes up. So instead of making ANY choice, they just slowly back away and move on to the next blog.

I highly suggest that if you need it on your sidebar that you pick out the 3-5 categories you really want to direct attention to and link to those (and only those!) in your sidebar with a blurb on what the category is about.

This goes for those Archive and Tag drop-downs (and tag clouds) too, put that on a separate page already!

Use ONE Category / MANY Tags

Nothing can drive me more crazy than seeing a post be in 3-10 categories. If the content of your post isn’t specific enough to be in a SINGLE specific category, then either it shouldn’t be posted until you can edit it down to fit a specific category or you really need to rework your category system.

Life. Thoughts. Thinking. Tidbit. Everyday.

It’s all the same thing! Select one category and drill it down using tags. A great example would be a Wordless Wednesday post. The category could be Photography and the tags could then drill it down into specifics such as flowers, children, internet meme, fluffy kittens of doom, and so on.

Social Media Button Overload

You know those blogs… the ones that have 6+ LARGE social media buttons on every post, top and bottom, including excerpts? No? Here’s an example!

I personally have only the small version of both the twitter button and facebook like button on my main home page and then I have a special area on the single post / comments page with the larger buttons.

I recommend either using a plugin (I suggest Sociable) or hard-coding them into your theme if you have that option and do not have ANY social sharing buttons on excerpts, it’s too much clutter, keep them to full posts only.

Get Rid of <CENTER>

I come across this on 80% of the blogs I work on. This tag is so outdated and can screw up your coding majorly. A quick replacement if you’re using WordPress would be to use the class aligncenter:

Example:

<div class="aligncenter">content here</div>

Or for use with an image:

<img src="image.jpg" alt="image" class="aligncenter" />

And that will achieve the same effect but in current and not so jacked up way!

Clear Your Floats

You know how you can come across a blog post that looks like this? Oh yes, I purposely screwed up my own coding to provide an example!

This can be fixed in one of two ways. The first would be to enclose each area with a P tag and give it a large padding so there is NO way the posts would be near each other and the second way (which I use the most often) is to clear the floats.

Example of using the paragraph tag:

<p style="padding-bottom:90px;">
<img src="http://onestarrynight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DSC_4277-300x199.png" alt="above us only sky" title="above us only sky" width="250" height="auto" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-8192" /> <strong><a href="http://onestarrynight.com/sky-3/">Above Us Only Sky</a></strong>
<br />
A post for Wordless Wednesday. I think over the years MOST of my photos tend to be sky focused. Something about it just remains mystical for me.
</p>

An example by clearing the floats:

<img src="http://onestarrynight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DSC_4277-300x199.png" alt="above us only sky" title="above us only sky" width="250" height="auto" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-8192" />
<strong><a href="http://onestarrynight.com/sky-3/">Above Us Only Sky</a></strong>
<br />
A post for Wordless Wednesday. I think over the years MOST of my photos tend to be sky focused. Something about it just remains mystical for me.
<br style="clear:both" />

By the way you can see the post itself to see how it’s not jacked up!

Personalize Your Twitter Sharing Plugin

I can tell you right now if I take the time to click that cute little “tweet me!” button on your site? It better have YOUR twitter handle attached to it! The biggest plugins I see with this issue would be AddThis, ShareThis, and AddToAny.

After installing and activating the plugin of your choice (or do what I do and hard-code them into your theme!) take the extra two minutes to go to the settings and slap in your twitter handle. No joke, you will ALWAYS have via @onestarrynight attached to every twitter button around this blog!

Get Rid of Partial RSS Feeds

I love RSS feeds. I’m able to read blogs on the go (or more often, in bed at 3am on my phone). I don’t have to do it like the old blogging days and manually go to every blog I’m interested in just to find out they haven’t updated in a month.

Granted, there will always be the debate between full vs partial RSS feeds. Overall most READERS prefer full feeds. Those who offer up only partial feeds tend to believe that it will encourage click-throughs… I feel it only encourages people to unsubscribe.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> reading and change them as such:

Fix Your Permalinks!

I bring this up every single time! Having a URL that ends like this: /?p748 or domain.com/2012/05/12/category/post-title is just crazy to me! There is no reason for the first one ever and the second is way too long and doesn’t need the date!

In WordPress it’s very simple to change how our permalinks look! I personally go with just the postname.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> permalinks and change them as such:

Most Importantly – Be Authentic!

I can’t stress this enough. To make your blog suck less, blog authentically! Don’t pretend to be someone else or lie about your life to just gain more readers. At the end of the day visitors can tell if you’re being an honest person or shady.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across an awesome blog just to be disappointed to find out the blogger isn’t being truthful in their posts!

Always respond to comments and emails when you have time, don’t write for pity pageviews, and remember that without your visitors, your blog is just an online diary!

User Submitted

I asked on my facebook page and on my Twitter, @onestarrynight, and here is what other people had to say for things that can make a blog suck! Granted I 100% disagree about justifying text! I think it looks awful but I discovered some die-hards LOL!

So there you go! 9 (and then some) ways your blog can suck less! I’d love it if you would share in the comments your favorite blog tip!