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10 Elements of a Professional Blog

Posted on 10. Aug, 2009 by Isaac Yassar in Blogging

Do you want to earn money from your blog?

If you want to make money from your blog, you want to blog professionally. In that case, your blog is your business.

In business, people can’t wear t-shirts and go negotiating business deals. It’s the same here on blogosphere. You need to show professionalism on your blog if you mean business.

A few blog elements can help you appear more professional. Check them out:

1. Unique logo / header

A logo / header represents your brand and help your readers identify your blog uniquely. A nice image is faster to memorize rather than texts. Having a unique logo / header also shows that you are all-out in blogging.

If your blog is new and you can’t afford to have your logo / header professionally designed yet, you can try to customize it yourself. Then gradually improve it along with the growth of your blog. Blogging is process.

2. About page / information

An about page / information is where you introduce yourself with your own style. Your visitors will see it, and your monetizing partners will too (advertising companies, advertisers, etc). It works well with the element above, unique logo / header. Both help you building your brand dramatically.

To create a good about page, learn from successful bloggers. Try their styles and find the one that suits you.

3. Functional navigation

Functional navigation helps your audience browse your blog easily. It ensures that none will get lost somewhere in your site after it grows vast. Simple and clear navigation is a necessity, especially when your site has grown a little bit sophisticated.

Functional navigation means your visitors know where they are and where they are going.

4. Subscription tool

Subscription tools give your readers some options to stay informed of your new content easily using email or other mediums. Therefore, your audience does not need to visit your site everyday checking if you have published new content or not. They can efficiently visit your blog once they receive the notice that your new content is available.

FeedBurner is a popular subscription tool found on most 6-figure blogs. If you haven’t, perhaps you should give it a try.

5. Advertisements

Putting some ads makes your blog looks like a professional money maker.  If your blog is new, you can also use them as a blueprint for your future monetizing strategy. Image ads improve your blog’s aesthetic better compared to text ads.

I doesn’t have to be ads, affiliate banners / buttons can function the same. 125×125 buttons is a good size to start and found on many famous blogs.

6. Contact page

Contact page allows your readers to communicate with you. They can use it to express complements, suggestions, complaints, etc. This is also vital in case an issue regarding other party arises. All famous bloggers provide this page on their blog.

The essence of a contact page is in the ability to reach you. Therefore it doesn’t have to be a real contact page. It can be a social profile, email address, etc. However, the real page is better.

If you use WordPress as your own-domain publishing platform and your theme have no contact page, you can use a third party service to get your contact form. Kontactr is one of them, and it’s free.

7. Copyright notice

Copyright notice inform everyone about the ownership your content and whether other parties can use it freely or not. A simple copyright notice on your footer is enough, though clearer statements are better.

8. Search box

This tool helps your readers find something in your blog fast. If you use WordPress as your own-domain publishing platform, a built in search tool is good enough. If not, you can install other tools such as Google Custom Search on your blog.

9. Privacy and comment policies

A privacy policy informs your readers about what you are doing with their private information such as email addresses, IPs, etc. Its existence is to make people comfortable in having activities on your blog, such as commenting, subscribing, contacting, etc.

A comment policy shows people your stand regarding comments. It shows what’s OK and not OK to say in your comment forms. Its aim is to protect the healthy atmosphere of commenting on your blog. A good blogger appreciates original comments and deletes spam.

I have a very simple privacy and comment policies here if you want to see.

10. Archive

Archive provides a way to reach all of your posts, from the oldest up to the newest. It is useful for you, your visitors, and search engine bots. All successful bloggers archive their posts.

If you use WordPress and you theme (again) doesn’t have archive page, you can use a nice plugin named Clean Archive Reloaded. It’s the one I use on my blog.

Alright folks, does your blog have all these 10 elements yet?

Tags: Blogging