Everyone has a blog and everyone likes it to look very good. Everyone wants his blog to have a unique look and an attractive look. Everyone wants a blog which attracts visitors to their blogs. In this process of making a blog good looking, we tend to add many things in our blogs. Like top posts, popular posts, recent comments, etc. These items as in other parts of the blog also appear in the homepage. What do you think, do all of these help?

Not really. Adding a few of them will surely help, but not all of them! Suppose you add featured posts, top posts, mot viewed and popular posts, the contents or posts displayed in them mostly will be the same. So why display all these? This also increases the page load time as many scripts are used to display those items. Also this has a negative effect on SEO as many links appear on the home page.

So what to do? Clear everything from the blog homepage? No need to do so my dear friends. Just remove a few of them. Let me tell you what to include and what not to include in the homepage. Read on folks…

1.) Link To All Your Blog Pages From The Top Header Bar Or From The Footer

There are many people who want to contact you to get some help or for advertising queries. These people mostly visit your blog homepage to see the layout, see the page ranks and other ranks and leave the site. So what if your site doesn’t have a contact or advertising page in the homepage? Its difficult for others to find it. So always add contact, advertising page in the homepage. This won’t take much of your blog space.

2.) Display Only Excerpts Of Posts

In homepage you don’t need to put in full of your posts. Just display a part of it. 50-100 words will do. This will give the readers a short knowledge about the post and they can read the post only if they find it interesting. This will also reduce the page loading time as only short parts of posts will be displayed. You can use the plugin called Thumbnail For Excerpts to display excerpts of posts on homepage. It also shows thumbnails of images on homepage and archives pages automatically.

3.) Link To Blog Categories

Always link to blog categories from the homepage. Suppose your blog has categories naming mobiles, i-pods, laptops,etc. There are many people who are not interested in laptops but in mobiles or i-pods. So always link to the categories so that the readers can find out what they actually want to read according to their interests.

4.) Don’t Clutter Your Homepage With Lots Of Buttons

In your homepage don’t add a lot of buttons like RSS and Social Bookmarking buttons. A few of them is okay! But not the whole long list. It won’t look good and also it will affect your blog load time. Just add a few important buttons of RSS, Twitter, FaceBook, Etc.

5.) Display Very Less Advertisements On Homepage

Try adding very less number of advertisements on homepage. Don’t clutter your homepage with banners everywhere (In sidebar, below each post excerpt, in header and in all other parts.) Only display banners in very needy positions like in sidebar and header and limit it to a low number.

6.) Display Less Links On Homepage

Don’t link to everyone from the homepage. If you’re including the our friends or any other such column, try not to show it on the homepage. It’s recommended that the homepage should contain very less links (Less than 100). But if you display posts, categories, our friends, featured posts, paid links the number will easily climb over 100. Adding posts and categories is necessary, but not the our friends column. So don’t show that on the homepage.

7.) Show Thumbnails Of Images In Posts In Homepage

Don’t show the full image on the homepage. Always show only a thumbnail of the image which is in the post. Full images are not required in the homepage. You can use the plugin called Thumbnail For Excerpts to display thumbnails of images on homepage and archives pages automatically.

So I hope you now know how a WordPress homepage should be! Please share your views with us!

Saksham is working for Go-gulf.com, a Kuwait web design company that provides affordable web development solutions in the Middle East.

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