Link baiting your way to tedium, formulaic blogs and why you should avoid them

As a web designer, reading design blogs is something I do quite regularly, what better way is there to keep up with what’s happening in the world of web design than to read insightful, original and thought provoking posts by your peers. For the most part, it’s still possible to find these types of blogs, and they are cherished, not only for their insightful intelligent takes on our industry but for the simple fact that they are in the minority – and it would seem, a dying breed. 

Of late, there seems to be a penchant in the web design blogosphere for replication and repetition. Originality in design and content is sorely lacking, replaced by standard Wordpress layouts and an obligatory “top 20” Digg friendly list, usually consisting of utterly pointless icon sets/Photoshop brushes that you’ll never use nor want.

There are a number of contributing factors to this trend, for the purpose of this post I’ll only mention aesthetics/ blog content, but obviously (on the technology side of things) the advent of Wordpress has had a huge impact, not only in terms of actual blog uptake but of blog (and indeed website) standardisation.

 Often, the reason web design blogs content are so remarkably similar is their paint by numbers SEO strategies; make some crappy list (or copy someone else’s), submit to del.icio.us/Furl/Digg/Shoutwire , and wait for the traffic, it’s link baiting on steroids. Their striking similarity in appearance, one could argue, comes from a one-sided promotion of what constitutes good web design, usually emanating from tunnel vision usability “experts” (who are perpetually stuck in the late 90’s) or backslapping design gallery sites were conformity is highly regarded. Each is guilty of believing its own doctrine, promoting design standards that are dogmatic at worst and formulaic at best. The advent of these web design blog/galleries has lead to a homogenisation of what is considered good design practice in some quarters of the web industry. How many clone web design blog sites have you seen offering up list after list of what they consider to be good design?  Each list fiendishly similar to the next blogs list, who in turn looks exactly the same as the last!

 The most frustrating aspect of all of this is that decent blogs with well written content and original design get drowned in a sea of inane lists and template layouts. Web design blogs aren’t alone when it comes to suffering from what I’ll call the cracked.com effect with a lot of industries mirroring what I’ve complained about above. So what can you do to make sure your blog doesn’t end up as just another formulaic turd? 

1. Don’t just copy others SEO strategies, what works in one industry might not translate to yours, seek professional advice.
2. Use professionals to design your custom/wordpress blog, using the same free themes you see day in day out just doesn’t cut it anymore; you need to stand out from the crowd.
3. Be original, with both content and design.