How to Make Your WordPress Blog Stand Out

From the moment someone lands on your blog, it takes just 0.05 seconds to form an opinion — one that determines whether they’ll stay or leave.

Yep, in under a second, things like structure, colors, spacing, and fonts determine whether your content is given half a chance. 

As a blogger, this might be hard to accept, but your blog’s visual appeal is just as important as the quality of the content you share.

To be a successful blogger, you need unique content and a unique blog, regardless of whether you’re a minimalist, a futurist, or a traditionalist. You need to string a look together, or you risk getting lost in a sea of sameness.

Many people launch blogs but few get the traction they deserve because they’ve left the visual design something to be desired. The truth is, if your blog looks like trash, people will assume the content is too. Heard enough? Let’s look at how your blog can inspire awe in all who visit.

What Makes a Blog Stand Out? 

The most successful bloggers pull out all the web design stops to set themselves apart. We’re talking color, visuals, themes, and everything in between. 

Creating a visual identity makes your blog more memorable, especially for first-time visitors, and ups the chances of them coming back. A visually-appealing blog differentiates you from your competitors. 

Design Changes to Instantly Improve Your Blog

Remember, the written content is just one part of a good blog post. The idea is to make your posts look good so people are enticed to stick around. Let’s look at small fixes you can do to give your blog a striking new aesthetic.

• Keep it clean

We’ve all come across those headache-inducing blogs that are so busy you don’t know where to look — and invariably exit the page before reading the desired post. 

Many blog designs rely on simple designs, with a lot of white space, and this isn’t a coincidence. While visuals complement the content, a cluttered layout makes content harder to read. Try to cut down the noise and keep it minimalistic in design. If you think you’re guilty of a busy design, try to stick to a header image, and a simple-yet-trendy headline font. Keep widgets and any other ads and popups to an absolute minimum. 

The last thing you want to do is scare people away from your content.

• Take 2020 design inspiration

Having a unique design will help your blog stand out, but what if you don’t have the dollars for a custom design? 

If you’re keen to be seen, check out the team at 99designs, who nailed the best web design trends this year. Heard of things like minimalist navigation, 3D elements, luminous color schemes? It’s all there. 

Whichever look inspires you the most, there will be a WordPress theme driving a similar aesthetic. To unleash the 2.0 version of your blog,  all you have to do is add your new theme and start customizing. Focus on all aspects of your blog design, including custom colors, fonts, logos, and layout.  

• Create a simple logo

Your logo is the graphical representation of your blog, one single badge that represents what you stand for. 

While many people’s first thoughts on logos are “I need something that’s unique and stands out …it needs a boat, fish, sun, yoga mat…” — in fact, the best logos are actually incredibly simple. 

Before you reach for your pad and pen, try something like Namecheap’s Free Logo Maker. You can make a sleek, professional logo in a few clicks. Simply enter your brand name and add one of the predefined icons. Then scroll through different versions of fonts and colors, until you see it, your logo. Then download and add to significant parts of your blog.

• Customize with a WordPress page builder

Page builder plugins work on top of any theme and allow you to build and customize your layout with a simple drag and drop interface. They let you do the kind of things that would otherwise need CSS and coding experience. If the concept of page builders might sound a bit abstract, I’d recommend this video from Yoast Academy. The short tutorial provides examples of exactly how some of the best page builders change the user experience for the better. 

• Hire a web designer

Naturally, there are limitations to the amount of content one can produce alone, and customization you can do on your own website. If you’re interested in giving your web design an extra push, I’d recommend hiring help if your budget can stretch to that. Check out our guide to hiring a web developer or designer. 

Add Some Fancy Visuals

We can all agree that blogs are a fantastic way to publish content. You can publish just about anything and there’s more than likely a market for it. There are some limitations to your reach as a blogger, however — not everyone enjoys reading, especially not on a screen. 

How do you appeal to people who prefer a more visual experience? To add a new dimension to a largely text-based medium, add eye-catching images to illustrate your points and cater to the content-fearing blog readers.

• Add graphics with Canva

Many would agree there is one online design tool that is increasingly more popular than the rest — Canva. You don’t need to be an expert to create stunning images to breathe life into your blog posts. With Canva, you can create beautiful graphics easily for free. It allows you to create graphics for social media, posters, logos, and more, in a beginner-friendly drag and drop format.

• Use high-quality stock images

Poor quality images won’t do your pages justice and will distract people from quality content. If you’ve not got a good eye for photography, don’t sweat it. These days, it’s fine to use stock imagery. There are some fantastic sites offering royalty-free stock image libraries. Some of our favorite for good quality and safe to use images include Unsplash and Pexels.

No matter where you source your images, try and stick to the same style photography and size photos so each post looks familiar.

• Reimagine your content with an infographic 

Why not scrap your content completely and turn your blog post into an infographic? An infographic increases the willingness to read an article by up to 80%. That’s because people find hard data, or complex topics, far more engaging when it’s displayed neatly in an infographic.

There’s a bunch of websites where you can create a professional-looking infographic without any design skills. Choose a template and add your content. It couldn’t be simpler. If your blog could benefit from an infographic, look no further than Creative Bloq’s guide to the best infographic template tools available. 

• Break up blocks of text

What are people going to think when they land on a block of text? No thanks. It’s important to break up long passages of text with a list, image, or headlines. 

Using headings to separate short blocks of texts. This way, people can quickly skim for what they like — and won’t be put off by an extra-long post.

Your Blog Deserves the Best!

I hope some of the tips on this page have inspired you to get back to the drawing board. I’ve included plenty of things you can do to give your web design some much-needed TLC. If it’s time to give your blog’s design a facelift, it’s time to rise up to the challenge. After all, your blog deserves the best. And just remember, if you’re using WordPress, you might be a theme away from transforming your blog’s design into something pretty awesome!

If you’re reading for inspiration and looking to start your first blog or considering switching to the mighty CMS, look no further than EasyWP. With managed WordPress hosting, you can start your WordPress blog in a snap. We’ll take over the installation and some other behind the scenes stuff. This way, you can get to work creating a blog people don’t forget. 

What are your tips to make your blog stand out? If you have any techniques to makeover your blog, we’d love to hear about them.