1. Make your photos the same size width.
– I think keeping your photos all at the same width is important if you want your blog to grow and if you want brands to notice your blog more often. It’s important to have a sleek/nicely put together blog if it’s something you are serious about, and photos that are all different sizes/widths just make a blog look messy. My photos are always at a 620px width. I resize them in one of my editing programs, but if you don’t use an editing program, it’s totally do-able right from your desktop. If you have a MAC, you just open the photo, it should open with “Preview,” click “Tools,” and then “Adjust Size.” If you have a PC, there should be some kind of “Paint” program or something similar that will allow you to resize. In high school, my computer was a PC/Windows, and I would always resize my photos on there for MySpace to make all the photos the same width. Yep, MySpace. haha. Anyway, there is a way to resize photos on every computer.

2. Don’t have too much going on in your sidebar… Or sidebars.
– I personally cannot stand being on a blog that has TWO sidebars FILLED with ads. Or even one filled with like ads for that matter. I just feel like it completely downgrades a blog. I understand it’s a way to make money, but when a blog has more ads than content, it just doesn’t even seem like a blog. Instead, it’s more of an advertising site, and it doesn’t really make me want to come back.

3. DESIGN.
If you’ve had a blog for over a year or two, you should have some type of design. I know this sounds obvious, but I’ve come across so many blogs that have a few thousand followers, and there is absolutely NO design. It’s just a white, blue, and gray, standard design that a blogger blog first looks like when you sign up. If you’ve been blogging for THAT long, and have 5,000 followers, at least make it look like you actually enjoy blogging, not just enjoy having followers. It just makes no sense to me that people can be such active bloggers, but have never even touched the design of their blog after such a long time. Etsy is a great place to find premade templates that you can easily upload to your blog. I offer pre-made template designs HERE.

4. Increasing your blog traffic/comments/followers by commenting. AKA. BE ACTIVE
If you blog, I’m sure you want people to come onto you blog to read, or see what you’re blogging about. I mean, who doesn’t? One HUGE way you can get your blog noticed is simply by commenting on other blogs, and leaving your blog URL at the end. Commenting on other blogs has increased traffic to my blog, including the comments I receive, by a large amount. I read something once that said bloggers should be commenting on at least 20 blogs a day. Now it can be pretty annoying, but if you have time on certain days, do it, and watch your comments begin to come in by the next day. You’ll probably even see your follower count go up, too. 

5. Make your blog URL a clickable link when commenting.
After you write your comment on someones blog, make your URL a clickable link. To do that, this is the code you use:
<a href=”YOUR BLOG URL“>YOUR BLOG NAME</a>
(Don’t delete the quotation marks where you put your blog URL in the code.)

6. Don’t have a dark background
These are just difficult for some people to read, and it personally will hurt my eyes if I’m on it for more than 30 seconds. Just stick with something light or white.

7. Make your blog mobile friendly
If you are on WordPress, your blog is probably already mobile friendly, but for those on Blogger, the mobile option that is given to you by Blogger is honestly really ugly, no offense. To change that, go to “Template” and you should see “Mobile.” Click the button right underneath that, and disable the mobile template. This will show people the actual desktop view of your blog on their phone. Which, trust me, is 100 times better than bloggers mobile view option. At least in my opinion.

8. Have a search bar
Most people do have this, but if you don’t, add it! Sometimes I will go back on a blog, and want to read something specific, or am looking for something on their blog, and when I type a key word in their search bar, it brings me to what I was looking for. But I have gone on blogs where I’ve wanted to find something, but there is no search bar, which makes my life a lot harder because if it was written 3 years ago, I’m going to have to go digging for it, and by that point, I’m just over it, and I don’t bother looking through your archives, hoping I remember what month you wrote it in.

9. Have you thought about switching from blogger to wordpress?
This is something I did, and I really believe it improved my blog tremendously. Read all about blogger vs. wordpress HERE.

For more tips, go HERE & HERE.