Think about usability for your blog like business owners think about their sales web pages. Those business owners want to make it as easy as possible for you to buy products. Your product is your content, so you want to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to find about you and view your content. Here are ten tips for making your blog more usable.

1. Use a tagline

- Visitors should immediately be informed about the purpose of your blog. Use a tagline at the top with the title of your blog. Hot diggity blog – A blog about hot dogs. Make sure that all of the post subjects have something to do with hot dogs. The purpose of your blog should be simple and focused.

2. Pick a topic and stick with it

- Every blog post should be at least vaguely related to the main topic. You do not want to confuse your readers as to the purpose of your blog. Make sure that the blog’s topic is broad enough to give you a lot of posts, but narrow enough so that you are not serving cookie cutter content. There is always room for exceptions, but do not make this the rule.

3. Encourage comments

– You will increase readership if you allow your readers to comment and respond to those comments. There are very few bloggers who can get away with a one sided conversation on a social network. Through your readers, you can come up with new posts and new ideas. You want to appear personable.

4. Make subscribing easy

- You want your blog content to be as easily accessible to your visitors. Make sure that there is a huge RSS feed button above the fold available to your readers. These readers should have the option of capturing your content in any way that they choose.

5. Create a great About page

- Take advantage of the space available within your blog. If readers love your blog, they will want to know more about the person behind it. They will want to know about your interests and motivations. Be honest and positive.

6. Provide a Best Of List

- Your readers want more than just a couple of posts. They want to read more than a couple of posts. Give your readers a best of list to refresh some of your older content. You want your viewers to read everything that they can.

7. Give Previous / Next Post Links

– People will often go from one post to the next, or from the first post to the last so they can get the complete story. Let them explore your blog at their leisure by giving them reading options. This is your product which needs to be seen.

8. Provide contact information

- Place your contact information on another page within your blog. Make it incredibly visible to the new user so that they understand how they can get in touch with you. Do not be afraid to post your popular email address to the world. You should allow your users the opportunity to contact you outside of the public blog forum.

9. Use visuals

- People want their content in smaller pieces which is broken up with pictures, block quotes or subheaders. Put some cool looking pictures onto your site which are related to your subject. A great picture is essential for attracting readers and making them stick. Remember that the pictures don’t have to be fancy, they can be stick figures on index cards.

10. Keep advertising unobtrusive

- You want people to be interested in your content before you want people to be interested in Adsense or affiliate banners. You do not want your site to be so advertisement heavy that it makes you seem like you are solely interested in blogging for money. Don’t make your advertisements the primary focus for your blog because that is a great way to lose readers.

You want to make your content as available and sharable as possible. The visitors to your site should be overwhelmed with the creativity and beauty of your content and want to share it everywhere. You will gain more traffic if your blog is usable.