David Airey, graphic designer

At the start of the month, Easton Ellsworth, of Business Blogwire, initiated Pass the SOAP — a nice idea for helping others improve their blogs.

Remove those thoughts of showers for now, because SOAP is an acronym for the Scratch One Another Program. The story goes:

100 bloggers. Each reviews one blog. Blogs are improved.

I was chosen to SOAP the It’s not about your stuff! blog, authored by the lovely Jessica Duquette.

Jessica says about her blog, “My writing is primarily about the emotional reasons that people have clutter in their lives. I also offer ‘lifestyle manangement’ tips and strategies, and sometimes, I go off topic and offer something quirky and fun!” Jessica asked for tips on improving her traffic, design and search engine rankings.

Here are some suggestions for you Jessica.

Traffic to your blog

What I notice almost immediately is the absence of an RSS icon, allowing people to subscribe to your feed. I see you have a section titled RSS Feeds at the bottom of your right column. It’s good to see you’ve included this, but why not have it up top beside the ‘subscribe by email’ box?

Many people are reluctant to give out their email addresses. Of course it’s great that you give the option of subscribing by email, because not everyone will want to learn about RSS feeds. I do the same on this blog and also use Feedblitz’s free service.

Looking through your front-page articles I notice the variation in dates when you make a new post. Again, consistency will help you here, giving your readers some indication as to how often you’re going to update. I know it’s not easy keeping it regular, so if you know you’re going to be unable to post for a while then why not let your readers know? Maybe you’re going on holiday for example. I’m sure your audience would be interested and they’ll not end up worrying about your absence (which does happen).

Blog design

The first thing I notice upon visiting your blog is the header. It’s not easy to read your title and strapline due to the lack of contrast over the background. My advice is to stay clear of outlines and drop shadows. All too often people see filters in PhotoShop and other graphics programs and think that using them will improve their design.

I’m not saying don’t use imagery. Just add a little contrast to the text and remove the outline and drop shadow. Had you thought of adopting a personal logo design? Use of a logo can improve brand consistency, even for personal blogs.

Moving away from your header image, the body text is mostly a good size for legibility and I commend you on that. Be careful of using too many colours within the text however. I notice you use pink, red, black and blue. Try not to use more than two colours within your text. Three at the most. Also, the body text varies in size from time to time and I can’t quite understand why. Consistency here will improve your design a great deal.

Search engine rankings (SEO)

This is not my forté, Jessica. I don’t profess to be an expert but there are some people who know what they’re talking about over at the SEO Clinic where you can submit your site for free advice.

Also, here are some worthwhile SEO blogs:

• Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.com
• Cristian Mezei’s Internet Marketing and SEO blog
• Unofficial SEO Blog

What do you think of Jessica’s blog? Do you have any tips or suggestions you could offer up? Jessica, I hope this has been of some help. Kindest regards.

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