5 Pages Every Blog Should Include

conversation inspired me to write this post. I remember that when I started blogging with my first website, I was always looking for different elements to add to my site. It took time to find out and search for pages that I needed to add, but after adding them it made it feel a lot more professional.

So here is a list of 20 pages that I feel that every blog should have.

1.Home Page

This may seem like a blatantly obvious one to include, and you would be right! The reason why I have listed the ‘Home Page’ is to draw your attention to it. The home page is THE most important page of your entire website! THE MOST IMPORTANT!!! This is the page that everyone will see upon visiting your site. People unfortunately do judge a book by it’s cover, so it is important that you spend time making sure that it is appealing to any visitors. Too many blogs seem to neglect their home page and just use the default layout of the theme that they are using.

Your home page needs to broadcast a lot of information about what your site is about, in a very short space of time. The average time someone will spend browsing a web page is roughly 3.5 seconds! That doesn’t give you a lot of time to spell out what your site is about. Remember that not everyone that visits your blog, will know what it is about. They may just happen to stumble upon it via a link or tweet, so you need to show off your site instantly.

There are many ways to do this, so don’t worry. The most important thing is not to overload your homepage with needless information. Not only will people not be able to take everything in at once, but it causes your site to look messy. Try to keep everything tidy and uncluttered to make it appear more attractive. A navigation menu is always welcome, as a good one allows visitors to navigate around your site with ease to find what they are looking for.

The home page is a great place to display your most recent posts. Not only does this make it easy to see what has been happening recently on your site, but it shows that your site is active. Not only do people like to see that your site is active, but search engines also like this and will rank you higher. I find that as well as displaying my latest posts, I grab peoples attention by displaying my featured postsvia my large picture slider. This scrolls between my 3 featured posts that I want to display, one from each of my categories.

2.Category Pages

It is a good idea to categorise your posts under a handful of subjects. This way, people can find related posts with ease. Too many categories and you will fragment your site up too much, making it harder to find related content. If you find that you do have too many categories, you may find that your site’s niche is too broad.

Making a page for each of your categories is a good idea to organise your site. These can be similar to your home page by displaying the most recent posts, but from that particular category.

I split my posts up into three categories and created a page for each; writing content, making moneyand getting traffic. This way, people that are only interested in the making money posts can easily find them, without having to search through all of my posts.

3.RSS Feed

Every blog should have an RSS feed. They are fairly straight forward to set up and they can help to inform people of your updates. Sites like FeedBurner and FeedBlitz automate the whole process so you don’t have to worry about it.

Make sure that you clearly put a link to your RSS feed on your site so that people can view it and subscribe. You can see our RSS feed here.

4.About Us Page

This type of page is quite often one of the most viewed pages on blogs. This is because people are curious to know who you are and why they should read your blog. Think of this page as an advert for your site. Sell yourself, your qualities, past experiences, information about you, your story and how you got started. The better this page is, the more likely people are to trust what you are writing about.

5.Affiliate & Support Page

Again, if you are selling your own product, you may have set up your own affiliate program to help to sell it. This is a great way to help promote your product as it gives incentive for people to advertise your product on their own website.

Having a dedicated page that describes all of the information that someone would need to become an affiliate advertiser of your product would be useful.