[Mistakes #2] Five Common Sidebars Mistakes – and How to Fix Them - DailyBlogTips

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[Mistakes #2] Five Common Sidebars Mistakes – and How to Fix Them Posted: 13 Dec 2013 06:22 AM PST This is the second post in a series of common blogging mistakes. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover in this series, drop a comment below or email ali@dailyblogtips.com. Most blogs have either one or two sidebars, which appear on every page (or most pages) of the blog. These sidebars contain “widgets” that each perform a different function. Your sidebar or sidebars are an essential part of your blog. Unfortunately it’s easy to get things wrong. A poorly-structured sidebar will, at best, not add anything to your blog – and at worst, it will put new visitors off sticking around. Note: To edit your sidebar, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance –>Widgets. You can drag and drop widgets into and out of your sidebar. Here are five common mistakes that bloggers make with their sidebars. Do any of them sound familiar? Mistake #1: Adding Too Many Widgets The biggest mistake I see on blogs is cluttering up the sidebar with too many widgets. This is definitely a case where less is more. Although WordPress comes with lots of built-in widgets, and there are plenty of plug-ins that add new types of widget, it’s a good idea to stick to just a few crucial ones and leave out those tag clouds and calendars. Fix it: It's easy for "widget creep" to happen over time. Review your sidebar ever few months and ask yourself whether you can ditch any of the widgets. Mistake #2: Leaving All the Default Widgets in Place When you first install WordPress, it comes with certain default widgets such as the "meta" widget. Leaving this widget in place makes your blog look amateurish, and is unlikely to add anything to your readers’ experience. The "Recent Comments" widget is also enabled by default – you may not want to give readers' comments this much prominence in case a spam or abusive comment sneaks past moderation. Fix it: Make sure you remove any of the default widgets that you don’t want as soon as you've set up a new blog; don't leave them hanging  around for weeks. It takes seconds to drag them out into the "Inactive widgets" section (where they keep all their settings). Mistake #3: Putting Your Widgets in a Weird Order Blogs have developed a convention for where certain elements are placed. For instance, in navigation menus, the contact link is usually the one on the far right. In your sidebar, you should have your subscription widget at or very near the top: this is where readers will look first. If you're using a search widget, that should normally appear just below the subscription one. Fix it: Take a look at major blogs in your industry and see how their sidebars are arranged, then stick to anything which appears to be a common convention. Mistake #4: Not Having an Email Subscription Option Having your RSS link clearly available is useful, but many readers will prefer to subscribe by email. If you use Feedburner, it only takes a few minutes to activate email subscriptions and copy the code Feedburner provides into a text widget on your blog. It's generally a good idea to make your email subscription option more prominent than your RSS option: take a look at how Copyblogger do this. Fix it: Even if you read blogs by RSS, keep in mind that many of your readers (or would-be readers!) will prefer to use email. If you don't have time to set up email subscriptions today, put a note in your diary to do it next week. Mistake #5: Stuffing Your Sidebar With Google Ads There's nothing wrong with running ads on your blog – but stuffing your sidebar with Google Adsense widgets won't do much for you or your readers. Too many ads will block out other important content – as readers may ignore your sidebar entirely. Fix it: A classier option is to sell 125×125 or 250×250 banner ads in your sidebar: these look neat (if you make sure you line them up nicely!) and, depending on your theme, can add colour and visual interest.   Have you come across any of these sidebar mistakes, or do you have another one to add? Let us know in the comments. Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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