This is the Guest Post by Kate Funk,famous professional blogger and writer.
Making
your blog look professional is not an easy thing to do quickly. A lot of spam
websites are made quickly and it often shows. However, with a blog you do have
a certain advantage. A blog does not need a complex or well thought out
navigation system, as many of them have a standard blog navigation structure. Plus, a blog is made up mostly of
text, so there is no need to create and optimize hundreds of pages. You simply
need to create blog posts that are full of text. Here are a few ways of
ensuring that your blog does not look like it was made by an amateur.
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| image taken from Google owned by opensourcecmsinfo.com |
Use a
content management system
These
are known as a CMS, and they are very popular at the moment. One in every six
websites is made by the CMS called WordPress. This is one of many content
management systems that is free to use, although you do need to buy a few
plugins if you want to move further away from a blog and closer to a website.
Still,
with a free content management system such as Blogger, Joomla, WordPress, etc,
you are able to create a blog very quickly. They are made so that people
without any sort of programming knowledge may still create a website. They work
on a “what you see is what you get” premise, so that you are able to lay out
your blog on the builder and see how it will look when it is published at the
same time.
Most
of the content management system programs that you can use are already
optimized for blogs. This means that the standard blog navigation structure is
already in place, plus a lot of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) factors
are already in place. SEO factors such as the Meta tags, title tags that are in
the correct position, and clean HTML code.
Buy a
template for your content management system
Instead
of creating your blog from scratch, you can often buy a template. Many times
they will give you some nice, some simple, and some skeleton templates for
free. These are very good for creating your blog, and they are often highly
customizable so that your blog does not look like the blog of other people who
have used the same template.
Sometimes
these templates are called different things within the content management
system program. For example, WordPress call their templates “themes.” If you
really want to customize one so that it does not look like any of the other
blogs, or so that it does not look like your competitions blogs, then try a
skeleton template. These are templates that have a few of the basic page and
SEO factor on them, but little else.
Hire
a professional web designer
Using
a content management system is a fast way of building a blog, but it does not
guarantee that the blog looks professional. Just because you are given the
tools to create something, does not mean that you are going to do a good job.
The truth is that an amateur content management system user is probably going
to do better than an amateur website designer, but there is still a big risk of
the blog looking unprofessional.
That
alone is a good reason to hire a blog designer (web designer). The website
designer is probably going to need a little bit of time to create it, but it is
his/her time that is being spent, and not yours. So, you will be free to take
care of other matters whilst you wait.
With
a professional blog designer you are far more likely to come away with a
professional looking blog. Added to which--if the blog design does not look
professional or it is not up to your standard, then you can send the blog
designer away to recreate the blog. So, you have a bit more of a guarantee of a
professional blog design.
Or,
you can cheat at it
Mixing
speed and quality is never a good idea. But, by either using a content
management system program or a website designer, you are able to move closer to
a quick turnaround, whilst also ensuring that you get a pretty good blog. There
is one way to cheat, but it is not often recommended. Use your browser tools to
see the source code of a professional looking blog, and steal the source code
for yourself.
Changing
the colors on the site is very easy, and the written content can easily be
purged and replaced with your own. The domain name and URLs are going to be
different (obviously), and it is not difficult to remove their branding images
and logos and replace them with your own. Just be sure to remove any of their
personal information (registrations, links, comments), and be sure that you do
not create any bugs as you snip away and change sections of their code.
People
steal website designs all the time and change them. In fact, a lot of competing
websites look very similar for those exact reasons. But, do be aware that you
may have mistaken identity and branding trouble if your blog looks too much
like your competitors.
This post is written by Kate
Funk. She is a professional blogger and writer at Rushtutor. She
coaches individuals in SEO and business networking skills.
Author Bio:-
AUTHOR: Kate Funk
This post is written by Kate
Funk. She is a professional blogger and writer at Rush Tutor.