The Importance of an Organized Blog

I normally don’t rant, but today I feel the need to. What I keep seeing more and more of is the utter disorganization of blogs. It shouldn’t be that hard to manage and organize your work when you’re using the WordPress platform, but there are still some people who just don’t get it.

The big things I’ve noticed while reading and analyzing other blogs are…

No Categories

I typically see posts filed under the “Uncategorized” section of a blog, which is where WordPress automatically files posts by default. This not only makes it impossible for readers searching for information on your blog, but the author’s posts will be all over the place if they can’t commit to where to place each post. This also prevents you from having any sort of archived record of the topics you’ve written for later reference.

No Contact Page

I don’t know if bloggers aren’t sure how to create a contact page or maybe don’t feel the need to, but it’s very annoying. I typically want to contact the author of a blog regarding a post they made, or follow up with additional information, but a lack of a basic contact page forces me to do a WHOIS lookup on their domain just to write them. If they also have comments turned off, doing a WHOIS is the only way to actually correspond with the author (unless they have a private domain registration), which in that case I’ll just laugh at how much they suck at using the internet.

Dead Links & No New Window

It’s surprising to me how often bloggers don’t check the links in their posts to make sure they actually go somewhere. Simple things like forgetting a dot after www will obviously lead your visitors nowhere. It also makes you look bad that you couldn’t take 2 seconds to double check your linkage.

For those bloggers that DO get their links right and link somewhere off their site, using a new window target is the only option you should use. Say you’re linking to a program you’re recommending that isn’t on your domain, using the same window to link it will divert your visitors away from your site and they’ll probably forget about you. Using a new window as your target on the other hand, will still divert your visitors off your site, but at least your blog will still be open in their other window when they return.

Spelling Errors

Unless you’re that 14 year old kid who blogs and makes millions of dollars, there’s no excuse to have spelling mistakes. WordPress has a spell check built right into it and Firefox will underline your errors in red for you.

Spelling shouldn’t even be a huge issue for bloggers, but when I come across a blog riddled with spelling mistakes I rarely come back. It’s a turn off. Most of these bloggers are making their income from blogging, so it’s basically their job. They’re writing for a living, so spelling should be top priority, besides content.

For those bloggers that already do what I suggested above, which is probably the majority of you… you’re good in my books.

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