If you have informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design you are likely to recieve an increase in traffic to your blog. You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog’s layout and design also plays a large role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allow customisation that if you employ this feature correctly can increase your blog’s traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

* Customise the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalise this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner.  You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

* Personalising photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own.  However, if you do not customise the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog.  You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

* Add a favicon

Don’t you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website’s URL are cool?  Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL.  These are easy to produce using photo or graphic editing softwares.

* Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

* Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

* Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalise the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back.  You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

* Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make certain that the adverts are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers’ ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

Related posts:

1. Design Elements of a Blog
2. The Most Important Aspects of Blog Marketing
3. What You Should Know About Blog Marketing