Before you lay the foundation for your dream house, you need to estimate your costs, select a design, choose the materials and architects and set up the contract. Similarly, designing your blog requires that you spend hours choosing a niche, plan, structure, and site design among others.
Setting the right foundation for your blog is the key to its success. There is a good possibility that people visiting your site are looking for joint ventures, advertising options, networking, or other information.
Creating the right pages on your blog will help you reach out to your readers and imbibe in them the confidence in your abilities. Once your blog is set up, ensure that you have these basic pages to make your blog complete. Below we will see 9 must have pages for your blog or even your small business websites. Newbie bloggers are not aware about the important of these pages. These pages indeed optimizes your blog homepage.
About
An “About” page is the sum total of you and your blog. It gives an insight to your readers about who you are, what you do, what your blog is about, and the story behind it all. It helps build a trust relationship with readers and help them understand you better. If you are not sure how to create an “About” page or need help, guidelines, or tips, you can check out Darren Rowse’s articles.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/11/24/how-to-write-your-about-me-page/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/07/13/about-me-and-the-search-term-competition-the-results/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/08/02/the-problem-of-default-about-pages/
Disclaimer/ Disclosure Policy
Disclaimer meaning: (n.) One who disclaims, disowns, or renounces.
Disclosure meaning: (v. t.) The act of disclosing, uncovering, or revealing; bringing to light; exposure.
With the New FTC Guidelines in place, it is becoming increasingly necessary that bloggers protect themselves against any potential conflict of interest that may arise between themselves and what they are blogging. If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger then its time you added a disclaimer/disclosure page to your site. For help with how to write a disclaimer/disclosure page, check out this ehow article and a few sample disclaimer/disclosure pages.
e-how – http://www.ehow.com/how_4500897_write-blog-disclaimer.html
Shoemoney – http://www.shoemoney.com/disclaimer/
Problogger – http://www.problogger.net/problogger-disclaimer/
Contact
A contact page serves as the primary contact point for your readers. Even though your readers or potential advertisers can connect with you by other means, it is essential that you have a specific contact page listing the contact options. Generally, having multiple contact options helps; Social Media Connect, Contact Form, Email, and Phone Number are some of the most commonly used connect points.
HellBound Bloggers – https://hellboundbloggers.com/contact/
Promotional Landing Page
If you have been blogging for a while and are aware of the various promotional methods, you should be aware of this one. This page is dedicated to promote YOU. Use this page to promote yourself and what you have to offer to your readers as a blogger; be it products, services, or content. Use the landing pages as a conversion weapon to convert your readers into subscribers. Copyblogger offers some excellent advice on creating landing pages.
Tip: Use your landing page link in your author bio for a better conversion rate.
http://www.copyblogger.com/seal-the-deal-10-tips-for-writing-the-ultimate-landing-page
Comment Policy
If you run a blog that accepts comments, then it’s imperative that you prepare a comment policy to inform your readers about the guidelines on writing comments in your blog. For example, your comment policy may state that you will reject comments that are inappropriate or hurt others sentiments. Let your readers know that comments can be edited or deleted accordingly. This allows your readers to understand how, what, and why to comment and how comments are handled. Check out hellbound bloggers which has a good comment policy page.
http://www.hellboundbloggers.com/comments-policy/
Privacy Policy
Adding a Privacy Policy page on your blog assures your readers that their personal information is protected and secure and indirectly encourages readers to comment on your blog which in turn improves the conversion rate. If you are a blogger who offers email subscription, newsletters, sales, or surveys this is absolutely essential. Ehow has a good article on how to write a privacy policy.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5857423_write-privacy-policy-website.html
Archives
Archives are like libraries that have tons of books. It’s a gold mine, full of information that is waiting to be explored. This page makes it easy for first time readers to reference articles written earlier. Most WordPress and Blogger themes come with a default Archives page although you need to activate it. If you have web development skills you can customize it to your requirements.
Thank You
This is a good way to build a relationship with your blog visitors. Thanking them for their comments or feedback or for taking a survey or for enquiring about your product will create a good impression. Your readers can be redirected to this page after they share their views purchase a product, subscribe to your blog or visit your site. Here is an excellent example of a very well made thank you page.
http://www.fcon21.biz/thanks-news
Also read more about how to improve your Thank you page at
http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/awful-thank-you-page.htm
Advertise
Money is, most often than not, the motive behind most of our actions. One of the best ways to encourage potential advertisers to sponsor or advertise on your blog is to highlight your blog achievements such as statistics, ranking, and other key details on this page. See what these top bloggers have to showcase.
PS: I’ve added mine too 🙂
http://www.problogger.net/advertise-on-problogger/
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/advertise/
http://techcrunch.com/advertise/
http://theapptimes.com/advertise/
Image Credit: nuttakit (Customized)
we should need all??
yes, Imagine providing a service that is incomplete, Selling a PC without a keyboard or similar circumstances. By having these pages you will have your reader informed and engaged.
nice article there Eddie , there are few pages every blog most have . though bloggers give less importance to them …
@seema, @vinayak thanks for your comments and views.
will definitely try some of them 🙂
thanks for sharing
Number of Blogs are increasing day by day and newbies are entering blogosphere to make their blogging debut.
Pages
This is truly an excellent post. We advise this to our clients as well. But I’ve never seen it explained and laid out so well. Well done Eddie.
Hi Fiona,
Thanks for your comments. 🙂
OMG I don’t have most of them and I think now is the time to create them! Thanks for sharing the examples of these pages! Great post…
why should we consider all these pages..like privacy policy, comment policy any reasons behind it??
@sureshpeters – I have stated the importance behind every page. Let me give you an example… lets say a customer needs to contact you regarding a proposal. However, you do not have a contact page nor is your comment section working… here you tend to lose a potential opportunity.
Are all of these pages really important for blogs? I mean what if it’s just a for fun blog, do I still need to post a Privacy policy page?
It depends if you do not collect any information in any form , then you do not need to assure your readers about their privacy.
Nice article. Looking to implement your advice in my blog.
Hey Eddie, It really a fresh idea.. My most of the blogs lack in those pages… I surely gonna create those soon…
Hi, Just have started new site web app rater and thanks for guiding me through your valuable points dude. Have to make all important pages for my new site.
Nice compilation. Guess the comment policy can be added as a part of privacy policy. Is there a need for an individual page??
I’ve set up a guest post page recently, you can add that to the list too. Hope I’ll get some guest posts soon.. 🙂
@Arif Thanks for your comments.
@Prasanth Adding the comment policy can be added to the privacy policy as long ur only talking about the privacy of the readers. However, when you start saying about how you handle comments I don;t think that it would be the right place.
@AnimHuT – Thanks for your comments and thanks for sharing as well.
@Gabriele Maidecchi – Thanks.
@Jane@Find All Answers – Good to hear that this article has come of help. Cool site.
@Irfan Siddiqui 0 Thanks for your comments.
Great i love your article, just bookmarked it. Will read at the time of creation of new pages in my blog :). Like me this article will inspire lots of people to add at least these important pages on their sites. 🙂
Awesome post….nice post idea…i miss many pages..!!tnx for help..
Putting “three pages to write” on tomorrow’s to-do list. Thanks for reminding. Your examples will save my day!
Good read. Gonna save this link and examine it with calm later at home, I already preview I will have a lot to work on in the coming days. Thanks for sharing 😉
Thanks for the useful article. just now noticed, mine is incomplete. have to create all this. 😀 | you save the day !!
And Stumbled and Share with my friends. hope they make use of this. :
@Claudia Thanks for your comments. Had a look at your site. Nice.
@Andreas@Linknami – Yes that is a good suggestion, However a back end site map is more than enough for search engines. If you are using a HTML site-map that is good only for your readers to know where your content is present. From my experience and experiments I’ve learned that an Archive page is more helpful than a site-map HTML page. That;’s why you will find the archive page here and not the sitemap page. Hope this helps.
@ashwin Thanks for your comments.
I have one more important page to add: A sitemap.
A sitemap ensures that search engines can find and index all pages of your site, otherwise several pages may be even forgotten.
Sitemap is really important but it is a internal page.. Not useful for users..
Nice article…I have to implement this pages on my website too!
Thank you for your effort!
Nice post….it is a good tip for new bloggers.
Abhishek Rohilla just posted..http://hellboundbloggers.com/2010/10/08/buying-online-guide/
Thanks bro for alll the details 🙂
Hey Eddie,
Great article. You’ve included lots of good examples. I’m inspired now to add some of these pages to my blog.
Well done.
Allan
Hey Allan,
Thanks for your comments. Good to see you here. 🙂 I am glad that this is of help.
These are really important part of your website and every website must have policy pages if they are using Google adsense on their website.
Awesome post! Yea all the above listed pages are mandatory! I guess i need to add a disclaimer page to my blog. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Thanks for your comments Samuel. Yes, as a bloggers its becoming more important that we protect ourselves.
What about Guest Post page?
Yes, that is a good suggestion Pulkit, I consider that as a promotional page 🙂