1. A Clear and Appealing Header
This is the first impression for most blogs. It’s on the top of the site, it’s generally the image that loads first. It’s what sets the tone for the site. The header doesn’t have to be fancy or professionally designed. It should, however, contain your site’s name and should set the tone for what’s on the site. This site, for example, has a fairly simple header. It does, however contain a clear site title and tagline while looking good (if I must say so myself).

2. Content and ad Separation
While you do want your ads to be “clickable”, you don’t want them to be confusing. Don’t deceive your readers into clicking an ad. That’ll get someone to not come back to your site. When it comes to your content, make it easy to read and difficult to get distracted by what’s around it. Your ads and promotional stuff should compliment your content, not distract people from it.

3. A Simple Top Menu
Try not to have 2 rows of menu options. A menu should be a quick way to reference key parts of your blog, not a way to sort out everything on your site. The menu should have a “home” and “about” section among other sections that you deem important enough to highlight as a top menu item. I will reference this site as an example. I’ve got some important parts on the top menu, but did not include every single thing I writer about here.

4. Make Sharing Easy
One thing you definitely don’t want to do is to deny someone who wants to share your content. If someone gets the idea to share your content in their head, you certainly don’t want to make them search around for a share button. Having share buttons at the top of the post does not make sense. How would someone know whether they want to share your post at the top of the post? Putting the share buttons at the bottom of the post, right after the content, is the perfect place for a share button. Right after someone reads your post, there’s an option to share. That makes perfect sens, doesn’t it? This concept is also true for comments.

5. Simple Background
Don’t make your readers dizzy with your background. Keep your background simple. Even plain white is perfectly fine. Your background does not have to be fancy, it’s exactly that – a background. Here’s a more detailed post about taking it easy on your website’s background.

6. Lay off of the Cursive
Cursive may be nice looking, but lumped together in a 30 line blog post, and your readers will have trouble reading it. Cursive is not what people are used to reading in long posts. Take a look at the cursive fonts here. None of them are easy to read in a long post. Then, think about how easy this post is to read. The font is simple, clean and is what you are used to reading. Don’t get caught up trying to be fancy and unique in your font selection. That being said, cursive works well as a heading or subtitle, just not as the entire post font.

7. Length of Homepage
The standard Blogger settings are to show 10 posts per page. If you tend to create long posts, that can mean your homepage takes a long time to load. If you average 2-3 pictures per post, that’s 20-30 pictures that have to load for your homepage to be fully loaded. Plus, if the posts are long, that’s a TON of scrolling per page. Consider changing it to 5 posts per page. Here’s how you do it:

Change that number “10″ to the number of posts you want per page. I recommend 4-6 per page.

8. Have Clean Sidebars
Try to keep your sidebars clean and as uncluttered looking as possible. It’s normal to have ads there, just try and make them look as good as possible. It is imperative that you make sure everything in your sidebar fits. There’s not a lot that looks worse than having ads or images spill over your sidebar’s boundaries. You can also improve the look by having sidebar titles for certain items. They can serve as little guides for navigating a site’s sidebar(s). As you see on Katie Did What, she has small titles for sections of her sidebar. The titles match the top menu and go with the rest of the design. Having sidebar titles makes it easier to navigate and makes it look more like a part of your site.

There’s no doubt in my mind that comments lead to more comments. And more comments lead to a more successful blog. When you’re considering leaving a comment, do you look to see if there are already comments left? If there are no comments, are you more or less likely to leave one? Many people don’t like to be the one to break the ice. That includes being the only one to comment on a blog. So, try and get a few consistent comments and that will lead to more comments.

Here are a few things you can do to encourage people to leave comments on your blog.

1) Respond to EVERY comment you get. This is important. If someone is taking the time to leave you a comment, you should try and take the time to respond. I get it, this gets to be a lot once you get 30, 40, 50 comments per post, but try and get to as many as you can. This will let your readers know that you are reading their comments, which will make them more likely to leave comments on your future posts.

2) End a post with a question or two. This is also known as engaging your readers. Ask them a question. If your post is about a TV show, ask what their favorite show is. If you write about fashion, ask them what their favorite item in their closet is. Give people a question to answer and some of them will want to share their answers!

3) Add a comment form message. Did you know you can add a message to the top of your comment form? Add something that encourages comments. Maybe “I’d love to hear what you think” or “I read and respond to every comment I get”. You can do this easily by going to “posts and comments” under your settings. The comment form message option is at the bottom of that page.

4) Turn off that captcha! Do you know if you have it on? Well you should, because it is the most annoying thing of all time and is the main reason why people fail to leave a comment even if they are considering doing so. There is nothing more annoying than squinting, tilting your head and trying again and again to make out the mixed up letters and numbers of a captcha. For detailed instructions on how to turn off that stupid captcha <----- click here.

The most important thing with comments is that you somehow convey the message to your readers that their comment is wanted and that it does matter. If they don't think you care what they have to say, they're not going to say anything at all.

Do you end your posts with a question?

How many comments do you average per post?

Having a creative, catchy blog name is important. You want your name to capture what your blog is about in a nutshell. It’s your first impression and is a very important part of your blog. But it is not YOUR name. When you see other bloggers at a conference, do you want them calling you “Healthy Fit Fashionista Mama” or “Jen”? If you don’t display your name anywhere on your blog, how do people know what it is? I am not saying that it’s a bad thing if people associate you with your blog name, it’s just that you want them to know that you have a real name as well.

What are some things you can do to work your real name into your blog? It’s really quite simple actually. There are a couple of places that you can and should use your real name. Doing just one of these things will give your blog a personal touch and will give you a name separate from your blog’s name!

• Include your name in the first sentence or two of your “About Page”.
(also see The Importance of an Easily Accessible About Me Page)
• If you have a welcome message in your sidebar, include your name in that.
• Consider making a small “signature” that you include at the end of every post. (don’t go too crazy with these)
• Make your Blogger profile’s display name your actual name. When you’re leaving comments on other blogs, you’ll come across as much more personal, which is a good thing. Plus, if people click through to your blog, they already know your name!

Just by doing one (or more) of those things, your readers and blogging buddies will see you as a person with a name, instead of whatever your blog name is.

What do you think? Do you care if people know your real name? Tell me!