Five ways to instantly make your blog look more professional

I get a lot of emails every week from new bloggers who want to know how they can make their blogs look that little bit more professional.

Obviously there are lots of answers to this question, but here are five things you can do right now that will make a big difference to how people will perceive your site.

(Note: these tips are aimed at people who want to blog professionally, and make money from it. If you blog for personal reasons, they may not apply to you.)

1. Don't use a generic template

There are thousands of different (free) blog templates available for all kinds of blogging platforms - so why are so many bloggers all using the same two or three of them? As soon as someone lands on your site and sees that generic Blogger/Typepad/Wordpress template, they're going to think you're an amateur who either doesn't know how to change the look of your blog, or just just can't be bothered doing it. Neither of those impressions will encourage people to come back, and you're not giving them much to remember you by, either.Why would you want your blog to look the same as everyone else's?

This doesn't mean you have to go for a custom design, of course (although if you're really serious about blogging professionally, I'd recommend at least thinking about it). Typepad, for instance, makes it very easy to change the colours, fonts and layout of your blog, and to upload a new banner. It's a long time since I last used Blogger, but I remember it being relatively easy to customise too, and I believe the service has improved drastically since then. Wordpress, meanwhile, has thousands of different templates you can use for free, and yet most users seem to plump for the same handful of designs.

At the very least, try to use a custom banner with some kind of logo: it's your brand, but if you stick to the generic template provided, the only brand you're promoting is Blogger's. (Or Typepad's, or ... you get the picture.)

2. Get your own domain name

 For much the same reasons given above, being www.yourblogname.com rather than www.yourblogname.wordpress.com will make your site look more professional. A domain name only need cost you a few pounds per year, and is an investment worth making if you want to be taken seriously.

3. De-clutter your sidebars

A mistake I frequently see new bloggers make is linking to absolutely everything from their sidebars. There'll be all kinds of clutter there: widgets, badges, links to every site they've ever visited, and all kinds of other stuff that no one ever looks at, and which obscures the really important stuff on your site. Obviously, you'll want to have some information in your sidebars - that's what they're there for, after all - but try to keep it to a manageable level, and include only those things that are really important and that you want your visitors to be able to find quickly.

4. Add an 'About' page

Despite having everything but the kitchen sink (and sometimes that too) on their blogs, a surprisingly large number of new bloggers decline to give any information about themselves at all. This can be quite off putting: once I arrive at a new blog, one of the first things I look for is some kind of "about" page so I can find out what the site is about and who's behind it. You don't need to write your life story, but a little bit of personality goes a long way!

5. Add some images

Lots and lots of text with nothing to break it up can make a blog look just a little bit bland. You can get free (and legal) images from sites like Flickr and stock.xchng which will make all the difference.