There are certain things you really need to make sure that you do when designing your blog, to ensure that you meet blog design best practices that will help you to provide a positive user experience for your followers and blog visitors.
So below are 7 tips to make sure that your blog provides a great user experience.
Table of Contents
1. Good Blog Structure and Pages Hierarchy
You need to make sure that your blog has a logical structure and a clear hierarchy between pages and a clear menu, and is easy to use.
A well-structured blog helps users to find their way around easily so that they can naturally navigate between relevant posts and pages and spend time on your blog. Good structure and hierarchy help to provide a good user experience.
Furthermore, search engines analyze the structure of your blog and they favor sites that are structured logically.
Just like if you were writing a document, one would expect headings and subheadings that naturally fit together. It is the same when designing your blog.
If your page is well structured using headings, it can help search engines pull out your content more easily.
It also helps search engines to easily understand what your site is about, i.e. the main theme or niche.
Have you ever come across this kind of list in search engine results that you see in the image below?
In the example above, I searched for ‘pasta cooking tips’ and the first result was this list.
On the image above (on the left side) you can see that, on top of the search results page, Google provides a list of bullet points from one blog post.
These results come from one blog post that someone has written (see the right-side image above).
Now, WHY would Google place something like this at the top of the search results? Great question 🙂
The answer is because of a few reasons but there are two key reasons worth noting:
- Firstly, Google loves great-quality content
- and secondly, to show at the top of search results, Google loves content that has a good structure and especially that is part of a bulleted or numbered list.
So, when designing a blog post, if you want to have a chance to show at the top of search results in the box that Google sometimes highlights on top of a search results page, make sure you number or bullet-point your headings in your blog post, as I have on this blog post!
Google, as you can see, have pulled the main titles (headings) out of the content from this page and put them together in the search results to answer my query.
Using headings not only makes the page easier to read for the user, but it is also good for SEO.
You can use different levels for headings: level 1 for the title, level 2 for subtitles, level 3 for lower-level subtitles, and so on, just as you would do in a Word document.
Solution: Make sure that you use headings in your blog posts. Have some header 2 and header 2 titles, for example.
2. Readability of Your Content
Readability is important for SEO as it provides good user experience and it keeps your readers on your pages for longer.
Notice how, on this page, I have made small paragraphs and that there is a lot of white space on the page. This is not only easy on the eye but makes it much easier to read on mobile devices!
The text in your blog posts also needs to be well-written. So you need to think about the:
- quality of the writing
- grammar
- spelling
- and the text has to be easy to read visually (i.e. with contrasting color scheme, clear font, etc.)
One absolutely fantastic and totally free tool you can use to help you is Grammarly. Install Grammarly in your browser and it will automatically tell you when you make a grammar or spelling mistake and how to change it.
Solution: Make use of the Free Grammarly tool + always proofread your posts before publishing them + write with small paragraphs + large easy-to-read text.
3. Responsive Blog Design
Responsive design refers to having a blog that responds to all devices. In other words, your blog will look good on an iPhone, iPad, laptop, desktop computer or any other device.
The great thing, these days, is that most paid WordPress templates are ‘Responsive’ designs and you do not need to do anything yourself to make sure it is responsive.
The key point for you is that, if you are buying a pre-designed WordPress template, make sure that it is ‘Responsive’
Sometimes, a page might look great on a computer screen but then look terrible on a smartphone.
It is essential that the design you use adapts to different types of screens as today more and more people use mobile devices to surf the Internet.
Responsive design provides a better user experience for anyone who visits your site. As search engines favor sites that provide a good user experience, it follows that responsive design influences SEO because visitors will tend to stay on your pages for longer.
Solution: Make sure that your blog uses a responsive design. Check how your blog looks on different devices to test it.
4. Fast Loading Blog and Site Speed
A fast loading time for your blog is important!
It is a bad user experience if a user has to wait for ages for a page to load. We tend to have little patience for waiting for web pages to load and so a user will soon lose interest in your blog if the pages do not load quickly. They will soon head elsewhere.
Slow loading times are bad for ranking in search engines because search engines look badly on low loading times.
I wrote a detailed post recently all about How to improve your blog or website speed and you can find it here!
Solution: Read how to optimize site speed post.
5. Make Your Site Secure
This means that a page is secure for the user to visit as it is encrypted. You can tell if a page is secure if, on the search bar, the address of the page is preceded by a little lock icon. Search engines favor encrypted sites.
As you can see from the image and at the very top of this page in the address bar, you will see above that uses the example of this page, the lock icon showing.
You will see the lock icon when your website is secure and this means, in effect, that your site address has been made https.
The easiest way it to go onto the website for whoever you use for hosting your websites and do a search for https or email the support.
Solution: Read how to optimize site speed post.
It’s really a very simple process although there are some considerations to be made. Your web host will help.
6. Nice Looking Design
Your blog needs to look attractive and also be easy on the eye, clear and uncluttered.
Often, less is more and in this respect do make sure that you have white space in your design to make the site great for the user experience.
A nicely designed blog encourages your visitors to stay on your site for longer and it captures their attention.
The amount of time a visitor spends on a page, between clicking a link on the search engine results and leaving the page again to go back to the search engine results, is called dwell time. This is something that search engines take into consideration when ranking websites.
If dwell time is low, it suggests searching engines that a page is either not relevant to the search or is of poor quality.
So, if you provide content that is relevant to the keywords you target and your page looks good and has good content, this is a way for you to increase the chances that visitors will stay on your site long enough, once they have clicked on your link from the search engine results.
Solution: Do pay attention when you get started to choosing a design that looks great. You can easily buy pre-made templates that make this very easy to achieve.
7. High-Quality Content
Useful and relevant content – Content is key on a website. All the content must be relevant to your products/services and useful for the reader. Sites with great content are favored by search engines.
Multimedia – In addition to text and images, it looks good to also embed videos, for example, to engage the user and keep them on the page for longer.
It is worth reading the post we did on how to write a blog post!
Solution: Think about providing your readers with quality rather than quantity when it comes to content. Make your next post an informative, useful, and detailed post.
It would be fantastic also to get your ideas below so please leave your comments and suggestions at the bottom of this post.
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