Think of your blog as you would the living room of your house.  It is the first room in your house and the first place guests see when they come into your home.

Whenever a reader clicks a link to your blog, whether they’re coming from Google, another blog, or someplace else, it is like they are visiting your house.  So what are you presenting to them when they first “come in”?

Just as you wouldn’t want to show your guests a messy house, you also don’t want to show your readers a “messy blog”.

What is a “messy blog”? A messy blog would be a blog overloaded with advertisements… instead of having laundry and books strewn about your living room, you have ads strewn about your blog.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t have ads.  On the contrary, ads are a great way for you to make money, and also can be useful resources for your readers, provided they are relevant.  But just as there are places for laundry and places for books in your house, so are there places for ads in your blog.

Here are some elements of your blog you should consider when trying to create a “welcoming” experience for your reader, and keep them coming back to your blog.

Use a Unique, Original Blog Title & Banner

This is like your welcome sign or your doormat.  It’s the first thing your bloggers see and the first impression they have of your blog.  Make it unique, make it “you”.

Blogger has a variety of free templates that are somewhat customizable.  This is fine to start with, but if you can, you should see if you can either search online for more unique layouts or learn how to design the layout yourself.  Even if you customize one of the blogger templates, it will still look similar to other blogs out there.

If you can create your own image and put that at the top, that would do a lot for making your blog feel personalized.  This page has a great tutorial about customizing your blog layout, including a section on how to create a unique banner for the top of your blog.

Organize Your Blog

The second thing a person will notice when they start to scroll down is how your blog is organized.  Where are the blog posts?  How far do they have to scroll down to see them?  What does the side bar say?  Readers might look for a bio, they might look for an “about” paragraph, describing what topics the blog focuses on.

And they will definitely take note of where the ads are.  You will want to have some ads near the top of the page; this is what advertisers pay for.  And that is fine.  But don’t overload the top of the page with ads.  This can make it look cluttered and messy!

Write Catchy Titles

Step three: readers will glance over the titles of your posts to see if anything looks interesting.  They are trying to judge if they want to invest time in reading your posts.

You want these to be interesting and catchy, so they lure the blogger in.  They should be relevant to the post (don’t write something interesting and catchy if it has nothing to do with your post… then readers will not trust your headlines and won’t know if your entry is something they want to read).

Write Effective “Leads”

So your headlines were interesting, and they started to read your post.  The first line of any news article or blog post is called the “lead”.  It is the first sentence, designed not only to capture your attention but also briefly provide some information about “who what where when how”.

Don’t stress out about this too much.  If you are having trouble thinking of a good lead or have writer’s block, then instead you can focus on your article’s “skimmability”…

Make Your Posts “Skimmable”

Sometimes, readers might find your title interesting, but instead of going straight to your lead, they’ll instead skim the post.  If you just have a large chunk of text, this is going to make it difficult for them to gauge what your post is about and how interesting it is.

So throw them a bone.  Use headlines so they have a brief idea of what each paragraph talks about.  Lists are great too.  For more info on how to write a post that is “skimmable”, click here.

These are just a few things you can do.  Ultimately if you put sincere effort into your blog, and find a nice layout that feels like “you”, that fits your personality, then you eventually will find some readers that stick around.