How To Blog On WordPress- Control Your Side Bar

You can control your readers by controlling what you put in the sidebar.

Look at your sidebar from the viewpoint of your readers. What do they want? Give it to them in the sidebars, in the way you want.

Since your about page is the second most looked at page, be sure to keep it easy to access. Also you want to be very visible in order to establish a relationship with your readers. On my review and niche blogs I like to put my picture in the top of the sidebar just for this reason. Then I keep the sidebar plain and simple.

For example http://cbenginereview.com – in this particular sidebar, all I want to do is to establish who I am. All of the attention needs to be on the review.

Newbie Lifelines’ focus is on making money. I know my readers are here to find out about making money online. I give them what they want in the top of both sidebars.

I have chosen not to use “blogroll” on this blog. I do send you out to other blogs I recommend. But I like to control that by giving my recommendation in my blog posts. This way you go look at the recommend site and land back on my blog. I always have the other sites open in a new window.

Categories

Keep your categories simple. You want your reader to find any data they are curious about, yet you do not want to overwhelm them with too many choices.

Use your blogs keywords for you category titles.

Banner Ads

It is really a matter of what you like when it comes to banner ads and how much people are paying to advertise on your site. Although I make money on this site by selling affiliate products, I like to keep my banners down at the bottom and least important. This is not in agreement with some big bloggers like: Problogger.net – Copyblogger.com and ChrisBrogan.com

Hmmmmmm – I better get big or move my ads. I do know for sure, that I do not want flashing ads. I would rather have your attention else where. Like on content.

The Optin box is for another post.

Hope this helps

Sheila

Ideas anyone?