Clean Your Blog: Oh the Irony!
Echoing the advice of Andy Wibbles, Darren Rowse of Problogger advises beginning bloggers to clean up their sidebars. The underlying point both are trying to make is that new visitors need to be able to focus on content when they first arrive at your blog.
Naturally, two other established bloggers wrote posts agreeing with Darren and Andy, leaving trackbacks on Darren’s post. Expecting to see examples of blog layouts that help visitors focus on content, I clicked the trackbacks.
Here’s what I found:
I bet your eyes are just riveted to the content in those two blog layouts!
You say you can’t see any content in those screen-shots? Neither can any first time visitor.
If you’d like to watch Andy’s video here it is:
Maybe Andy’s loofa needs to scrub more than the sidebars of some blogs.
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7 Responses to “Clean Your Blog: Oh the Irony!”
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Hi
Great site, very useful tips.
So what you dislike about my blog? The big adsense block?
I’m open for suggestions.
Yep! The big adsense block is a problem. I don’t mind ads. I have them on all my blogs. The problem with yours is this:
Stop and really look at the screenshot I snapped. That is exactly what I saw when I visited the link from Darren’s site. Try to find “content”. Other than the title, when a page loads a visitor sees absolutely no content!
This seems to only be a problem when we look at “single” articles. Your main page looks fine.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I would advise at a minimum:
Use a smaller adsense block and also use float feature to make the text appear next to to the adsense blog.
There are other options. Notice Darren has his ad at the end of content. I’m putting them lower down in the text. Some would probably criticize me for but at least you can see the content!
HA! Thanks so much for featuring the video…
You’re welcome. Lucky for me you stayed seated or my hosting company wouldn’t permit that video.
Thanks for including the video. Very useful stuff!
Why is that guy sitting at his desk naked? He should be filming himself in the shower so it makes more sense.
I actually visited Johntp’s blog just the other day and thought the adsense ads above each post were annoying. I also have a problem with bloggers including every widget in the world on their blogs. It’s way too much noise.
If you’re making a few cents a day from adsense is it really worth it to keep those ads up? It distracts readers and pushes them off your site.
Want to keep readers? Focus on the content and remove anything that is a distraction. Make your rss feed icon clearly visible and keep your readers happy.