12 Easy Tips to Make Your Blog Look Professional: 101 Guide for Beginners
The beauty of your blog is the first thing visitors see when they first land on your website, and it’s very important to make sure it’s attractive enough to grab users’ attention at a glance, else users will just jump off your website, and you don’t want that to happen.
But then, When you start a blog as a non-website designer, it can be really difficult to know what exactly to do to make your website look professional and attractive.
Well, the Good News is, you don’t have to be a website designer to be able to create an attractive and nicely looking website that will entice your visitors.
There are a lot of tools and easy-to-follow approaches that can let anyone design a nicely-looking website in a few hours.
So, in this article, I will be sharing 12 Easy Tips to Make Your Blog Look Professional and help you attract the quality audience you require and stand out from your competitors.
Let’s get started!!
12 Ways to Make Your Blog Look Professional
1. Domain Name
Your Domain Name or Brand Name is the first step of branding.
So when choosing your domain name, make sure it reflects your brand and is easy to remember. Avoid using numbers or hyphens and opt for a domain extension that aligns with your goals (like .com, .org, etc.).
Note: This doesn’t mean your domain name must carry your niche, but just make sure it’s short and easy to understand.
For example, my blog is about Digital Marketing and Online Business, but my domain name is simply Peres Tech, which doesn’t contain my industry.
2. Consistent Use Font
Your brand font is another key element in making your blog look professional. So when picking a font, Make sure it is clean and legible (Clean enough to read).
So to make your blog look professional, make sure to use different font styles for headings, subheadings, and body text to create a visual hierarchy. Consistency in font choice across your site contributes to a professional and cohesive look.
3. Professional Logo
Oh Yess, what is branding without a logo? Your logo is the most important part of your blog because it helps people easily understand what your brand is all about.
So do well to create a professional logo that represents your brand identity. Just as a half-bitten Apple reminds you of Apple or a letter (L and G) reminds you of LG, make sure your logo is simple and easy to identify.
Place your logo in a prominent position, such as the top left corner of your website or the Middle.
4. Color Palette
Colours are what make your website attractive, and being able to pick a specific palette and use it consistently is what makes your website look professional.
So do well to pick a well-coordinated colour palette that reflects your brand’s personality and values. Use these colours consistently throughout your website, considering aspects like background, text, buttons, and accents. This consistency adds a professional touch to your website.
By paying attention to branding elements like your domain name, font selection, logo, and colour palette, you can create a strong and professional visual identity for your website.
5. Get a Web Hosting
Web hosting is simply a place where your website lives. Just as every local business has an office, so does your website need one but on the internet.
However, not every web hosting provider out there is worth using so make sure to check important factors like performance, support and affordability. These are the three main components that determine if a web hosting provider is worth using or not.
If you’re yet to host your website, here are the 3 best web hosting providers I have used and can recommend.
One benefit of a self-hosted website is that it allows you to customize your website to your taste and gives you a full advantage over every single thing, unlike free servers.
6. Install a Beautiful Theme
After getting a web hosting plan and setting up your website, the next thing is simply installing a theme.
WordPress themes are simply already-made templates that you can easily download and install on your website to make it appealing to your audience.
However, Your choice of theme is what will decide if your audience is going to stay on your website or not.
So when picking a theme, make sure to pick a theme that is visually appealing and user-friendly. You can browse through reputable theme marketplaces like Envato Market and consider factors like responsiveness, customization options, and overall design.
7. Customize Your Theme
Just installing a beautiful theme won’t give your website the professional look it deserves. This is because themes aren’t by default customized to fit any industry.
For example, this website currently uses the Kadence theme, which is very fast, lightweight, and beautiful. But to make my website look professional and easy to navigate, I had to do a lot of customization and even build a fresh landing page from scratch.
So, to get the best out of any theme, Customize elements like colours, typography, logo placement, and layout to create a unique and professional look. Personalize every element to reflect your brand identity.
8. Focusing on a Topic
A blog that writes about almost every single topic out there can’t be seen or considered a Professional blog due to lack of direction.
So before you get started with publishing content, make sure to first, pick out a particular topic you specialize in and can always provide content even on your weakest days.
It’s very crucial for you to define a clear and distinct topic for your blog as this will help you establish yourself as an authority in that niche and attract a specific group of audience.
9. Consistent Layout
Professionalism means repeatedly using the same brand element to create a consistent appearance.
Thus, this also applies to your website. To make your website look professional, it’s crucial for you to maintain consistency in your blog’s layout. Such as using the same formatting styles for headings, subheadings, and body text. Consistency enhances readability and creates a cohesive and professional look.
My website is an Epitome of a consistent blog post layout. If you clearly look at my website content, you will notice I use the same text font for my headings, subheadings and body text in other to keep a consistent appearance.
10. Be Unique
A lot of newbies often try to look like their competitors that are well-to-do. Like emulating their website design, using the same writing tone, and just trying to appear exactly like them this is very wrong and won’t make you stand out.
I remember when I started back in 2021, I tried as much as possible to make my website look exactly like that of H-Educate trying to incorporate every single thing he does on it’s website on mine. I copied his content approach, his website theme, design and a lot more.
But along the line, I noticed I was losing my value, and the purpose of starting my brand, so I had to take a break, restrategize and start working on my own strategy for every single thing and trying to be unique.
And this actually helped me build the authority and value I have today.
So if you truly want to look professional and stand out from your competitors, consider offering unique and valuable content. Develop your own voice and style to engage your audience and establish your brand as distinct.
11. Permalink
When it comes to optimizing your website for search engines, clean and descriptive permalinks play a crucial role. A permalink is the permanent URL of a page or blog post on your site. These links help search engines and users understand what the content is about and improve the overall user experience.
By using clear and descriptive permalinks, you are indicating to search engines what your post is about and what keywords are relevant. This makes it easier for search engines to index your content and display it in search results.
To set up clean permalinks on your WordPress site, simply go to the “Settings” section in your admin panel and then click on “Permalinks.” Here, you will find different options for the link structure, such as using the post name as part of the URL (Recommended option). You can choose the structure that best suits your needs and save the changes.
Remember, when changing the permalink structure on an existing website, it’s important to properly redirect the old URLs to avoid 404 errors. This can be done by using 301 redirects. If you’re unsure how to do this, it’s recommended to seek help from a developer or use a reliable redirection plugin.
If you’re yet to change your website permalinks, a great plugin I use is Rank Math SEO, as it automatically prompts me to create a redirect whenever I delete a blog post or change my blog post URL.
As much as permalinks don’t really seem to play much role in website professionalism, they can be a great way to up your website SEO and also make your website link short and easy to share.
12. Regular Updates
Regularly update every single updatable item on your website such as Plugins, Content, About Page, Privacy policy and other key elements that are required.
Doing this will help you keep a clean website that always meets your audience’s expectations. And the same time, this will also help you figure out every minor issue before it seriously harms your website.
Conclusion
Implementing these 12 tips will help you build a professional blog that your audience will love and always remember.
Your main focus in setting up a professional blog should be having a clean design and high-value content that your audience appreciates.
If you’re not a good website designer, you can reach out to me and my team to help you out using these details. email: Services@perestech.com and on Instagram:@GoddayMayor1 to help you set up a nicely looking theme and good brand profile to to make your website stand out.
This post contains affiliate links.