Most bloggers like to flood the sidebar of their WordPress blog with a lot of widgets.
I have to say that putting a lot of things on your sidebar is definitely not a good idea, especially with a lot of advertisements.
What I did before to my sidebar is to flood with advertisements, categories, latest posts, popular posts, tags and a lot more until some of the time, my sidebar is longer than my contents when scrolling down my blog.
So, that is the wrong way of doing because the more things you have on your sidebar, the more confuse your visitors are.
Imagine that you have only 1-2 widgets on the sidebar, it is easier for your visitors to focus.
As a result, I had picked 3 most important widgets that I personally think MUST have on every blog.
[Read: 10 quick tips to get started with Genesis Framework]
1. Email Subscription Widget
Collecting email address is very important.
By having your reader’s email contact, you can always send email to them to provide them tips or to sell them things ultimately.
One way to get their email addresses is to put a widget way at the top of your sidebar so that they can see and don’t make it anymore difficult for them to subscribe by just needing them to provide name and email address. In some cases, you might not even need their names.
Some bloggers use the pop-up technology where I find that useful as well.
So, you know you are going to put an email subscription widget up there but what plugin you should download?
I download none for your information and what I use on my blog is the template provided by Aweber by default.
Aweber is not only a great email autoresponder solution where it also has quite a number of good templates for you to choose.
[Read: How to install a WordPress blog in just minutes]
2. Your list of series
Do you have a blogging strategy?
I tell you what, here I’d like to give you one effective tips for your blogging strategy.
Plan a series of posts and list them out in one single page or post. This strategy I learned from Copyblogger and he called it the Content Landing Page.
In this way, you gain:
- Great internal linking which results to great SEO.
- Creating a bunch of relevant contents.
- Reducing bounce rate.
- Increase your email subscription by putting an opt-in box at the end of your Content Landing Page.
I had a couple of series already on the second widget of my right sidebar and feel free to check them out.
So, try it and I bet you will see something new in terms of bounce rate and subscribers on your blog.
[Read: Why I use Google Adsense to monetize my niche site]
3. Popular posts
Lastly, another important widget that you can have on your sidebar is the popular post widget.
The popular post widget basically show a list of posts which are popular (usually the most commented posts) where very likely your readers will browse through that list to see what you have to offer.
There are two ways of doing it:
- Download and activate the Popular Post Plugin.
- Create a new category that categorize all your popular post.
For me, I use the second method where I can control what content I should put on the last widget.
It is not fair that I define what is popular and not my readers but as a blog owner myself, I believe I know what posts are popular and what posts are not.
[Read: How to get a lot of followers on Twitter]
Finally
These are not the only 3 widgets that you can have on your sidebar.
You can also have your social media profiles on the sidebar so that your readers can follow/like/circle you easily.
Apart from that, having advertisements on the right sidebar is also a good way to monetize but should not be over-done.
The not-so-useful things such as your list of categories, archives, and tags should be left at the footer or some other place that is not so critical.
So, make full use of your sidebar by not putting things that your readers don’t bother.
Try to think on the other hand, what would you expect mostly from the sidebar of every blogs.
If you have any comment regarding this post, do drop us something below.
I only keep two widget in the sidebar on most of my blogs. The widget i prefer are popular post widget & subscription form widget. I think every one should keep lesser number of widget in side bar so that you can increase the speed of your blog.
Tauseef Alam recently posted..Cost to Purchase a Domain Name
For getting more visitors towards your website, it is very important to review your website design and do possible changes if you find something complicated or cause visitors run away. I appreciate your suggestion about adding some widgets into the sidebar of a blog to make it more user’s friendly. This will also allow people to browse blog posts on the basis of months, years or category. Good to read about these widgets 🙂
This is really nice sharing, you mention every point with fully detail. its also very interesting and helpful keep it up this Good work.
AAmir Awan recently posted..Fresh Mag Blogger Template Free Download
cool choices, but i would like to recommend a most important widget to include, “The Mini Bio” or anything like it, as a writer, identity is everything.
everything else is important of-course but successful writers are very known, people have to know you and get used to you, display your picture and your bio.
it’s always the about us page the most popular page in a blog, so you can’t be certain that display your bio it’s gonna be a great addition.
Many thanks and Best wishes!
Mitch recently posted..Easily Create World Class Resume/CV On Yourcvbuilder In Less Than 5 Minutes
Another Well Informative Article Describing All Crucial Points. Every time I Visit Your Blog, I’ve Always Find Something Really Handy With Some Unique Kind Of Writing. Moreover, Blog Is Loading So Fast. I Really Like To Follow More Articles Of Your Website. Keep On Blogging.
Tejwinder Singh recently posted..15 High School Hairstyles For Teenage Girls To Follow In 2014
I definitely agree with your three choices. Email, popular posts, and your series if you have them. For service industry blogs, it can also be very helpful to have a widget with a contact form for a free service and a widget with a discount or coupon if someone lets us know they saw the blog.
I think some things apply to “local business” blogs that don’t really apply to seo or blogging blogs. For us, it is really about getting the site visitor to make a phone call or to fill out a contact form.
Nelson Ruiz recently posted..Reliable Pest & Termite Control
Thanks for your comment, Nelson 🙂
Alan Tay recently posted..3 WordPress Myths that You Can, and You Should Live Without