Whether you’re building a blog from scratch or are making a blog successful after you’ve already had it for a few years, there are a LOT of things you need to do. I’m using my 10+ years of blogging experience to share 17 things your blog needs: 9 things it needs for your readers and 8 things it needs to grow. And I’m also sharing a free checklist with all of these things on it!
This is an updated version of a post published in 2017. Click here to read it.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great®!
17 Things Needed for Making a Blog Successful
9 Things Your Blog Needs To Help Your Readers
Clean layout
If someone goes to your blog with too much going on, they will probably leave. A clean layout doesn’t necessarily mean you need a white background (although I prefer that because it’s easier to see the other things on your blog). Make sure that there isn’t too much going on and you can let your content speak for itself.
This means not using a super busy font, not using colors that are super difficult to tell apart, not having ads covering every inch, etc. Don’t have a link color that is so close to your normal text color that people wouldn’t be able to tell that a word or phrase is linked. I made that mistake with my blog and for a while my link text was navy, which was very hard to tell apart from black. That’s why my link text is Kelly Green.
If you’re not going to have a light-colored background, make sure that you’re not using colors that are difficult to tell apart if someone is color blind. The NIH says, “The most common type of color vision deficiency makes it hard to tell the difference between red and green. Another type makes blue and yellow look the same” (x). So as great as Christmas colors are, don’t have red text on a green background and vice versa. Same for blue and yellow (minus the Christmas connotations).
Blogging 101: Terms You Need To Know
Again, you don’t want people to need to go on a treasure hunt to find what they’re looking for. While that’s one way to reduce bounce rate, it isn’t the best way to grow your readership; people are more likely to just leave than to keep searching.
Make it clear where people can find specific things, but you need to do it without overwhelming your readers. That’s why I’m a big fan of a simple menu with related pages nestled under them.
Look at the top of my blog.
“Home” is pretty straightforward, but “Start Here” is next. The pages next to “Start Here” are all straightforward: check out my blogging resources, a big freebie, shop my products, how to work with me, where to follow me, and then holiday. Related to my holiday posts are my gift guide posts, which is why it’s nestled underneath it.
Okay, let’s talk about what’s under “Start Here.” Yes, I have a page for Start Here, but I have related pages nestled under it. These include: About, As Seen On, Tags & Topics, and Popular Posts. (I’ll talk about my Start Here page later.)
I think these are pretty straightforward. The only thing I want to talk more about is the Tags & Topics page, which I will do later.
The Best Plugins for a Blog in WordPress
Social media networks visible at the top of your blog
Want your blog followers to follow you on social media? Have links to your networks easily accessible! I shouldn’t have to go looking for your networks. If someone has to click to go to your contact page to find your social media, many people aren’t going to bother. If someone has to scroll to the bottom of your blog to find them, many people aren’t going to bother.
My links are under the picture of me on the right and at the bottom of the page. This way, none of you have to go looking for that information. You should have the links on your page in multiple places.
Best Social Media for Bloggers: How To Manage Your Social Media
About me page
Your readers will (hopefully) be curious about who you are! You need a page that explains you to them.
This page should explain you and the purpose of your blog. I don’t consider myself an expert on these pages specifically, so check out these posts to help you write an amazing page: About Me Template, How To Write An About Page That Compels Your Readers To Fall In Love With You, I can’t write about myself! 5 simple steps to creating a killer about me page, and How to Write the Perfect ABOUT Page for Your Blog.
Contact/Work with me page
Your readers and people who want to work with you need to know how to reach you! This is also a great place to put your social media networks, but that should not be the only place they are (see above).
The biggest reason for this page, though, is that someone might want to work with you, such as a company or another blogger. Like with the About page, I don’t consider myself enough of an expert to tell you how to write an awesome page, so check out these posts: What to Include on Your Contact Page (And Why It’s Freaking Important), 7 Easy Tips for a Standout Contact Page, and Website Contact Page Tips for Creatives.
52 Blog Post Ideas Health Bloggers Need
Picture of you
I strongly think you should have a picture of you in your sidebar. Your followers want to know who they are following! But if, for some reason, you don’t want your picture out there, have some kind of logo or branded image there instead.
This should be a good-quality image, maybe a professional one. It should show you, maybe doing something related to your blog. The reason I use one of me working on my computer is that I don’t have a good-quality image of myself doing something related to chronic illness, and as of right now, I’m not interested in going out of my way to take one.
Even better, though, is for you to use the same image for your profile picture across social media networks. It helps for consistent branding – and it saves time!
How To Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas: 12 Questions To Ask Yourself
Search bar
I currently have 922 blog posts published. Yeah, you read that right. So no matter how many connected posts I link to in my blog posts or how much to dig through my archives, you might not be able to find a post that you think I’ve written.
That’s why it’s so important to have a search bar. It will (probably) take you a while to get up to 900+ posts, but you need to plan for the day when it isn’t practical to expect your readers to dig through your blog to find something.
Finally, 95% of people aren’t going to spend more than a few minutes looking for a specific post. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’re going to leave. A search bar helps make that time last longer.
Why You Need a Blog Newsletter + What To Send Your Newsletter
Tags
While I have my 3 big categories on my homepage – Health, Lifestyle, and Blogging – a lot of my posts fit multiple categories, and I talk a lot about specific health concerns. That’s why my Tags & Topics page is so important, and it’s built on the tags that I use.
I tag all of my posts with relevant information so they are easy to find, both for readers and search engines. I have individual tags for each of my illnesses, as well as for chronic illness and chronic pain individually. It’s important that people who come to my blog for tips and info can find those, and the best way I can do that is by having all of my tags in one place.
If you don’t have over 900 posts published, then you don’t need a ton of tags. Most of the tags on my page aren’t even used anymore. But I keep them so people can find them, and I built that page to house all of my tags over the last decade.
So you might not need a Tags & Topics page yet, but if you think you’ll be blogging for a while, you might want to keep it in the back of your mind.
Blog Traffic for Beginners: Keep Your Traffic Up This Summer
Image descriptions
First things first: I am well aware that I don’t use alt text and image descriptions in the best way. But, again, I have 900+ posts, all of which have at least 2 images. Maybe one day I’ll hire someone for the project to update all of them, but that day hasn’t come yet.
Moving on!
“Image descriptions” is not a term that is synonymous with “captions.” Moz says:
“Alt text (alternative text) describes the appearance or function of an image on a page. Alt text is read aloud by screen readers used by visually impaired users, displays in place of an image if it fails to load and is indexed by search engine bots to better understand the content of your page. Also known as “alt attributes,” “alt descriptions,” or technically incorrectly as “alt tags,” alt text used within an HTML code or in the appropriate field in your CMS (Content Management System.)” (x)
If you follow me on social media, you’re probably family with seeing “ID” followed by a description of the image. On your website, your alt text should contain the image description.
You should be using alt text and image descriptions because a) they are the bare minimum for disabled users and b) they can be helpful for SEO. But that should be more of “the image fits my topic and SEO, so the image description will bolster my SEO” than “this is another tool for improving my SEO ranking.”
Here’s what I mean:
The big keyword for this post is “making a blog successful”. If the text in an image reads “17 Things Needed for Making a Blog Successful,” then the image description will say “Text reads: 17 Things Needed for Making a Blog Successful, www. kate the almost great .com”. That includes the term “making a blog successful,” so it will help my SEO.
How To Improve Your Blogging Skills: 8 Skills You Need
8 Things That Your Blog Needs To Help It Grow
Related posts
You want people to read more than one post, right? The best way to do it is to give them related posts. Plus, including related posts also generally enables your bounce rate to decrease. The bounce rate is the percentage of people who go to one page only before leaving your blog. If there are related posts available, you are more likely to have people to go check those out instead of reading one page only.
I do this a couple of ways.
First, I have a widget that automatically links to related posts under each post.
Second, as you may have noticed (or will notice shortly), in every post I manually link directly a similar post at the end of each topic.
Thirdly, at the end of every post, I manually link directly to 4 posts.
I do both of these things because manually choosing the posts to link to allows me to choose specific posts that I know are similar rather than leave it to the widget and hope it picks posts that are related.
Again, I’ve published SO many posts. If I want people to find related ones to what they’re currently reading, I need to be proactive about it.
Authentic Mental Health Blog Post Ideas That People Actually Want
These are super important because they make sure people other than your audience see your posts.
Every person who reads your blog has a different social media reach than you do. If they can share your posts on social media or via email, then your posts will reach more people.
I use Ultimate Social Icons and Share Plugin, which is free; see that bar of social media networks on the left? That’s the plugin (it’s not visible on my homepage).
Additionally, under each post is a list of social media icons, and those are all for sharing posts. That’s from the Jetpack plugin.
I also have the jQuery Pin It Button for Images. This means that, when you hover your mouse over an image, you’ll see a red Pinterest button. That makes it extra easy to share a specific image.
Basically, make sure that it’s easy to share your post. If someone wants to share your posts they will, but it’s much more likely they will if it’s super easy to do it.
Writing about Health on Social Media Like a Pro
Link to popular posts
Your popular posts are popular for a reason, and since you know that people like them, you can get even more people to like them if you share them. I have mine in my sidebar so any random reader can check them out, but I also have an entire page for them under the Start Here umbrella, as mentioned earlier.
While the Popular Posts page is done manually – every couple of months I review the most popular posts recently and update the page – the widget less so. I use the Monster Insights plugin to connect my blog to Google Analytics, and it has a feature for popular posts. I put that widget in my sidebar.
Plus, by having an easily accessible list of popular posts, you can help lower your bounce rate.
How To Be Good at Blogging: Blogging with Limited Time
Again, readers are lazy (myself included!). Someone has to really want to subscribe to your newsletter to go searching for it. Making it easy helps people who are kinda on board subscribe, as well as your die-hard fans.
I have signup forms in my sidebar and my footer, so if someone is at the bottom of a post they can easily find the signup form without scrolling again. I also have a bar at the top of my blog and LOTS of opportunities in each post.
And, of course, I have signup forms in my contact and follow page.
Consistent branding
This is important for one big reason: it helps your work be consistent and recognizable to readers.
Branding includes color schemes, image styles, fonts used, and more. Using the same ones consistently makes your entire work be consistent across networks
As you know if you have read more than 1 post of mine, my images are all the same: based on related stock images; vertical, with 3:4 dimensions; a white bar set to 64% or 70% opacity, depending on how light the initial image is; and text in the font Bitter for regular font and Janda Elegant Handwriting for subtitles, etc. Sure, you might not have known the opacity is either 64% or 70% or the names of my fonts, but you know what images are from my blog.
Additionally, they’re vertical and 3:4 because that’s what does best on Pinterest. Your exact ratio might be different, but it should be close to 3:4. So while the branding itself is helpful and makes your content recognizable, the vertical 3:4 is what you need for Pinterest success.
Essential Social Media Tips for Bloggers
A “Start Here” page
I’ve talked about the fact that I have a Start Here page before, but I haven’t talked about the page specifically.
This page is short and sweet and it has links to more pages. Why? Because it’s really a starting point. I link to big important pages, how to join the newsletter, and more.
This page is helpful for readers because it directs them to other interesting areas, and it’s helpful for me because it helps me reduce my bounce rate and get more page views.
Custom 404 page plugin
I LOVE this plugin!
If you can’t remember how you’re familiar with “404,” that’s referring to the “404 error” that you get when you try to go to a website that doesn’t exist. This plugin means that you make a page on your blog and then set that page as what readers will get if they get a 404 error.
This plugin means that you can make errors work for you. Don’t just lose readers because there’s a problem! Direct them to other pages.
I got this plugin because of possible errors in general and because I’ve deleted several hundred posts and pages.
Again, I’ve been blogging for 10+ years. I hit 1,000 published blog posts in 2020.
I’ve deleted posts that aren’t relevant anymore or that I don’t like. I’ve deleted pages that made sense when I created them but don’t in 2023, let alone 2024 or 2025.
That doesn’t mean, though, that I haven’t linked to them in other posts, or that other people haven’t linked to them. And again, am I going to go through hundreds of posts to look for links that aren’t relevant anymore? Absolutely not. So if someone gets directed to them, I need a way to make that error into a success.
What I Would Do If I Started a Blog Today
Proofreading plugin
I am so embarrassed by and grateful for this story …
Several years ago, a lovely and kind reader commented on a post. They said that, while I advertised myself as an editor, I needed to take a look at my blog posts because there were frequent editing mistakes. They framed it so nicely and I was horrified to realize they were correct.
That day, I downloaded a proofreading plugin for my blog, and last year I signed up for Grammarly. Grammarly has made the biggest improvement in my writing, not only because I draft my blog posts in a Google doc. But the proofreading plugin added another layer of proofreading to my blog posts, especially because it also checks my Yoast SEO previews, image alt text, blog post titles, etc.
If you are that reader – THANK YOU. You helped me turn around my blog … and I’m so embarrassed to say that I needed that comment you left.
Starting a Chronic Illness Blog: Tips for Blogging with Fatigue and Pain
Download the checklist now!
Like this post? Share it! Then check out:
How To Be a Health Blogger: Writing Blog Posts, 25 Awesome Blog Post Ideas for Beginners, How To Write a Blog Post in 10 Easy Steps + Free Blog Post Template, The Blog Tools I Use and Love
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
As a newbie blogger with only 8 months experience, I really appreciate the information and advice in this post. It is so informative and I am grateful for seasoned bloggers like yourself for helping those of us trying to get established. I’ve been following your blog and social media posts and am quite impressed. Thank you for everything!