In my previous post Change-The Only Constant In Life, I did mention that I have done a major layout and structure change. You surely must have noticed the
three column layout with two sidebars on either side!. I knew I needed to put more information, but was unsure about what I should include.
That's when I came across 10 Must-Have Things That Should be on Your Blog's Side Bar at SEO For Bloggers . Out of these ten, I only have nine. Can you guess which one I left out?
#1. RSS Buttons
I am not a RSS fan. I have added a few RSS buttons though.
#2 Your Other Projects/Blogs
To be honest, I don't have any other projects or blogs. However, I do have a few articles, which have been published in magazines. I made a section titled "features" and added the links to the articles.
#3 Short About Section
I didn't have this one before. I took a fragment of my very first post, Welcome to Enhance Life and placed it in the about section.
#4. Contact Info
I didn't think that contact information was that important. SEO For Bloggers convinced me otherwise. Now my email is located in the side bar, top right corner. You can write to me directly!
#5. Most Popular Posts
I analyzed a few reports from sitemeter and google analytics and figured out the most popular posts.
#6. Blog Categories
I wanted to categorize my posts from the day I started blogging. However, blogger's workaround way of categorizing seemed a bit too much of a hassle for me. Now that I have switched to
blogger beta, I try to make good use of the labels.
#7. Recent Comments
Blogger beta has a widget, to add recent comments. However, it can't be done directly with the classic template. No, I don't want to switch to their customized template. So, I had to restrict to showing just the user and the date. If any of you know how to add recent comments (more descriptive than I have here) to blogger beta, please let me know.
#8. Blogroll
This is nothing new to me. I have had the blogroll since the day I started the blog.
#9. Archives
Blogger gives the archives as default. No worries here.
#10. Site Search
I thought the search should have been given more prominence. Why is it the 10th?
If I were to write my list of 10 Must-Have Things That Should be on Your Blog's Side Bar I would have also included Email subscription. I have a moderate amount of users that have subscribed to Enhance life. (Then again, it won't be 10 things! )
All of the above mentioned side bar content, mainly depends on the blog. Or rather the blog type. For example, if I were to keep a personal blog, all 10 of these may not be "Must have" side bar features.
Hopefully this post helped shed a little light on how you can customize your sidebar, to improve your blog's usability and gain you more readers.
