Clean Up Your Blog
Apr. 28th, 2008 by Dharmesh ShahI’m a regular reader of Fred Wilson’s blog. Fred posted an article today that he is planning to clean house on his blog. He will remove many (if not most) of the widgets that adorn his site.
There was much rejoicing!
I can understand why Fred installed all these widgets in the first place. He’s got a natural curiosity and he’s a venture capitalist by trade — and invests in this stuff. There’s no better way to get to understand a technology or trend than to actually use it.
But, I’d argue that very few of his blog readers appreciate the widgets (except, perhaps the people that developed them).
Benefits Of Widget Removal And A Cleaner Blog
1. It focuses readers on the core content, which is (hopefully) why they’re there.
2. It makes pages load faster. Think of the bandwidth saved across the web!
3. Search engines like Google appreciate fast-loading sites (and possibly reward them with higher rankings).
4. It makes things simpler and more likely to load across a variety of browsers. (Yes, yes, I know things are supposed to work — but they often don’t)
So, if you’re a blogger, follow Fred’s lead and clean things up a bit. Your readership will thank you.
About the author:
Dharmesh Shah is a serial software entrepreneur. He is the author of the
widely read startup blog OnStartups.com which focuses on advice and ideas
for startup founders and management teams. Dharmesh is also the co-founder
of HubSpot.com, a software company building applications that help small
businesses transform their website into a marketing machine.
Posted in: Blogging, The Net, social media |
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April 30th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I agree, I had an e-commerce site that I loaded with a couple eBay widgets. Sure they looked sharp, but they took too long to load. I could see a visable drop in my sales. Needless to say, the widgets are gone.
FYI - With the recent update to Google PageRank (yes, I admit I bow at the alter of Google) these tips are even more important.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:44 am
Sorry for the double comment but I just wanted to congratulate you on surviving the “dreaded Google PageRank update” unscathed
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
[…] hates blogs that are too cluttered and filled with countless widgets. As such, he reminds us to clean up our blogs to provide a better user experience. Get rid of useless widgets […]
May 4th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I must say I never visit blogs filled up with various buttons, widgets and banners. Even my firefox with 4gb ram and dual core sometimes goes “WTF!” looking at these blogs.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I agree, too much is just too much.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:27 am
A great idea. Most of my widgets are to help increase income or traffic. Its time for a big review of what is actually working and what isnt.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
How is blogrush working for you by the way? I dumped mine due to lack of results.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Clean blogs are easier to read.:)