Blogging 101: Top 5 Blog Design Tips and Tricks

Whilst I’ve talked extensively about how to design your blog aesthetically and making it look pretty, I realised I’ve not talked much about the more functional aspects of design. Whether it’s the back end coding, designing for SEO purposes or just making sure your website has a useful and easy user experience – the design is a key component. 

Keep Content Accessible

You need to make sure your design isn’t reducing the accessibility for a reader to actually read your blog. Make sure your text is in a highly visible colour and contrasts against the background. Simply said, black text on a white background just works best. White text on a black background? Not as much… yellow writing? No. 

This will also include your fonts, make sure they’re readable. And ensuring you have alt text for any images so those using a screen reader can still enjoy your content. 

Have Text as Left Align or Justified

First things first is most cultures are taught to read left to right, and especially in English that’s how we’ve trained our brain to read things. So when large chunks of text are centred or right aligned… it can be frustrating. If the start of the line isn’t in the same place, it actually takes us longer to read because we take time to find the writing. For this reason, I will always recommend left aligned text, or if you really centred, then choose justified. 

Use Headers

If content is king then headers are the queen. Headers help break up large chunks of text, which helps your reader want to continue reading. If your whole blog post is in one section it makes it look longer, and some readers may just leave. If they see headers, it breaks the content down a little and makes it look more manageable, so they stay. 

Change your Headings with CSS

From an additional design standpoint, use your headers in order. Your main blog title will always be Header 1 so you will start your headers with Header 2. If Header 2 then has sections, those sections would use Header 3, and so on. This is from an SEO perspective, as Google reads the headers as information about the page, where higher headers have more authority to inform. If all your headers are Header 4 because you prefer the look? Change it with simple CSS. 

Look out for the “Additional CSS” tab when customising your blog (using WordPress!). This will allow you to essentially overwrite your theme CSS to better fit what you want. I know bloggers don’t use correct headers because of the sizings of the pre-set ones, so this is how you change it! 

Just type in h2{font-size:14px;} where h2 is Header 2 and you can change 14 to whatever you prefer. Using it in the customise menu allows you to see the changes instantly. Header 3 would be h3 and so on. 

Use Plugins to Add Design Elements

If you really want a certain feature on your blog but just can’t find a theme that includes it or just can’t understand how to code it yourself then don’t fret. Plugins are your friend. Whilst yes, more plugins can reduce your site speed – if you really want a certain feature then don’t worry about it! I really love having my header slider on my homepage, and I also love having instagram at the bottom – both of these are with the help of plugins.