This one may seem a bit obvious but have you noticed the amount of blogs without a home page on their menus? Co-incidence or choice, it’s hard to tell, but for newbie bloggers who have no pre-set home page (or they change to a new menu) this can be confusing.

When I started my very first blog I accidently deleted the pre-set home page tab on the menu and could not for the life of me figure out how to make a home page without it adding the /home/ on the end of the URL. I tried to make a home page through both Pages and Categories still to have it add the /home/ onto the website name.

To me this isn’t the point of a home page, a blog home page should be the landing page of the blog and hence have the same URL that users type in when looking for your blog (ie: www.iamablogfgdgd.com). This is important if you have both a static home page, or a home page that lists you’re latest posts. It means users don’t have to search for it, and the first page they’re brought to is the page that shows them where to go from there.

So here’s how you can make a home page. While you may think it is simple and not worth mentioning, I know there will be others out there who find this simple tip valuable.

To make a home page

Step One: Go to Menus

Step Two: In the section custom url enter the name as Home or Home Page, and enter the url as your websites url (www.iamanexample.com) and save.

Step Three: Add it to your preferred menu and you’re done!

No stress newbie bloggers!

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Here’s my quick and easy tutorial to inserting your new social media buttons into your sidebar.

Step One

Choose your buttons – a quick Google search will prove that there is an insane amount of different styles out there. You can go for classic icons or customized ones. I personally have used these ones. Note while it is easy to download these files to your laptop you may need to have an unzipping program installed when it comes time to upload them – I used the free trial of Winzip for mine.

Step Two

Head to the Widget area on your dashboard and drag a ‘Text’ widget into the position you want in your sidebar or footer.

Step Three

In another tab click Media> Add new and upload your buttons to your blog’s media library. To do so you may or may not have to unzip the files first.

Step Four

Post the following html code into your Text Widget:

<a href=”your link here” add target=”_blank”><img src=”your image url here”  width=”55px”></a>

• Replace the your link here with the link to your social media account keeping the ” “
• Replace the your image url here with the image url that is attached to the button in your media library keeping the ” ” – the image url should be to the right hand side of the image when you click on it in your media library.

One thing you should know about this code is that

the _blank”

and the

width=”55px”

are optional and don’t need to be included but they are useful:

• The the _blank” is used so that when a reader clicks on the image it will open in another tab (meaning they wont be directed away from your website in their current tab).
• The width=”55px” is used the determine the size of the buttons in your sidebar. You can play around with this a bit to get the correct size. Another way is to scale the images in the Media section and leave this bit out, but I prefer including this in the code.

As always if you found this post helpful in your efforts to start a blog don’t forget to like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter.

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During your fourth month of blogging you’ll be getting pretty used to this whole blogging thing. The next two months are going to be the months of social media.

Have you missed month three, or the whole series? Follow the appropriate links.

• Four months in and you should start to have an idea of how often you want to post. This doesn’t apply so much to personal blogs but for other types (travel/ fashion/ tech) you should consider writing down an editorial calender. For example using a travel blog – Mondays could be travel tips, Thursdays could be destinations and Saturdays could be photo of the week day. Try to stick to your schedule
• Start pushing your social media networks a little more and work on actively participating on them with your readers (even if you only have two or three fans). Instead of only posting your latest links add photos and try to start conversations – twitter is great for conversations. Doing this will help get your name out there and start to build up a following.
• If there are any other networks you’ve been wishing to join now’s your chance! I personally love Instagram, Pinterest (drives 14% of my traffic on one of my blogs) and Twitter (but you’re probably already using that). Vine also looks interesting although if you’re like me you will have to wait until the android version comes out. Invite all your FB friends (if you don’t mind having your blog known) and network with like minded bloggers and people on those networks.

Will stick to that this month as chances are you’ll be squeezing blogging in between either full time work or study. You don’t want to burn yourself out – once month four is over go onto month five.

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If you’ve been scouring through the internet looking for inspiration for naming your travel blog you’ve probably noticed that travel blog names can be categorized into a number of different groups. We’ll talk about these below and identify which group is best for you and finally, how to choose your very own travel blog name.

SEO based travel blog names

What on earth am I talking about? If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of SEO check out our Beginners Guide To SEO page.

Now that we’re on track – SEO based travel blog names are the ones that use targeted keywords as their domain names. As a very broad example if you decided that the people who will be visiting your blog will be searching for the topic by typing the words ‘travel blog’ into google than you would register the domain name travelblog.com (which would be extremely expensive and unlikely).

Some other examples are “gobackpacking.com”, “travelincolombia.com” – you get the idea.

Now of course a lot of the most obvious ones will already be taken so this route may not hold as many benefits as it used to but if you’re planning a niche travel blog (ie: to a certain place instead of a rtw type blog) it is a fantastic idea.

Your name plus an adjective

This type of travel blog name is uber popular in the travel blogging community. Take your first name and combine it with an adjective that describes you or the way you travel.

For example using my name I could use ‘adventurousally’, ‘allytravelstheworld’ or ‘snorkelingally’ etc – all quite lame but you can come up with something  better if you put the effort in.

Some people think these types of names are lame but some of the most popular travel bloggers use this naming method. It’s a great way to personalize your travel blog and is perfect for those who are planning on including pictures and/or personal tales on their blogs.

Descriptive Names

This type of travel blog name is great for travel blogs that either want to be purely reader centric or combine reader centric posts with personal travel stories. They differ from SEO based names due the fact that they are less likely to be directly searched for but instead represent the essence of traveling.

For example ‘escaping reality’ describes the mindset of a round the world traveling and would be a great name for a blog (this may or may not already be a name somewhere).

Choose this type of name if you think the above option is lame and your topic is too broad for an SEO type. It also shows creativity and if your name inspires the essence of travel in others they’re more likely to remember it.

Your full name

This is one of the least popular types as initially its hard to tell that your blog is even travel related. But there are a few travel bloggers who name their blogs after themselves. Obviously if you take this route you’re less likely to be going for a entirely reader centric blog (think lonely planet’s blog) and you’re more likely to be making it all about you and your personal travels.

So once we’ve establish how we want to name our travel blog how do we take the next step to pick a specific name and lock in your domain?

1. Identify your niche (destination/rtw/etc) and jog down about 10 or 20 of the names that you think would perfectly describe it using any of the naming methods above (SEO/adjective/etc).
2. Go straight to a domain company of your choice, if you aren’t familiar with any you can click on the crazy domains link in the top of my sidebar (note if you purchase a domain name from the company I get a tiny affiliates payment from the company). Start putting all of these names into the space provided on the domain website to check if any of these names are already taken.
3. If the names are already taken I wouldn’t advise taking the same name with a different tld as you want to start your own brand here. Instead head to the Google Adwords Tool and type in your names and see what suggestions it comes up with. You could also go to a domain naming website but they won’t tell you the estimated amount of traffic you may get if you rank highly enough per month. Although if you get a bit stuck for ideas you can go to a domain naming tool and then put your suggested names into Google ad words.
4. Once you find a domain name (and have checked the estimated traffic from the ad words tool) that isn’t taken sign yourself up!

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Lets have a look at the options to how often should you post:

Option One: Post Everyday

There are many benefits to posting everyday. Doing so will rapidly increase the content and choice for the readers of your blog and will please Google as well. It will give you more avenues to possibly attract more readers quicker. The negative of posting daily is that it can be exhausting especially if you have a day job, or children. this tiredness can lead to a decline in the quality of your work and reader numbers may start to dwindle as a result. However if you have enough free time and are able to create inspired content ideas posting daily is a good option.

Option Two: Post every couple of days

I would suggest for most bloggers to aim for this option. By posting every couple of days (say two or three times a week) you’re still posting often enough to keep your readers (and the search engines) entertained while avoiding blog fatigue and drab content.

Option Three: Post Weekly or Fortnightly

This option is okay, especially if you’re rather busy and therefore don’t have a lot of time to post regularly. Try not to post any less than once a fortnight though, as it may have negative effects on your readership and search engine traffic. However if you have an established blog, or your treating your blog as a leisure activity, these effects may not be as much of a concern to you.

So How Often Should You Post on Your Blog and What do I do?

Middle ground is probably the best option, especially if your just blogging for fun.

Currently I post on my blog sites a couple of times a week (I run four). If I’m trying to get visitors to rise however I tend to post daily for a period of time. This may not work for everyone though so before making a definite decision don’t be afraid to test out how the frequency of your posts effect your visitor and rankings.

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Tips for New Bloggers

Since WTBAB attracts a lot of beginner bloggers I thought I’d do a summary post containing some advice for new bloggers.

Advice for New Bloggers:

• Think very carefully about your domain name: If there is one piece of advice for new bloggers that is essential in the very beginning it is this. Changing your domain name after putting a ton of effort into branding, link building and building up a following is a bitch. Save yourself the hassle and really think about what to name your blog before you dive in.
• Pick a topic you’re passionate about: If you pick something boring you’ll hate writing about it and your blog will be doomed to fail. Anyway blogs are often used as a creative outlet for pick something you love to talk about – make it fun! As far as tips for new bloggers go – this is the one that is going to determine your relationship with your new blog – choose very wisely.
• Set up your permalink structure early. You can do this via settings>>permalinks. Choose the one with the best seo benefits see more in this article: How to start a blog: WordPress settings.
• Get your categories/ tags set out well early on otherwise you may confuse your readers by changing them later: see Tags vs Categories for more info.
• Don’t spam other blogs with horrible/ spammy comments in an effort to get your blogs name out there. This is great advice for new bloggers as there is so much of this going around – don’t listen to anybody who tells you otherwise. Keep your comments interesting and relevant to the conversation.

What other tips would you give to new bloggers?

I’ve just listed a few important ones here but I’m sure we can think of some more advice for new bloggers in the comments below.

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The age old question of tags vs categories raises its technological head when planning the layout for a new blog. It’s important to choose between tags vs categories when designing your menu and navigation for your blog to determine whether you will have a lot of categories for navigation purpose, or a simple menu with few categories and many descriptive tags so uses are able to find a specific topic.

Here are your options in the Tag vs Category debate:

Category Heavy

A menu would be considered category heavy if it has a large amount of categories and drop menus. For example our menu includes categories such as ‘Earnings’, ‘Marketing’, etc and then once these a hovered over a drop menu appears where you can find the original categories broken down into more precise areas eg: Marketing splits into SEO, Offsite Marketing and Offline Marketing. Some proclaim that category heavy menus have negative SEO implications although I can’t comment on how accurate this is because I haven’t done too much research on the subject. The reason I have a heavy category blog is because I find it helps my readers head straight to the areas they want to visit. I’ve still kept it simple and limited the amount of ‘drop down’ categories so I feel it still looks uncluttered and easy to navigate.

Category Overload

A blog is considered to have reached category overload when it has the initial category menu, a horizontal drop down menu and a vertical drop down menu. See here for an example. I would consider the Lost Girls blog to be category overload due to the amount of categories accessible from the menu. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, their viewers will be able to find almost exactly what they are looking for when using the website. However some people find this sort of set up annoying or cluttered and may be deterred by it, but some wont.

One Row

A lot of bloggers take this path – they say no to drop down menus and have only the broad categories available for all to see. A normal menu would consist of something like this:

            Home                   About                    Blog                    Contact

Just the basics are kept in the menu. They may have other categories somewhere, but they aren’t shown in the header menu, perhaps they may be in the side bar or on a separate page. The is a simplistic approach and can be quite effective as it will please those who find drop down menus annoying. To make up for the broadness of the categories blogger who take this road will often have their tag cloud or a search button visible in their sidebar so there readers can still find specific topics.

Another option is to use a One Row menu but attach a link to your page to your menu bar (instead of a category) and on that page list your categories there. You can see an example on my personal travel blog here. Note that I have added the page “Categories, Destinations and Travel Guides” onto the menu therefore avoiding the need for a drop down menu. This way it keeps the blog uncluttered, and those who want to find a specific country or category can head over to the page where each category link is attached to a picture or image map.

Super Minimalist

A super minimalist will on have the one category normally labeled ‘Blog’ and readers may have trouble finding earlier posts as they will be buried at the bottom of the blog. They may also have an ‘About’ page. Some love the simplicity of this but others find it annoying, especially if they want to find out more about the blog. This structure would be best for personal blogs and wouldn’t work so well for commercial ones (although there are some successful bloggers who have their blogs laid out this way). It would be logical to say that these bloggers prefer tags over categories as their main navigation tool, but sometimes tags are absent from the blog as well. If you favor this layout my advice would be to implement tags so your readers can at least have a path into your earlier posts.

So when it comes to picking a winning to the tags vs categories debate, I would recommend going with either the One Row or the Category heavy option. If you have a lot of different blog posts on your blog – categorize them so your readers can find them up front, otherwise if you hate the look of a drop down menu keep it simple with the One Row approach and stick a tag cloud somewhere you readers will be able to see it.

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In case you’re wondering what a ‘magazine theme’ is I’ll point you in the direction of an example: check out the Lonely Planet page.

Basically the difference between a magazine theme and a normal blog style homepage is that with a magazine theme you can choose to highlight certain categories or posts on the front page giving your blog a magazine type feel. I personally love the look of this type of theme, I think it gives a more professional impression so its especially great for commercial blogs.

So here are some reasons to make the change:

• As mentioned above the style gives you blog a more professional feel which while isn’t really helpful for personal blogs, is fantastic for business, tech, news and commercial travel blogs. It helps show off certain sections of your blog that you want your readers to check out.
• Depending on how you set it out you may be able to style your home page in a way that allows less posts to get lost in your archives. This way your readers will have instant access to a larger number of your posts and are less likely to ‘bounce’ off your page.
• Variety – With a lot of themes you can choose different layouts for your home page, you can have a mix of featured post sliders, carousels and 1 or multi-column layouts.
• It will help your blog stand out as most other blogs use the general ‘latest post’ layout.

So this was just a short post today but hopefully I’ve given you something to think about. As always if you liked this post don’t forget to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter

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