Organization is a powerful tool in the arsenal of a successful blogger.

The ability to categorize files and information, manage your time effectively, and work in an uncluttered environment has a massive impact on your productivity. It allows you to get more done in a faster amount of time. It allows you to do better work and it even increases your ability to focus on a particular task as it reduces distractions.

It also looks good. When internet users find your site they will quickly be drawn in or repelled by their first impression of it. If your site demonstrates to them the domain of an organized professional, then they will likely look further and browse through your content. If it appears scattered and disorganized, they will probably never even look at your first headline.

The bottom line is this: Get organized. In fact, here’s three areas that you should specifically focus on organizing in order to grow your website or blog.

Unclutter your site with a crisp, clean design.

A brand new visitor stumbles upon your site. The first thing they see is a strange header image that really has nothing to do with the rest of the site. Then they see a million and a half widgets down your sidebar that seem to range from a New Year’s countdown to a daily quote in Chinese and even a list of latest tweets from an account that you set up for Rover, your dog.

Every last inch of space on the site is filled with links, text or images. There is no open space at all. The visitor sees a cluttered mess of a website claiming to be a professional or an expert.

All this takes place in a matter of seconds and they move the cursor up to the ‘back’ button on their browser. You’ll never see them again.

I cannot overstate this point. First impressions really are lasting impressions. When a first time visitor sees your site for the very first time, you have a matter of seconds to impress them before they hit the back button and continue browsing onto some other websites.

Take the time to choose a beautiful theme for your blog. For a few ideas just check out this post that I put together a few weeks ago: 11 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes.

Take the time to create a look and feel for your site that is genuinely appealing to people. Leave some open spaces. Don’t use widgets or links in your sidebar that have nothing to do with your site’s theme. Clear some of those out and apply only the one’s that really make sense.

Unclutter your time with schedules, tasks and priorities.

Major companies spend thousands of dollars to bring in speakers to train employees to be more efficient and have better time management skills. They understand exactly how important it is to be able to get the most out of the limited amounts of time that their employees have.

The ability to make the most of our time when it comes to producing and marketing our blog is absolutely priceless. It’s far too easy to sit down with the goal of writing a post and simply get distracted with our emails, with reading other blogs, with our social media outlets like facebook and myspace, or with a thousand other things.

If we don’t create specific times when we devote ourselves to writing then we will never rise to the level of success that the professionals do. The difference between good writers and great writers is that great writers write even when they don’t want to.

Start each day with a list of things that you want to get accomplished for your blog. Then take a few moments to jot down which items are the most important and should be worked on first. Then devote specific time during that day to focus on accomplishing your goals.

Unclutter your article production with post lists and notes.

If you’re like most people, you probably find yourself trying to come up with content to fill your blog. I mean anyone can just throw together some words and post something on their site, but it takes effort to really provide something that is worth reading and studying.

Always keep a pen and a pad of paper handy. Regardless of where you are and what you are doing, you can always be thinking of ideas for your blog. When you come up with something, simply jot it down in your notepad. By the end of the day you will find that coming up with topics to write about is much easier than it used to be.