To create a blog site worthy enough to attract repeat visitors and develop a blog following you need to really pay attention to detail when picking out a template, adjusting the template’s layout to your taste, and if you hire someone else to create it, you need to have a clear picture of what you want so you can be able to express to them what you need in your custom-made blog design.
In the early days of blogging, you could easily create any blog site, throw it up on the web, and blog to your heart’s content; and if you did most of your search engine optimization right, you stood a good chance of being successful. These days, with so much competition, if you don’t create a blog site that looks modern you’ll have one big strike against you. It’s all about the readers’ experience when they visit your blog site so you can keep them coming back for more, faithfully!
I’m a big fan of WordPress and Google’s “Blogger” when it comes to creating a blog site; both are effective, straightforward, and extremely easy to use. If you’re using WordPress, try to use a separate hosting plan such as Hostgator or any other inexpensive host with similar bang for your buck; hosting plans are really cheap but good nowadays! Although WordPress.com has free hosting like Google’s “Blogger,” at this time they don’t allow you to use AdSense ads unless you sign up for their VIP program, which is full of great features but very expensive.
Google’s “Blogger” is another great blogging platform and it’s free! The one drawback to Blogger is the in-house templates are a little outdated so you need to find one of the many free blogger templates available on the web. Blogger does allow you to put AdSense ads so this is the choice for the majority of bloggers starting out on the internet.
Once you create a blog site using WordPress or Blogger there are three areas you might want to adjust to your liking; the header, the sidebar, and the footer. Many WordPress templates allow you to replace the header with your own design and Blogger makes changing the header very easy! You can insert Google ads in your sidebar through HTML, and it’s a great idea to look at the footers on the bottom of other websites to figure out which type you like.
The bottom line is this; if you create a blog site you can be proud of, it will help inspire you to keep blogging and moving forward to success!
