7 Things Every Blog Should Have

Here are the seven most important things we here at EW think should be on your blog.

Posted on

2 August 2015

| Last updated on 2 January 2018

There are thousands, upon millions of blogs out there on the Internet. But you'll find each and every one of them may have the following 7 predominant aspects in their design to ensure they give their audience the best user experience possible. We've whittled down a lot of different aspects, leaving you with the most important things your blog should definitely have, whether you're a business or independent blogger.

These are also seven elements we have included on our own ExpatWoman Blog, which we have used as an example:

1. A consistent colour scheme and style
An important part of any well-designed blog is a consistent colour scheme and style. You'll find most bloggers will stick to a very basic and simple colour scheme... For our ExpatWoman Blog, we used just three colours! Luckily, these match our brand colours from our ExpatWoman logo, so it's easy enough for us to continue this "look" in our blog, too.

Mix and match with your favourite colours to find the best palette that works for your blog's theme, your own personality and what works best with your content. Make sure, of course, that they look great together when unified by your blog skin. This idea applies to your blog's fonts too... Don't waiver away from using more than 3 fonts, max! Otherwise you risk making it look a little messy.

2. A simple layout that's easy to navigate
If you're a new blogger, or looking to refresh your site with a minimalistic look, then adopting a very simple layout will be a great step to enhancing your blogs performance and quality. Make sure your main content area is clear, and ensure you have an organised, well-designed sidebar to accomodate. This can be on the left or right hand side of the blog... Depending which way your mood is when designing!

Take into account, if you wish to turn your blog into a business, areas for potential sponsors and advertisers to appear, too - and make sure they don't disrupt the feel and layout of your blog, which could potentially damage your audience's experience.

You might also be interested in:

3. Keep it clean and clutter free
To elaborate on point 2, make sure you don't have too many widgets or areas on your main blog page, otherwise you risk your reader's not finding what they're supposed to be reading... And that's your content.

4. Use large, high quality images and visual elements
Even if you're not exactly handy with a good camera, subscribing to something like a stock image website will do wonders for adding great, high-quality and related images to the content you publish. This rule also applies to any image you use in your sidebar or any banners you may use. Embrace the opportunity to show off your Instagram or Flickr feeds, too!

5. A short author biography in your sidebar
An about me page is usually a very popular page for your readers, basically because new visitors to your site will want to learn more about it before they determine whether or not it's worth clicking around to have a look. But while your about me page is vital, so is your sidebar author biography and profile picture. But don't fear - this is only a short bio, and should contain only a few sentences that will eventually, with some luck and a click, lead to your full bio on your about page.

Creating the best short bio on your main blog page generally includes: tell the reader why they should stay to read, what's different about your blog from all the others, a short bit about yourself or your company, followed by a link to your full about page. Ta-da! Accomodate your short bio with a relevant image, whether it's of yourself, the niche in which your blog contributes to or your company logo if you haven't already used it.

6. Clear social media and RSS feed buttons
Once people have decided whether your blog is worth visiting more than once, they might even decide they'd like to follow you and see what you're up to in other places around the Internet. And this includes your social media. Plus, people are still using RSS feeds, so yes, definitely have one of these. What's brilliant about standard blog hosting sites, is that they'll more than likely include an RSS option for you anyway for your users to click on.

7. An easy archive navigation
Nobody wants to scroll through pages and pages and pages of content they might not necessarily want to read... Instead, they might be eager to find something you posted way back in 2013. So make sure your archives are clear, visible and easy to reach on your blog. All it takes is one swift click in your sidebar, and your reader might find something they're really interested in, even if it's not necessarily fresh content, it could still be relevant to them.