I Hate Your Blog - some reasons on why people say that line to you when you ask them to rate your blog

Are you want me to review your blog and rate 10 out of 10?

I can't, yes I can't rate any blog by 10 as there is nothing like perfectness in this world and no-blog can be a good to rate 10 out of 10 or say it is a 5-star blog.

Recently many of the newbies in my country (Pakistan) asks me to review their blogs and whenever I gave them the 2 stars, they where ready to ask more question like what is the bad in their blogs?

How I can rate so low?

How they can improve their blogs? and some other.
She is sad because I Hate Her Blog
As one girl asked me why "I Hate Her Blog?" and here's the answer to that girl and all of you (who reads this blog post).

To be on topic and to the topic I've search and research this topic and found some awesome results from many professional bloggers, and here I wanted to share my own views on how we can say that I Hate Your Blog.

What things I consider before rating any blog?

The main question.

Yes! It is a main question that how and why of rating a blog on basis of some general things like look of blog to content and so on.

Some points I check firstly before rating any blog are:
  1. Blog design
  2. URL (domain or sub-domain)
  3. Bounce rate
  4. Content quality
  5. Loading time
and many others are listed below with a brief description and tips to cover the main points of a quality blog to create another cool and out-standing blog in no-time.

1. Blog design: Theme/Template of your blog

Blog design is something you've to consider before even starting or publishing your first article. What people see in very first visit is blog design, they tend to ensure that blog is well designed or only another free template applied blog.

However you can create a amazingly designed blog using some free blog templates, but what is required to design a lovely blog is design inspiration, any software to design header or logo, some great examples to crush on great ideas and a mind to collaborate with latest trends of blog and website designing.

Here's an example of great flat design by Microsoft Stories:
an example of great flat design by Microsoft Stories:
If you want to design your blog in that way of modern UI "flat designs" than don't forget the Microsoft's approach and get inspiration from this stories hub by Microsoft.

What to note down from that example? check below:
  • Logo of Microsoft at left corner and after that logo a menu bar
  • Second and main menu bar for navigating to other pages
  • Page title and after that stories of people
  • Also you can see a search bar and sign-in option at left corner
After clicking on any page you'll see a wide page with details and text about story. This is the great way to design a flat and trendy blog design.
She said that her blog designed with flatness in mind but there's nothing like flat

2. URL (domain or sub-domain)

URL is the property of your online word and a for a blog you've to create a sub-domain or top-level-domain (TLD).

Whatever you can beat many competitors with a sub-domain, but with a top level domain you can set your position on the top of your competition.

Some benefits of having a TLD:
  • More trust by advertisers and search engine bots
  • Easy remembering by readers and users
  • Good feeling of having a .com or .net blog just like professionals
  • Easy to create backlinks as professionals like to link to top level domains
there are many other benefits you can imagine of, as she is blogging on a sub-domain having *wordpress.com and you know on a sub-domain with WordPress we can't earn money and many other things, that's why I rated her blog lower.

3. Bounce rate

Bounce rate or exit rate of a blog or web-page decides the future of your online venture and you've to consider this thing before hey-days of your blog.

If new readers got your homepage or other pages boring or less informative, they'll press exit button and go away instead of checking any other page. This will call exit rate or bounce rate of your blog/website.

To reduce this rate and improve performance you've to take steps:
  1. Check out the errors in HTML and CSS
  2. Create analysis of your content and pages
  3. A navigation menu with links to other pages can be a good choice
  4. Improve UI by selecting perfect and human readable text fonts with better colors
  5. Make sure your users can navigate to any page of your blog just clicking thrice on your blog.
  6. Don't try to trick users and make sure you've a search engine on homepage and all other pages
as usual people love to navigate and if you make it possible to reach any page in just three clicks, they'll love it and visit minimum 2 or 3 pages. It means you can decrease bounce rate in no time.
she don't have a search engine on her blog and not a good navigating menu to reach other pages

4. Content quality

Content is the blood of your blog
Try to add quality in your blog content by making it unique. Not with re-writers or any software do this with your own hands by typing good in words content and creating amazing images.

Videos can make a good role, but you main idea is writing the words than don't hesitate to read others and get inspiration.

Personally I read more at-least 3 articles before creating any new blog post on this blog, just because I need inspiration and help to convey my idea and give my good points to readers of my blog.

For an example:

The Google Inc.

Guess what if Google starts creating content instead of sending searchers to other websites? I am 100% sure that they'll end up creating enough content.

Google is a search engine and they only can give search results to users and give them good articles, image or videos.

What it takes to create good content:
  1. A good and relative topic to your blogging niche
  2. Some time to research on that topic you choose to write on
  3. Reading other's views on how they describe your selected topic
  4. Knocking your mind to think different and provide information which is not yet available on internet
  5. Before publishing you've to re-check your article to avoid spelling and grammar mistakes, so anyone can easily read your point of view.
She have some spelling mistakes and out of topic articles on her blog

6. Loading time

Web-page loading time is a key-point and we should pay attention to this factor of Google rankings and user experience.

Loading time of a web-page decides the quality and future of rankings, so make sure you have a faster loading blog or a website with a good CDN which can lead to load faster.

Before doing any edits to make your blog faster in loading you should test it with your mind as I said in a interview:
“the biggest tool for blogging or any other thing is our MIND”
As you can see how GTmetrix generate fake reports or you can say wrong. For a demo check my reports below:
GTmetrix generate fake reports
Check highlighted scores and dates in above image, that's why I say use your mind and check page-speed with your own tests.

Checklist to make your blog load faster:
  • Use small images with .png or .jpeg formats
  • Show 4 to 6 blog post on homepage and don't use more than 10 widgets
  • Try to use java-scripts when you badly need, otherwise stay away
  • Make sure your hosting provider is good and up all the time
*Don't trust on online tools, as she is doing this and she got a blog with 1 minute of loading time.

Final sayings:

That was a question I prefer to answer in a descriptive way, so I created this blog post to help others create a good blog which I can rate with love.

Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to ask question in comments form blow, I'll love to rate your blog too :)