This article is a chapter from my book Blog Ideas: 131 Ideas to Kill Writer's Block, Supercharge Your Blog and Stand Out. The entire book will eventually be available on this website for free in web format, but if you prefer to read it in ebook or physical formats, you can find Blog Ideas on Amazon.com (affiliate link).
I didn’t pay much attention to plugins when I first started blogging with WordPress. Then I started getting comment spam. It began as a trickle touting insurance, male enhancement, and gambling. Then it became an unmanageable torrent of comment spam. Hackers attacked my site with scripting and brute force password attacks. That’s when I realized that WordPress alone is not enough. You needed some plugins.
Plugins are like apps for your blog. You install a plugin to your blog to add extra functionality. They can add security, features, and design enhancements to your blog.
WordPress makes it easy to find and install plugins. All you have to do is log in and click “Plugins” on the sidebar menu. It will show you every plugin you have installed. Find new plugins to install by clicking the “Add New” button. Doing so will take you to a page where you can browse or search for plugins. Installing a new plugin is as easy as clicking the “Install Now” button. This article will give you ideas on which plugins you should install.
This article will also give you some ideas for features you can consider adding to your blog. Features don’t have to be plugins. A few standard blog features include contact pages, resource listings, and privacy policies. Many readers expect every blog to have certain sections. Consider including the ideas in this article into your blog.
The average user judges a website within seconds of arriving on it. You need to set up your blog so that it is appealing to readers. Readers should know what kind of blog you have at first sight. If you keep them guessing for too long, they will lose interest and wander away. Design the blog so it is easy for readers to find information. This article will show you some ideas for grabbing your readers’ attention.
Install these plugins
Perhaps the greatest thing about WordPress is its customizability. You can install plugins to make your blog do almost anything.
A plugin is a piece of software that you can install into your blog to give it some extra functionality. Many plugins are free, but you have to pay for some of them. WordPress has a vast library of plugins that you can browse and install.
What makes WordPress so powerful is the large number of plugins it has. Adding plugins adds custom coding to your blog to make it do things above and beyond what WordPress itself can do.
Installing too many plugins can slow down your site, so you should install them on an as-needed basis. Here are some ideas.
Provide a way for readers to contact you
You probably don’t want your personal e-mail address out there for spammers to grab. One solution is to put a contact form on your blog. That way, readers can fill out the form, and you will get emailed when they hit “Submit.” Three good options to try are Contact Form 7, Contact Form, and NM Contact Forms.
Add social media buttons to your blog
You can increase the chances for your blog posts to go viral by adding social media buttons. This makes it easy for readers to share your article on social media sites. Some excellent options include AddToAny Share Buttons, Simple Share Buttons Adder, and MashShare Social Media Share Buttons.
Optimize your blog with these plugins
If you run a content-rich blog, your main source of traffic probably comes from search engines like Google. There are simple tricks to help Google find your site and rank it higher. To make search engine optimization easy, you should consider All-In-One SEO Pack or Yoast SEO. Another tool, Google XML Sitemap Generator, generates sitemaps that you can submit to Google Search Console to help Google index your blog.
Take control of your advertisements
The easiest way you can make money on your blog is to put advertisements on it.
Google Adsense is the most popular way to monetize a blog. There are other ad networks but start with Adsense if you’re new to the game. Once logged into Adsense, if you create new ads (under My Ads), you can copy the code and paste it anywhere on your site. Easy.
However, in practice, you probably don’t want to add the advertisement code to each article you post manually. That’s not so easy. Imagine the time it would take to go through every page on your site to make a change to the advertisement codes.
You need a good ad manager plugin. An ad manager plugin gives you a central dashboard where you can customize and control all the ads on your site. Here are a few of the most popular ad manager plugins:
AdRotate Banner Manager is a full-service advertising solution available both as a free and paid plugin. Display your own ads or ads from popular ad networks anywhere on your site. The plugin lets you schedule ads and tracks their performance.
WP125 is a simple free solution for serving square 125×125 ads. You can schedule the ads for a particular time frame, then track clicks on them. The settings allow you to set the number of ad slots, columns, and a default ad-sale page.
WP-Insert is a free WordPress plugin that helps you customize the placement of advertisements. It is optimized for Google Adsense and comes with loads of features including geo-targeting and rules for where and when to display ads. I chose this plugin for my own blog because it has an intelligent midpoint detection algorithm, that lets me insert ads in the middle my posts.
Adning Advertising is a comprehensive solution to manage advertisements on your WordPress site. It has predefined layout options, campaign manager, banner creator and advanced analytics. It serves all the traditional ad styles as well as Corner Peel Ads, Popup Banners, and even page background advertisements.
Advanced Ads is a free advertising management plugin that lets you add, manage and test ads on your website. Its main features include ad creation, displaying third-party ads, geotargeting, grouping, and scheduling. Filter and target ads based on your visitors.
Optimize page-loading times
People have short attention spans on the internet. If your blog takes longer than a few seconds to load, many of your first-time visitors will click out and never return. There are a few tricks you can use to make your blog load faster. W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and Autoptimize are popular plugins that cache and compress your blog files for faster loading times.
Keep your blog safe
Just like the real world, the internet is not always a safe place. There are a lot of bad people out there who want to break into your blog, spam you, and con you out of your money. There are some plugins that can help keep you safe.
Askimet comes with all WordPress installations. You will want to enable it. Askimet filters most of your comment spam into the trash so you’ll never see it.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin is one of the most popular WordPress backup tools. The free version lets you back up your blog once a week. You can pay for more options.
Some hackers use brute force software to try to guess your blog’s password. They’ll try to log in thousands of times with different passwords. WP Limit Login Attempts will stop brute force software in its tracks.
Try Jetpack
Add the power of the WordPress cloud to your blog. WordPress offers a full suite of useful tools with just one plugin. Jetpack (www.jetpack.com) has tools for increasing your traffic, improving security, loading your page faster, and much more.
The free version of the plugin gets you:
- Lots of free themes to choose from
- Performance features to make images load faster
- Brute force attack protection
- Downtime monitoring
- Related posts
- Statistics
- Automated social media posting
If you’re willing to pay some money, you can get some additional features:
- Premium themes with support
- Real-time automated backups
- Automated spam filtering
- Faster video loading
- Automated malware scanning
- Automatic security fixes
- SEO preview tools
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Accept PayPal payments
- Enhanced site-wide search
- Priority support
For the frugal power-user, you can get most of the premium features for free through separate plugins from other vendors. Jetpack just lets you consolidate many services into a single plugin by a trusted vendor.
Functions your blog should have
There is some content that people have come to expect to find in any blog. Whenever I come across a blog and have no idea what it’s about, I immediately look for the “About” page. If I want to contact the owner of a website, I look for the “Contact” page. These are standard pages that every website and blog should have. Here are some standard functions your blog should have, as well as some optional ones to consider.
Write an About page
When people visit your blog, one of the first questions they have is, “What is this?” It’s a good idea to have a page explaining what your blog is and who you are. This is a great place to elaborate on your blog’s hook. Write a little about yourself. It also helps to build rapport with readers if you include photographs of yourself.
Readers might also want to know a little bit about where you’re blogging from. Write about your location. What city or country do you live in? What does your work area look like? If you have a company, what does the building look like? What are some neat things about the area where you live?
If a visitor to your blog wants to contact you, what is the best way? In your Contact page, you should include the preferred methods of contacting you. You might include your e-mail and address. If that’s too personal to put out there, you can consider including a contact form that hides your email address.
Write a Now page
Derek Sivers is known for starting the online music store CD Baby. He advocates bloggers including Now pages in their blogs. A Now page is a page describing what you’re currently working on. Whenever a reader is wondering what you’re up to, they can visit the Now page to find out.
Write a Purpose page
A company called Fictive Kin advocates creating Purpose pages. A Purpose page is where you write about your vision for the future. Readers can visit the page to find out what the purpose of your blog is.
Include legal disclosures
Bloggers are expected to follow the same rules that businesses follow, especially when there is money involved. If you live in the United States, you should search “FTC blogger guidelines” on your favorite search engine, and read some of the things the FTC has to say. The short version is this: if you make money from any endorsements or include any affiliate links on your blog, you need to disclose that to your readers.
It is also a good idea to have a privacy policy. Let readers know if you collect any information from them, and what you do with that information. I am not a lawyer, so I can’t advise you on how to write one, but you can do some searching online for examples. In his book, How to Make Money Blogging, Bob Lotich offers his privacy policy as an example to provide inspiration. He also suspects that Google rewards websites that include a privacy policy.
Make your blog mobile-friendly
As the popularity of mobile devices increases, you can expect more people to read your blog from their phones and tablets. The screens on those devices may be tiny. To avoid turning off those potential readers, you should make sure your blog is mobile-friendly. Gather all your mobile devices, and look at your website on each one. Make sure your text is easy to read. Test your menus to ensure easy navigation. See if your advertisements render correctly. Try to read your blog as a member of your audience would. If it’s the first time you’ve ever seen your blog on a mobile device, you may be in for a surprise.
Set your permalinks
Permalinks are the web addresses leading to each blog post. In your WordPress settings, you have the option to set different styles of permalinks. You can include the category, the date, ID numbers, or titles in the permalinks. From a search-engine-optimization standpoint, you should set your permalinks to include only your post titles, and maybe the category. Most search engines put a lot of weight on the words appearing in the web address. By including your post titles and categories in your permalinks, you ensure that the relevant keywords will be in the web address for each article.
If your content is time-dependent, you can consider including the date. Using an ID number in your permalink is not advisable, but it may be useful in some cases where you want a shorter, simpler web address.
Why you need a pretty blog
New users make a judgment of your site within a second of visiting. First impressions matter. A lot. You need the initial view of your page to look as appealing as possible to the reader.
There is a statistic called a “bounce rate.” That is the percentage of people who visit your blog, then leave without looking at anything else. These are those people who are looking for something and don’t see it when they click into your site. You want the bounce rate to be as low as possible. You want as many people as possible to visit your site and get sucked in to look at what else you have. A great design is the key.
Design your blog on paper
An excellent blog starts on paper. Developing a blog in writing means to envision how your final product will look. It means you transfer what is on your mind to a piece of paper.
Your blog design should be straightforward and clean. If you’re starting from scratch, the first thing you need to do is organize your information. Get a sheet of paper and write down all the topics your blog will cover. How will the menu look? What are the most important features of your blog? What do you want readers to do when they arrive at your blog? Write down everything that will go on your blog’s home page. Include content, links, advertisements, and images.
Draw a big rectangular box on a separate sheet of paper. That is your computer screen. Draw how you envision your website in that box. Sketch the links, images, videos, advertisements, content, tags, comments, and everything else that you want your blog to display. Sketch where the menus will be and any navigation elements. Draw how the blog shows each post including how it features the most recent posts. Think about where to place the various sections. Doing this will help you choose the right theme for your site. If you are paying a designer, this sketch will also assist them in the design process.
Going through the planning stages on paper saves you time. You won’t waste effort creating things that don’t have a proper place on your blog. It also keeps your design simple and minimal. Your paper design acts as a blueprint making it easy for you or your designer to create the site.
Provide directional cues
Readers are more impressionable than you might imagine. What was the first word on this page? Chances are, I just made you look at the top of the page. If you want your readers to take a certain action, tell them so. Highlight buttons you want them to click. Provide directional cues like arrows to guide the eye. Use white space to draw attention to certain elements. Establish a clear visual hierarchy of the order a reader should look at things.
Here’s a trick: if you have a picture of a person on your page, readers are likely to look wherever the pictured person is looking.
Here’s another trick: put an image at the top of a blog post and align it right or left. Let your first lines of text be squished between the picture and the side of the page. Doing this will accelerate the reader from the opening words of your blog post down into the meat of your article.
Get in the habit of analyzing any article that drew you in, or sales page that compelled you to buy. Why did you read the entire article? What is the structure of the beginning of the article? Why did you click the “Buy” button on that sales page?
Try some Photoshop alternatives
Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for image editing, but it’s expensive, and many people don’t want to invest the money in it. Luckily, there are many great free alternatives out there. Canva, PicMonkey, and iPiccy have sophisticated cloud-based image editing. No software download required. If you don’t mind downloading software, Paint.NET and GIMP are free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop. They might not be as powerful, but they will do the job for most users.
Find the perfect theme
Besides content, the most important thing that will differentiate your blog from every other blog is its theme. A theme is a collection of files that define what your blog looks like and how it behaves. You can change the way your blog looks by changing its theme. There are many free themes that you can download and install on your blog. WordPress has a massive library of free themes.
If you’re serious about differentiating your blog, you should consider paying for a theme. WordPress provides a directory of premium theme designers. A couple of other places to check out are ThemeForest and WP Hub.
You should also consider buying a theme framework. A theme framework is a basic theme that you can install other themes on top of. You first install the framework, then you can install various customizations called “child themes” on top of it. Some popular ones include Genesis, Thesis, and Storefront.
Another option is to hire a designer. This option costs more money, but it will give you a blog theme that closely aligns with the specific vision of what you want your blog to look like. Upwork is a good place to find a freelance web designer to customize your website. You can also try a crowd-based design company like 99designs or DesignCrowd.
Test your blog’s usability
Have someone who has never seen your blog before sit down and look at it for a few minutes. Were there any parts where the reader hesitated or found confusing? Did she make any mistakes? Remember: there is no such thing as a user mistake. If the user made a mistake, you have a problem with your user interface. Did your reader have any questions where the answer wasn’t obvious? You will need to address those.
If you don’t have a friend around, you can also do user testing virtually. Peek is a free user-testing service. When you enter your site’s address and email address, they will send you a five-minute video of someone using your blog for the first time.
A more sophisticated way to test your blog is to run an A/B test. This is where you show half of your visitors one version of your website, and the other half another version. Then you can see which version gets the best response. You can do this by hand, but it is a cumbersome process. There is also software that helps automate and speed things up. A couple of popular options are Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer.
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