6 Quick Fixes That Will Instantly Improve Your Blog

Posted: 08 Feb 2016 09:39 AM PST

Sometimes it’s the smallest changes that make the biggest differences. How many of these practices are you implementing on your blog right now?

Is Your Site Fully Responsive?

Just because you have a responsive theme, doesn’t mean every part of your site is mobile friendly.

Look at the image below…

This is an iPhone 6 screenshot from an article on my hair site. This right-aligned image looks great on a desktop, but it looks ugly on a mobile device because of how the text wraps.

And with 70% of my nearly 200,000 visitors per month coming from mobile now, this is something I need to keep tabs on. Unfortunately a lot of my older posts have images aligned like this.

Even though a recent WordPress update promised to make images more responsive, check some of your older pages. You may still find they need adjusting… especially if you’ve aligned them manually in WordPress.

I’ve made a commitment to put images on lines by themselves without alignment — as opposed to left or right-aligning them.

I’m in the process now of auditing my older pages so images look better on mobile browsers.

Don’t forget to check your site on your smartphone from time to time. I’ve unearthed some ugly surprises thanks to large images that are outside of the margin and awkward wrapped text.

If you notice an image that is outside the margin of your site and throwing your entire site out of whack, you can remedy this by removing the width and height parameters in the HTML code.

height and width

Some themes render correctly on their own, but if yours doesn’t, then that’s one way to fix it.

From a page-loading perspective, this could have a tiny impact. However, most people have high-speed Internet access today, so it’s less of an issue.

What The Font?

Do you know the difference between Serif and San Serif fonts?

No worries. I didn’t until about 3 weeks ago.

San Serif fonts don’t have tails on the letters and are actually better for Web browsing. They they look a lot cleaner and will give your site a more modern look.

Image Source: TheRealKatie.net

Many themes and image editors like Canva are now using Sans Serif fonts and keeping up with the font trends. Here are the top 10 Sans Serif fonts.

Speaking of Canva, check out my video below on how to design an image template for your site in only 2 minutes!

It’s amazing how Canva makes a non-designer like me look like I really know a thing or two about design, right?

Gotta love it!

OK…now back to the topic.

If you need fonts for your graphic program or text editor, download them from 1001Fonts.com. I use them all the time to add fonts to my computer for Photoshop use.

You can sort by Sans Serif fonts and view them all at once. The ones with the green price tag are free for commercial use.

Looking for a different font for WordPress? This tutorial will show you how to add custom fonts to your site.

And if you want to learn how to pair fonts in your images, check this out.

Use Big, Bold High-Res Images

Images help break up your text and they breathe life into your content.

But nothing says “amateur” like a low-res, grainy image!

Ew!

If you need some eye-catching, high-res images, check out Gratisography by Ryan McGuire.

You can use the images for your personal and commercial projects and they are 100% free!

Yes, you read that right. They are free and with no attribution required! See for yourself.

Hurry and download them before Ryan changes his mind!

I love using a nice big lead image to start my posts. These are great for social media, but I also find them incredibly fun to create.

Also play around with font pairing to make your image pop even more.

Write Shorter Sentences and Paragraphs

I want you to notice something.

Isn’t it much easier to read my content when I break the text up like this?

Now read the paragraph below…

As you begin reading this, notice how bad this looks when I don’t break my content up? Don’t laugh. People still write like this. I bet you’re already starting to feel overwhelmed and drained by this looooooooong paragraph. You’re probably still reading, but only because I’m making a point and you may be curious about what I’m going to write next. And if you’re reading this on your smartphone…oh boy… God help you. I know your eyes want to cross, skip around or at least take a break. Long paragraphs are a turn-off to our eyes and minds because the fast-paced, digital world has forced us to desire quick consumption. We like to scan and speed read through articles. So if you’re still writing your paragraphs like this, please stop. Start breaking up your content more. Your readers will thank you and probably read even more of your content.

Are you cross eyed yet?

My bad. Just trying to make a point.

Don’t forget: A 4-line paragraph might look fine on a 27″ monitor, but that same paragraph turns into 10 or more lines on a smaller device.

White Space is Your Friend

I remember when website owners were seemingly afraid of white space. Too much of it was perceived as dull and boring.

Now we associated it with professionalism, cleanliness and it’s practically become a design standard.

Today it’s all about larger margins, adequate line spacing and shorter paragraphs. All create white space to make your site easier to scan/read.

Write For Humans. Not Google.

Remember the good ole’ days of article generation software?

For the newcomers out there, you could buy software to churn out keyword-optimized content that would hopefully rank on Google.com.

What about calculating keyword density?

Just think. We actually counted how many times we used a specific phrase we were targeting to help with search engine optimization.

Now that SEO has changed, I spend much less time on keywords and more time ensuring my blog has a casual, consistent tone.

So relax…

Be you!

One thing I love about blogging is it’s much less formal, and gives us a license to write in a more casual format that brings out our personalities.

That’s what makes it fun!

If you don’t enjoy blogging and it seems like a chore, do some exercises to help find your own voice.

Create Quality websites

09/02/2016