Many articles and eBooks on the subject of traffic stress the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when designing your blog and writing posts.  Good SEO lets search engine spiders “see” exactly what you want them to find when looking at your website.

But Spiders aren’t people.  There is absolutely no logic in building a site with SEO efforts so perfect that it is ranked number one for every keyword if it’s so ugly or user-unfriendly that human visitors leave immediately after the page loads.

Unfortunately, many new bloggers do just that.  They choose a template that they might like but never take a moment to consider if someone else might find it hard to read, confusing, or just plain ugly.

The K.I.S.S. Principle

When choosing the layout for your blog you should always strive to keep it simple.  Avoid bright colored backgrounds. Try not to confuse your visitors with a massive amount of links or animations. Make sure that your blog is useable first, then make sure it looks good.

Take time to look over other blogs in your niche.  Chances are, the top blogs in your topic will have a relatively similar look and feel.  Most will be simple and to-the-point.  As an example, take a look at the following blogs:

• Mashable
• Andy Beard – Internet Business Systems
• Chrisg.com
• Lapin Gourmand
• The German Car Blog

These blogs cover wildly different topics, but each has one thing in common.  They are laid out intelligently, simple to use and easy to read.  None of them feature odd flashing gizmos, pop-up ads or anything else that takes the reader’s attention away from the text on the page.

This type of simplicity may seem boring or fail to fit what you want to see on your own blog but remember, your blog should be designed with your reader in mind first and your own unique style second.  With no readers, there’s no point in having a blog!

Getting The Right Design

Most blogs are personal at heart and a blog’s design is a reflection of the person who writes it.  Unfortunately not everyone who blogs is also a graphics design wizard.

If you have a concept for your blog but just can’t locate a theme that fits what you want, don’t be afraid to seek out a web design company or graphics design firm to get the look you want and the features you need.

You don’t have to take that step immediately.  Wait until you have decent readership and are getting some income from Google AdSense or a blog ad network.  Take 50% of that income and set it aside until you can afford to hire someone to create a custom design or layout.

If you don’t want to shell out anything, get to know people on web design forums or find someone you can trade favors with.  Trust me, these people exist and they aren’t that difficult to find if you look around for a bit.

In the end, make sure that your blog is useable first and pretty second. the most stunningly visual blog in the world isn’t going to gain any readers if the content isn’t what they are looking for or if it’s so difficult to navigate that they can’t find their way around.

It’s not often that I come across a WordPress theme that gets me excited. Most themes out there are nothing more than souped up versions of the default WP theme. Kubrick. While I have nothing against a simple layout, the fact of the matter is that most of the sites I run require far more versatility than Kubrick can provide. Enter The Morning After theme by The Master Plan. Not only does the theme have a metric ton of options to play with, but it’s got a nice, clean newspaper style home page layout to go along with it. It only took one look for me to realize that the main page layout was exactly what I wanted for my food blog… With a few tweaks, of course.

After uploading the Morning After to my WordPress sandbox, I was immediately greeted with an issue. The theme as I downloaded it wasn’t compatible with WordPress 2.3. Thankfully the Master Plan has dedicated support forums and that problem was quickly and easily remedied. Setting the theme up as instructed on the download page was also quite simple. As a matter of fact, if you’ve got even a little bit of design experience, everything about the Morning After theme is simple.

The theme is based on the Blueprint CSS Framework, and once you take a moment to understand the way the framework is designed, any changes you’d like to make to the Morning After is as simple as changing a little bit of css. Everything else is done for you. That simple.

As a side note, if you’re just jumping in to CSS design. (What kept you?), take a look at blueprint. this tool will save you hours of headaches once you’ve learned it.