There are a lot of good reasons for making big changes to your blog. A few tweaks might be in order or, you might decide to do a total re-vamp. Sometimes you need to give the blog a re-working so that you can get more traffic or so you can get more conversions.
You might just want to invest time, effort, or some money in it as you grow your business. You might have seen a theme in your travels through the blogosphere that just looks like a perfect fit for your business model. Continuous improvement of your business model can be subtle or can be an overhaul as well.
Many successful and profitable blogs go through changes every few months and some make changes less often. Things can almost always be improved on unless you’ve got a 100% conversion rate. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your blog from an aesthetics perspective as well as from the standpoint of making you more money.
At the very least, changes can be noticed by your subscribers and the fresh look could give you some motivation to promote, write, and market your wares. This is necessary on an ongoing basis in order to keep your blog fresh and to keep getting you new subscribers or opt-ins.
Here are some helpful suggestions for you:
1. Choose A New Blog Theme
With a few clicks you can give your blog an entirely new look. There are free and there are premium themes for blogs such as WordPress Blogs and not only can a new theme give you a new look that’s slick and professional but it can also improve your SEO and monetisation.
Many blog themes have search engine optimisation features built right in and are ready for Google Adsense or other monetisation programmes. Once you get the hang of installing a theme (it’s not difficult), you can try out a few options to see what fits your blog well. If you’re using WordPress Blog, your blog sidebar is easily customisable as well.
2. Add Some Widgets
Adding some sidebar widgets can do a lot for your blog. A new high-converting ad button, new graphics, new opt-in offer to entice people to subscribe to your e-mail or marketing list, and doing something like joining a blog directory like BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog which provides graphics, functionality, and traffic can dress up your blog, bring you traffic, and help you get subscribers or buyers.
3. Add Some Buttons
AddThis and Onlywire are options for adding social bookmarking buttons to your blog. They’re easy to add, add visual appeal to the page, and best of all, they encourage your visitors to bookmark your posts. Those bookmarks improve your SEO and can bring foot traffic to your sites as well. Because many of these sites are based on tags, related tags will bring the kinds of visitors you want!
4. SEO
Another way to give a facelift to your blog with or without changing the look is to tweak and optimise every page. Optimise your titles, your header info, and the content on your page. Do some keyword research and then optimise existing pages with long tail and laterally related keywords as well as do some strategic linking within the blog plus off the page. Do this with activities such as social marketing, blog commenting, and article marketing.
5. Copy Improvements
Are you getting a lot of traffic but not a lot of sales? Maybe it’s time to tweak your sales copy. Blogs should pique the interest of the reader based on the advertisements you have on the page. Don’t give away all the answers otherwise there’s no need to click. You want to whet the appetite of your readers and to provide value as well.
Read tips from successful copywriters and consider books as well that can teach you to write in a way that compels people to buy. Try to look at your blog as an outsider and be your own critic. Would you be sold based on the content on your page?
Finally, some promotion is going to be in order. After you’ve made some changes, it’s time to test things out. Do your best to drum up some new traffic and new buzz. A contest, a social media campaign, and putting great new content up can help you get some traffic and help you see if your WordPress Blog redesign is a hit or not.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2012
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent site, keep up the good work
This blog rocks! I gotta say, that I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
Hi Bill,
Thanks a lot for your comment, I am happy to hear that you are enjoying and learning from the content.
Regards – Sean
Hi Sean,
I have added this information to my list of things I have to do, so now I have to see how I can improve the look of my site.
Thank you for this information
One way I would find out if the changes were helpful would be to ask my fans. They are pretty interactive so I think I would get some good feedback
I have done this and I received good comments. They picked up some things I didn’t think of.
When you make a creation you think it is the greatest forgetting what others might think
Hi Sean,
After reading this post I am also inspired to give my uwcblog a facelift.
The many video’s with step by step instructions available in the YOTA Forum make it all so very easy to change the style of my blog and give it a facelift.
Hello Sean,
I am so giving my blog a “new face lift”. I have wordpress, and never thought to play around with it. Thanks for the heads up, will see how many different plugs in I can add, change my photo and generally give it a good image clean up
Cheers
Lisa
lisa
Try asking friends to give an honest opinion. They will look at it from a readers perspective where you are looking at it from an owners point of view. iIdid this and have managed to make some good improvements
Hi Sean,
These are all great ideas. I think I will probably go back over my old posts and try to optimize them a little better. I know a lot more about SEO now than I did when I wrote my earlier posts.
I think I would also work on writing more attention grabbing headlines. Can I go back and re-write some of my articles and give them better headlines and tweak the copy? Or, should I just leave them and write new posts?
I think I would do these things first before changing the look of my theme.
I am about to work a little bit on my blog, want to try two sidebars for all the widgets etc.
.
One question to changing context for SEO – how does google see that, will it re-check the page more often? Can I also change my permalink or should that stay the same and only “play” with the content inside of the post?
Tks
It is always best to get your content right the first time if possible Renee. If you have found that your SEO is lacking on some posts you have written previously, I don’t see the harm in changing a few things, however I would not be changing it a great deal. With permalinks, best to leave them as they are if you can.
Thanks for that Sean. I never had to change content big ways, just a few words here and there. Good to know that I should leave the permalink, so I better pay attention I get it right first time
It can be changed Renee, but yes, getting it right the first time is the way to go.