What pages should every blog contain, and why? What pages are blogging essentials that could be crippling your blog if they are missing? Have a look at this list and then improve your blog in a matter of minutes!

Home Page
Obviously, the first page that every blog needs is a home page. But this can be one of two types of pages. Some blogs prefer the static home page whereas others prefer a list of the most recent posts.

In my opinion, unless you have a good reason for not doing so, always make your home page the list of recent posts. This means that visitors can quickly find your latest posts and so can search engines. Whether you just display snippets or the full posts and whether you display the latest 5, 10 or however many posts is up to you. It depends how much you are writing and how involved you want the search engines to get. I always list the latest 5 or 10 posts in full.

About Me / Us Page
This is a page I do not think is needed, but people still include. Save the pages and valuable linking for other pages! You can include a brief about me paragraph or two on the side bar of your theme rather than a page that is not really needed and gives little benefit.

Contact Me
Are you hoping to blog for profit? Do you want to display some adverts? Well, how will advertisers contact you? Make a simple contact page and include a plugin to display a simple contact form to protect your email address. I always use one that includes a captcha form so that spammers cannot send me their automated emails.

Newsletter / Follow Us
Do you make it easy for your readers to work out how to follow your RSS feeds? Do you offer one or more alternatives? You should do!

Not everyone knows how easy it is to use RSS feeds, so create a simple page about how to use these. It does not need to be anything to complicated and can point to other references for finding out how to use RSS feeds. But if a reader is new to reading blogs and you teach them a new trick, where are they likely to use it?

But, what about those people not using RSS? Well, operate a newsletter as well. There are plugins and free services for running newsletters, so install one of these to the follow us page and explain how to sign up.

Site Disclosure
Are you considering displaying affiliate links, sponsored reviews or other paid posts? Then, especially if your site is hosted in the US, you should disclose this and the neatest way is through a stand alone page. Just explain that you will be being paid for posting, that your choice of subjects to post about may be influenced by advertisers but that you will keep the content independent and honest.

These are the main pages that you will, and won’t, need on a blog. Make sure that you have these and readers can follow you and advertisers can contact you!

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