On almost every blog you can find more or less clutter. New bloggers tend to place a bunch of small buttons and widgets somewhere to install some initial promotion for their blogs. Later, typical sidebar elements like blogroll, monthly archives grow bigger and occupy more space.
I have seen blogs listing more than 50 categories with only 1 or 2 posts in it. What a waste of blog real estate. A whole new design for your blog can be the ideal opportunity to declutter it, but you do not have to get a total redesign to get rid of the clutter on your blog.
I have already made some little tweaks to my layout, there will definitely be more occasions to put hands on it in the future.
Monthly Archive
If your blog is a year or more old, the list of links to past month´s archives grows really big. While writing this, my list does only contain links to 3 months, no problem so far. What would that list look like by autumn 2008? I´m planning to move the monthly archive list from the sidebar to an extra archive page. This will free a lot of space in my sidebar for other features bringing in more value.
Widgets
Some widget do not only occupy a lot of space on your blog, sometimes there are problems with the time they need to load. Depending on the theme you are using, this can delay your content to be displayed. I removed the BlogRush and the MyBlogLog widget from my sidebar. Especially MyBlogLog can take several seconds to load.
I do not want to say that you all should remove these widgets from your blogs now, but you should test if they delay the delivery of your content and how that effects your reader´s experience.
I decided to drop them, because according to Google Analytics, more than 70% of this blog´s visitors are actually new visitors. As they do not know, what to expect on this blog, I did not want to make them wait too long and therefore maybe turn them away.
Buttons and Tools
Do you have any buttons or tools on your blog? There are thousands of these available for free. Check, whether these do really provide a value to your readers, or if they exist just for fun. If so, remove them immediately. Think of these little buttons showing the Google PageRank of the site. I have seen sites (not only blogs) presenting more than 20 of them in the footer. In most cases a handful of them do only show a broken image or present an error message.
Do they deliver any value to visitors? People who take care of the PageRank sites they visits, are supposed to have the Google Toolbar installed either way. They don´t even have to scroll down to the footer to see it. It´s even on top of the site´s header.
Always try to see your blog with the eyes of your readers. Check every detail of your blog. Do you want to attract your readers attention away from the content you produced in hours of work? If not, drop everything unnecessary.
Visit skelliewag.org for 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog.
This article is part of my series:
The 25 best ways to increase traffic to your blog. Please read the other 24 articles and you will definitely increase your blog traffic.
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blog, sidebar, widgets, archive, BlogRush, MyBlogLog
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google » Declutter your blog
October 8th, 2007 at 3:03 pm[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt according to Google Analyics, more than 70% of this blog´s visitors are actually new visitors . As they do… showing the Google PageRank of the site. I have seen sites (not only blogs) presenting more than 20… they visits have, are supposed to have the Google Toolbar installed either way. They don´t even have to scroll […]
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October 8th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Marco, I so agree with you.
I recently changed my blog theme and it looks so much cleaner now. I got so fed up with my out dated but also cluttered look. Like you I dropped the blog rush widget because it didn’t provide the value I expected from it. The MyBlogLog widget is still featured but at the very bottom of the site.
You know, there is a plugin you can use to make the archives a “drop down” feature. I’m using this on my new blog and it seems to work well.
Monika
October 10th, 2007 at 4:20 am
I’m doing the declutering on my blog as I speak and it’s so hard. I just don’t know what to remove. It seems like everything is important.
p.s.: I’ll check back, faved you on Technorati
October 10th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Marko, I like your layout as it is now. As I said, the monthly archive could move to an extra page one day. Does BlogRush work for you? I´d find it being placed a bit too low - on my Notebook it´s far below the fold.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Hmm I’ve noticed that as the number of posts on my blog is growing, so are the categories that I am posting to and my section in the sidebar for that is expanding as a result. Maybe I should take your advice and get rid of it. Or maybe another strategy, is rather than removing them, reorganise the categories so that there are fewer of them. You’ve given me food for thought there
October 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I agree, less is more. The cleaner your Blog looks, I believe, will lead to more credibility and return visitors.
October 16th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
That´s exactly the point, Alex. Getting more visitors from having a cleaner look.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:18 am
is still and one day, a real black most and went even know It is I remember for kids by year. turtle, I know well