Creating a Style Blueprint for your Website is as simple as opening a Word document and making a list of common elements you will use on each page of your website.
On your list put the types of fonts, photo sizes, linking schemes, how you use line breaks between paragraphs, line breaks after quotes and such, optimization methods… etc. That way you always have a consistent look and you don’t forget any optimization details. Nothing wastes time like having to flip back to another page to see how certain elements of the paragraph were styled. This is how you format the actual page to look consistent throughout the site. CSS style sheets are great to keep style elements consistent. But you have to know where to apply those style elements and when. Add in hundreds of similar CSS style elements, you need a cheat sheet to increase your productivity.
Examples of What to Include in Your Style Blueprint:
- Keywords being targeted
- Link – Alt Tag – Title Tag
- Internal links
- H1, H2, H3, H4 styles for different page types
- External links – target=_”blank”
- External links – rel=”nofollow”
- How many <br /> between paragraphs
- How many <br /> after pictures
- Picture width and alignment
- Picture on the right side of the page
- Picture on the left side of the page
- Page elements to bold or italicize
- Are Titles all Caps or Just the first letter
- And or &
These are just a few examples. However anyone who has a website or a blog really needs to take the time to fill out their own Style Blueprint cheat sheet. Taking just a few minutes to document as you go along will save you an incredible amount of time in the long run.