All Entries in the "Blog Design" Category
Add A Twitter Badge To Your Blog The Hard Way
I decided I’d put a Twitter badge on a client’s blog so I went looking for Twitter badges. Man are they hard to find. Well, if you have a Twitter account and you are active in your account then you should add a Twitter badge to your blog. What better way to attract new followers than right there on your blog?
Here’s what you need to do to find that Twitter badge:
- From your Twitter page, click on “Help”
- In the left sidebar you’ll see “Twitter FAQ” – CLICK ON IT
- Click on 1.1.FAQ
- Scroll down
- Keep scrolling down
- Scroll, like, all the way down until you see “Can I put Twitter on my blog?“
- Click the link using “put a Twitter badge” as anchor text in the “Can I put Twitter on my blog?” paragraph
Yikes! That’s seven steps just to find the page on which the badges can be found. Five if you count the three step scroll function as one. Facetiousness aside, you’d think that Twitter would make it easier for bloggers to find badges for their blog. And, I’m a bit disappointed in the limited choices available. Oh, well.
Instead of the above seven-step process, just click here and you’ll go to the Twitter badge page. Or you can go to http://twitter.com/badges. Now, from here:
- Click the type of widget you want to use (again, I’m disappointed they don’t have one for WordPress – the most popular blogging platform); if you use WordPress, click “Other”
- Choose the type of badge you want
- Customize your badge
- Copy the code
- Inside WordPress, click on Design then Theme Editor
- Click on the Sidebar php file you want to edit
- Insert the widget code where you want it to appear in the sidebar
- Update file
- Visit Site and make sure the badge appears the way you want it to appear
Don’t have the time to install your own badge? We’ll do it for you. Call Chris at 786-317-8774 or visit the website and fill in our contact form.
The Importance Of Your Blog Theme
Many new bloggers do not fully understand the importance of a blog theme. There are several things to think about when choosing a blog theme, chief among them is the ability to optimize it for search performance. When it comes to SEO, not all blog themes are created equal. But SEO is not the only thing that is important. Other things to think about in choosing a blog theme are:
- Design – Is your blog theme attractive?
- Niche – Does your blog theme fit your niche well?
- Easily Adaptable – Can you modify your theme with ease or is the code too thick?
- Widgetized – I don’t like widgetized blog themes for myself, but many bloggers like them. They do make certain aspects of modification easier, especially if you are not good at messing around with code. If you prefer widgets then make that a point for your blog theme. If you are like me and would prefer to modify your files directly then FTP them back to your server then don’t worry about widgets.
- Plugins – Does your blog “freak out” when you use certain plugins? You might try another one.
- Archives – I’ve had several blog themes whose archives don’t work properly. Either choose another one or download the SRG Clean Archives plugin. You’ll have to modify your sidebar somewhat to use it, but it’s fairly easy to do.
When it comes to choosing an appropriate blog theme for your new blog, make sure you get one that is optimized for search, attractive, and appropriate for your niche.
How To Increase Your Clicks On Your AdSense Ads
A lot of people have high hopes for their AdSense blogs. Too high, actually. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money on AdSense with your blog. I have one blog that only gets about 1/10th the clicks as other properties I own, but the income is double. How is that, you say?
No. 1, you have to choose a keyword niche that is profitable. Do your research. Find out what topics are clicked on the most and what keywords offer the highest payouts on AdSense.
But there is one other thing that you can do to increase your AdSense blog’s ROI and click through rate, no matter what the payout is on the clicks. This one thing can increase your CTR by 100%. It’s just a simple tweak and all you have to do is make this one change to your template’s CSS or php file and you’re in business.
What’s the tweak? The color of your in-text links. I’m not talking about your AdSense links. I’m assuming you know how to optimize your AdSense ads. I’m talking about your blog post links. If you don’t use links in your blog posts, that’s even better. Why tempt your readers to click a link that won’t make you money? But what if you do use links in your blog? Make sure those links don’t show up in blue like normal links. That will tempt people to click those links and they won’t click your ads. Instead, change your CSS file to make links appear the same color as your other text. That will make internal post links indistinguishable from surrounding text and you’ll get more clicks on your AdSense ads.
Will A Quick Glance Catch Their Attention
If you check your blogs statistics you can see whether or not your content is holding your readers attention. If you have a high bounce rate and a low page read, your not selling your content and quick glance doesn’t hold their attention.
Your blog should be set up in such a way that a reader can quickly see what is on offer. Most visitors scan and if the scanning shows value, they will either bookmark to come back later, or settle back and start reading. The key to catching their attentions is a simple as black and white.
White Space
The first key is white space – not plenty of it, but carefully balanced. The idea of white space is to enable the important information to stand out, particularly paragraph headings. White space around graphics can also be important. To get white space around your graphics, include the vspace=”x” and hspace=”x” at the end of the graphics code: the number in brackets represents pixels. For example, your code may look like the following (I have omitted the opening and closing < >)
img src=”http://yourimageurl.jpg” alt=”suitable alt tag” align=”alignment” vspace=”10″ hspace=”10″
That code will place a white space of 10 pixels around your image.
Black Space
Black space of course is your text. You need to highlight the important sections, such as paragraph heading by using bold or a strong color. If there is sufficient white space, the ‘black’ section should stand out. Another example of using ‘black’ within whitespace is by using bullets or numbering. These work particularly well for short sentences as their use creates plenty of white space.
The use of black and white space has been a technique used successfully over the years by marketing consultants, particularly when it comes to flyers and business cards. Used carefully, a quick scan of your content should be enough to sell the opportunity to stop and read. Let us check out your white space with a free blog consultation.
