10 Blog Customizations To Make Your Blog Perform Better

Written by Josh Dunlop | Posted in Blog Learning, Blogging | 24 comments

Introduction

If you really want your blog to excel, you shouldn’t just set it up with a plain WordPress theme and leave it at that – the beauty of WP is the ability to create much more interesting websites with the ease of clicking a few buttons. This post is all about making your website better with just 10 easy customisations.

Header

The first thing any visitor sees when they enter the website is your header, so there’s no excuse for not having a good one. Depending on your niche, you can add different elements to your header to make it stand out from your competitors, for example, I’m in the photography niche so I added a couple photos and a little bit of writing about them. Beneath that is the links to different parts of my website, customised so that they’re unique to my blog, and are in keeping with the rest of my theme. When you compare my blog header to that of a very similar blog, who are using the same theme, and have been round a few months longer, it’s easy to see which is best. I personally really don’t like having adverts in your header, I don’t know if it makes the website a lot of money, but I do know I’d never put one there – your website is judged on first impressions, make it count.

Logo

We’re currently in the process of finding a logo for our website, but first of all, I need to find some ideas that I like that haven’t already been taken, or are completely cliche. Just like the header, appearance is key, and a good, strong logo, makes your website look even more professional. It helps to have some elements relevant to your niche, but in the search for a good logo in my niche, that’s not what makes a good logo; more often than not it’s the typeface and style. From my list of top 20 photography websites, here’s my most and least favourite logos. Let’s look at the PopPhoto one first, it’s bold and strong, with good colouring which doesn’t distract the reader from the text. When you look at the ePHOTOzine logo by comparison, the bad font and dodgy colouring makes it look it was found in popart.

Slider

I really can’t stress how important it is to have a good looking slider on your homepage, they’re incredibly useful and of course, makes your website look really good. I’m pretty picky about the look of my website, so we looked around for quite some time before choosing the appropriate slider, and actually ended up buying one called uBillboard, which is completely customisable and one of the best that I’ve seen – it only cost $20. The featured slider not only allows you to plug your latest tutorials, but all the old ones that you know are great, but nobody seems to be reading because they’re lost behind pages and pages of other tutorials. For $20, this is one of the best customizations on my website.

Social Bookmarking

I’ve been working on our social networking since day 1, but we only recently added the Sharebar widget to help with our social networking, and it’s already made a noticeable difference. The day it went up, we received 10 tweets of our content all with the tag @photojosh, so not only was it sharing our website, it was sharing our Twitter, which links to our Facebook, which then brings everyone directly back to our website. You have the ability to add loads of different options to your Sharebar, but to make sure it’s not too intrusive, we only include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and StumbleUpon. The bar slides up and down the page as you scroll, so it’s always there as a constant reminder for people to share content that they enjoy, which is a huge help to a starter site like mine.

Very recently, I’ve added a related post feature to the bottom of each of my posts to help improve my bounce rate and pages/visit ratio. I’ve had trouble finding a plugin that I really like, and i’m still not entirely happy with the one that I’m using, but I’m going to keep looking around for one that I really like. For now, it does the job very well, I’m just a bit of a perfectionist. The related posts are at the very end of the post so it’s targeted for readers who will actually read the whole of the post and make it towards the end, which is exactly what I want. If they’re not interested in what I’m writing then it makes no difference to me if they’re on the site or not, I need regular followers who are looking to learn.

SEO Smart Links

This is one of my favourite plugins because it’s takes away so much potential work, all you have to do is assign keywords to different links and this plugin does all the work for you. When you know your keywords, you can start using them more often to link your readers all over your site, improving your bounce rate and pages/visit ratio. Every couple of weeks I will post a tutorial with a list format, which is full of good information, but the primary reason for writing it is so that I can link to lots of my tutorials, and any new readers can have a look at what I have to offer. These are usually very successful posts and help to build my following without having to do any of the hard working of linking every single link. You can change the settings of where you want the posts to appear and how many times they appear in each post, helping you to produce the best results.

About The Author

This plugin is half for the user, and half for me. I feel it’s important for the reader to relate to me as a person, rather than ExpertPhotography as a website, as they’re more likely to interact when they realise there’s a person behind the website rather then just a computer. A little bit of personal information goes a long way as the reader will be able to relate to you and is more likely to come back in my opinion. I think Michael has done a very good job of being the face of this website, so much so that at least half of the comments on my posts on this website mention Michael, rather than Josh. This is all part of becoming recognised as an authority in your niche and furthering your career because of it – your name should be synonymous with your website’s name.

User Forms

A great way to encourage user interaction is t0 have a user submission form for your readers to submit their own content, no matter what your niche is. My niche is photography, so my form is an obvious one, it’s a photo submission section. Not only does this help to build content for my website, but the readers feel involved and get recognition for their work, which as the same time, encourages other readers to share their work. As someone who creates almost all of the content on my website, I’ll tell you it’s not an easy thing to do and the sooner you can get other people involved to help you for free, the easier your job gets.

Image Slideshows

I’ve always been one to use photos on my blog posts, and not just because I write a photography blog as I explain in this article. Images are an excellent way to get your point across, and slideshows are very good at effortlessly providing comparisons and ranges of images. I looked around for quite a long time for a good slideshow plugin and I settled on oQey Gallery as it had the smooth finish and thumbnail tab that I was looking for. Everyone likes to look at photos, myself especially, so if you can find a way of including them, then your going to find your readers are much more interested. Slideshows are particularly useful because if someone is on a slow internet connection, you’re not waiting for multiple photos to load all over the page, they’re only waiting for one image effectively.

About Josh Dunlop

Josh helps to run a bunch of websites. He is a master with a camera and great at driving traffic!

24 comments so far… Leave a reply

Joshua
August 2, 2011 2:01 PM

Great list Josh!! I'm really enjoying reading how you are putting together you site. I too just recently started another blog which I will be branding as opposed to my first blog which is real general when it comes to the domain and building a logo around it. I was going to leave a plain thesis theme installed but after reading your post I an going to spice it up a bit.
John
August 2, 2011 2:18 PM

Hi Josh, what related post plugin are you using now that allow you to show images?
Matt Smith
August 2, 2011 2:31 PM

Hi Josh, Some very useful tips here for people wanting to make their site stand out. I myself utilise a 'Slider' on my homepage, featuring some of my best articles to atract readers.
Ali
August 2, 2011 4:37 PM

Hi Josh, Great informative article as always. Got some great ideas for my blog :) Keep up the good work!
Jamie Northrup
August 2, 2011 7:29 PM

Thanks for the list Josh, I'm currently redesigning my website and went through the list to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything, and other than the SEO Smart Links I'm not, so I'm going to look into implementing that right now ;)
Prajwal Shinde
August 2, 2011 8:22 PM

Hi Josh, That is a great list of customizations. I like the Popular Post Sidebar that Michael has installed on his blog. May I know how you add a Popular Post Sidebar. Can it be installed with a Wordpress Plugin or is it a feature in theme itself? Any reply would be appreciated :)
Syed Balkhi
August 2, 2011 9:28 PM

I would highly recommend SlideDeck than any other slider plugin. It is by far the most feature-rich plugin. It has free options and paid ones as well. It includes horizontal sliders, vertical sliders... and you can have slides inside a slide... all customizable through the backend... Most importantly has touch enabled features as well for ipads and smartphones..
Tung Tran
August 3, 2011 1:43 AM

Hi Josh, Which theme do you use for your blog?
Michael
August 3, 2011 2:52 AM

Those are some great tips Josh. I've got a few of these features on my blog but definitely need to add a few more of them. Thanks for the input.
Kalesh
August 3, 2011 4:35 AM

Hello Josh, I liked your list. It was really helpful. But let me tell you that the author post beneath each post makes me look awful. Because many times same people comes to our website and it is awkward to see it very often. This section is very useful for blogs like TechCrunch and Problogger where there is a lot of writers. I love the Popular Post used by Michael and want to know where I can find it.
Jason
August 3, 2011 9:03 PM

Really cool stuff. I have the ubillboard plugin but am unable to get it to work on my homepage. Any help would be appreciated!
Sam Childs
August 4, 2011 6:16 PM

Hey, I like the sidebar slider, I was looking for that plugin! Cheers.
fazal mayar
August 5, 2011 6:23 AM

those are solid tips, customization is needed to improve the overall quality of our blogs
Josh Nurse
August 6, 2011 5:02 AM

Great List Josh! Enjoyed the Read as Always. I was wondering though how you were able to customize the header from the two bars as the default for your theme to the one. I am currently designing my blog and cannot do this and would like all my links within the one bar. Any advice would be great! Thanks, Josh N.
metalpig
August 6, 2011 1:40 PM

great list Josh! thanks for sharing us those blog customization tips and plug-ins. :)
Dustin
August 6, 2011 8:35 PM

Josh, I like the popular post sidebar from above. It looks like the same one on your site. What is it called? Is it a plug-in? Thanks, Dustin
DNS
August 7, 2011 9:38 PM

Great tips man... what are the plugins you use for the related posts and for the popular posts? I'd like to put them on my site cheers!
Nate @ Strayblogger
August 8, 2011 6:11 PM

You're not kidding about the logo... I have had income increases of over 30% just from putting up a much better-looking logo on a few of my sites. Your whole site will either look crappy or professional based on the site's logo.
Craig Cole
August 9, 2011 9:35 AM

Thanks for the info! Must admit, I'm a big fan of Michael's customised Popular Posts sidebar. Don't you know if this is a specific plugin or if this has been specifically designed for this site? Thanks again.
Curt
August 10, 2011 6:01 PM

Great post Josh. I've followed Michael's website for many months now and it is awesome! I would love to know what you find that Popular Posts sidebar. I'd be willing to pay for it if it was a paid-plugin or custom job. Can you tell me where to find it? Curt Donohue http://www.prestatraining.com
Lucas
August 11, 2011 2:13 PM

I too would love to know where I could find a Popular Post Sidebar like the one mentioned here. I've always loved the look of it.
inspirationfeed
August 11, 2011 7:20 PM

Incredible tricks and tips!
MLM Coach
August 14, 2011 7:30 PM

I know a lot about SEO, but it looks like I can learn some new tricks from you! Thanks for sharing Josh.
NgPillai
August 17, 2011 1:41 AM

Nice info for newbie bloggers. Keep up the good job buddy. Hope it really helps people out there whom looking to start blogging. Cheers NgPillai