If you are starting a new blog, or even auditing an existing blog, then you might not have yet considered the pages of your blog other than your posts. But, there should be some almost standard pages. Here are my suggestions and reasons.

A Home Page – On the whole, it is pretty obvious that you are going to have a home page. Most blogs will display recent posts either in full or just as excepts. But, if you are intending to sell posts, then you really should include the full posts to give advertisers full value, and increase your advertising fees.

Contact Page – You may not think that a contact page is a necessary part of a blog, but it is totally essential and should not be excluded! It is vital to have a contact page if you are wanting to run any sort of advertising at all, or to communicate with others who might be interested in your activities.

Displaying your phone number and address is probably far from ideal and displaying your email address opens you to all sorts of spam, but a simple contact page with a contact form is easy enough. Have a look at the newsletter plugins and even captcha form plugins that are available for this.

Why is it essential? Well, once your blog is doing well advertisers might find it and want to ask you about buying space. Other bloggers might want to contact you about guest post opportunities on your website. Having some way of contacting you is invaluable.

Disclosure Page – Only needed if you are making an income in some way from your blog, if you are affiliate selling, sponsored posting or a variety of other paid methods, disclosing that this takes place is a good idea. Just say that you do accept payment for posts and so on.

Subscribe Page – This is another one you might think is pointless, but is actually very useful. You might have a big, easy to use RSS icon on every page, but does every reader of your website know how to use it and what the advantages are?

Create an obvious page, that can be called Follow Us, Read More or something fairly obvious to indicate that it is the page to go to in order to find out more about what you are writing. Give on this links to your RSS feed, plus a comment on the advantages on using RSS Feeds. Sell it to your readers, if they have got to this page rather than using your RSS icon, then they probably need help.

Then either add instructions on how to use the RSS feed or a link to a site that explains it. Some readers could be so pleased to learn this new trick that they decide to follow your blog.

Also, offer a newsletter feed. Use either a suitable plugin or a third party service for this. You are giving your readers plenty of choice as to how to keep updated, meaning they are more likely to keep reading and coming back, thus increasing your traffic!

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