In few weeks from now I would’ve blogged for 2 years. I can say I have learnt a lot from this period and i have also made some mistakes and most importantly learnt from them. Blogging is not always a smooth ride as you are bound to face challenges and sometimes make mistakes.
While your blog can survive some mistakes and still stand (weaker or stronger), it may not survive some. There are some grievous mistakes that can kill and bury your blog even without your notice. This article is for every blogger out there, don’t think because you have been in blogging for long doesn’t mean you can’t make mistakes even without knowing but most especially for newbie bloggers so they can avoid mistakes that could kill their newly found passion even before it starts off properly.
Blogging mistakes to avoid:
1. Not Publishing Regularly: When you begin blogging your passion to write will begin to wane when you begin to feel the money you are earning is not commensurate with the amount of work you put in. The difference between blogs and other types of websites is in the frequency of publications. As a blogger you should have publication schedules to maintain.
Even if you can’t publish every day, you can choose 3 – 5 days of the week to publish so as not to starve your audience. When a visitor visits your site and can’t find something new to read such a visitor will be gone and may not ever return again.
Not only will you lose your audience when you don’t publish regularly, you may also lose your search engine ranking. I have explained how content freshness can improve search engine ranking on this blog. Google and other search engines favor fresh contents and rank them high, so regular publications will help your contents rank high on search engine results. Regular publication also means regular content indexing by search engine crawlers.
2. Quality of Content: The quality of your contents can either make or mar your blog. Poor content quality is a common blogging mistake you will find bloggers make and this mistake can kill your blog. Always ensure you publish only high quality articles on your blog. Do not compromise on the quality of your articles just because you want to publish a post.
You rather not publish any post at all if you can’t come up with quality content. Same goes with guest posts, do not accept poor quality posts or duplicated contents and publish on your blog. If you are a copy-and-paste blogger, desist from it as this act will only kill your blog.
3. Poor Optimization: The easiest way to succeed as a blogger is to rank high on search engines and you cannot rank high if your blog posts are often poorly optimized. Learn search engine optimization SEO and apply them on your blog.
A good optimized blog stands a chance of ranking high and earning a lot of $$$$. Apply the proper SEO methods on your blog and see it fly high. Ignore SEO and see your blog suffer.
4. Blog Design & Hosting: Do you know your blog design and hosting can either make or mar your blog? The mistake most bloggers make is in the type of hosting package they use for their blog and also their blog design. In an article I earlier published on this blog titled “Importance of Blog Design and Layout – Things You Should Know” I explained how your blog design can affect its user engagement and performance.
The type of theme you use for your blog or web hosting package and slow down your site and cause it to suffer in search engine ranking as Google consider site speed as a search engine ranking factor. So avoid this blogging mistake, acquire a good hosting package and use a fast and responsive theme in designing your blog.
5. Not Building a Mailing List: 75% of bloggers are guilty to this blogging mistake. Some don’t build a list at all while some start very late. You may have heard the saying that “the money is in the list”. A mailing list will be very essential when you decide to use affiliate marketing as a monetization method.
A mailing list will help you maintain contact with your audience from time to time. So if you haven’t started building your mailing list, I recommend you start now.
6. Not engaging with your audience? Another blogging mistake that can kill your blog is when you fail to engage actively with your audience either via blog commenting or on your social media pages. Respond to your visitors comments and help them solve their problems. Engage with them on your social media pages, build and maintain relationships with your audience through and active engagement.
7. How much do you promote your blog? Most bloggers rely only on search engine traffic to grow their site; this is a grievous blogging mistake that can kill your blog especially when your posts are not ranking high on search engine results. Read”Why you shouldn’t rely on Search Engines alone for Traffic”.
Avoid this blogging mistake, promote your site and drive traffic from multiple sources and you will see your blog fly high. I have shared a lot of my traffic secrets on this blog.
In conclusion…
Have you made any of the blogging mistakes listed here? Analyze your blog and see if you are making any of the blogging mistakes that could kill your blog as i have discussed in this article. Fix these mistakes and see your blog succeed.
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Hey Nwosu,
Another insightful post sir!
you said 75% of bloggers commit this blogging error and am sure this will help correct this mistakes.
Truth is I didn’t commit this mistakes you highlighted simply because my blogging buddies rocks. My success thus far could only be traced to leaning on the shoulders of those that have gone ahead of me in this blogging world, even if it’s only 1month older than my blog or perhaps we start together, so far you know something I don’t know.
Posting regularly is highly essential and I have chosen to post 3 times a week and it has proven to bring significant of success to my blog.
You have shared an all important post, boss and thanks for sharing it. :)
Sam
Hello Nwosu,
I’ve being blogging for sometime now and I can honestly say what you’ve penned down here is so true.
You see, when you don’t update your blog, your visitors drop, your Alexa rank drops and every thing on the blog takes a downward spiral.
Thanks for updating these awesome tips…I also have a similar post you may consider beneficial: http://notopoverty.com/quitting-blogging-quit-these-habits-of-yours-first/.
Do have a supercharged day!
– Terungwa
Yes Sam a lot of bloggers make the mistake of not building a mailing list. I am glad to hear you haven’t made any of these mistakes and i hope your site continues to grow from strength to strength, thanks for your awesome contribution.
Hey Nwosu,
I agree with almost every point you mentioned . The article is well written and it contains mistakes which i have done.
As far as publishing is concerned, i won’t agree with you, i personally prefer publishing less often because it gives me a break and i can promote my stuff more often.
You are right, if visitors won’t see enough stuff, they might not visit again. But i would suggest that for the sake of content don’t lose the quality of your content, because quality matters ;)
Thanks for sharing buddy :)
-Siraj
Hi Nwosu
This is a very honest post. I enjoyed every bit of it.
My blogging journey so far is a rough one. I started as a copy and paste blogger until i found my niche. I recently understood how important it is to post frequently. It has helped me so much.
I would like to add one more. “Relating with with other bloggers”. This is very important. It will save you a lot of stress. Sam can testify to that.
Content is not enough to get you out there. The people you know can speed up the popularity.
I’ll take to your advice and some other advice from other bloggers when i finally start my niche blog. I’m planning it already.
Thanks for this tips. It will come in handy soon.
Thanks bro for your awesome addition. See you at the top.
Hi Nwosu,
Nice Points, It’s important to have unique, informative and interesting content only then you can engage your audience and grow your blog. However mere writing content won’t work you have to plan how to spread your content to targeted maximum audience. So apart from focusing on SEO, you should also give proper attention to social media engagement which can help you to reach more audience.
Hi Nwosu,
some very important points to consider.
If I could go back to the begin of my blogging career, I would have hired an expert blogger to help me start in the right way.
I have made so many mistakes, a lot of them are listed in your nice post.
The biggest mistake I have made is bad linking.
Well, at least, with time, we become more expert!
Thanks for sharing!
Nice contribution, glad you could me.
Thanks Eric for your contribution, i hope this guide will help both newbie bloggers and other experienced ones to avoid such mistakes.
I think am guilty of number one, I ll try my best to live up these.
Agree with your blogging mistakes Nwosu :)
Yeah, blogging needs consistency, presenting worthy posts, basic SEO, enough social promotion etc to thrive in it.
Thanks for sharing this good post, keep writing the blogging tips :)
Hello Bro,
Surely you have mentioned serious mistakes here.
These days we need to concentrate more on our writing skills. Writing high quality and conversational article is must that gains social signals.
Participating in blogging communities is also advisable for newbies.
Hey Bro!
Great Points which i would like to give more importance for hosting which will normally affects us if we don’t choose right provider as recently i felt this problem beginning they were good soon later they are down on the service between enjoyed your post
Hi bro
nice point listed here bro.i agree all your points listed here.blog design and blog host is a major mistakes all blogger will do.And some New Bloggers will not active in social media.this are the most mistakes bloggers will do
thanks for sharing this info
wish u success
They are all great suggestions and very necessary for everyone to expect any blogging success.
Your #3 drew my attention. We are always talking about optimizing and I guess it’s now time to talk about over optimization.
WordPress is already optimized and it offers so many different tools – very easily accessible and most are freely available – that makes it really easy to over optimize the blog and posts which eventually will bury our posts deep down in SERPs rather than doing any good to ranking.
One of my educational blog is really buried and I’m trying hard to pull it up without any success. It’s really hard once it sinks. So, if you ask me, I’ll suggest you to be aware of general SEO concepts and optimize only mildly.
I cant agree more on this with you, it is easy to over optimize a WordPress blog and kill it in the process, i have also shared standard SEO concepts on this blog that will keep your blog safe. Thanks for that awesome contribution.
Hey Nwosu,
First of all I must thanks to you for sharing such a nice post. all points are well explained and essential new blogger like me.
I have an doubt about your point number 7 for promoting blog. I strongly believe that organic traffic is automated continuous in flow even you on vacation. but the other social media and manual generated traffic you have to put continuous efforts. you stop putting it traffic will come to end. any way as long as it also help to increase overall traffic.
what is your opinion
Search engine traffic will always perform better than social media traffic for the reason you gave so i will advise you to build more search engine traffic.
Yes! The mistakes are pretty common! Poor Content and Bad On-page optimization are really widespead mistakes. I take much notice of these points for all my websites. Thanks for sharing good post!
Not only you covered all the mistakes but also covered them in proper order. Consistency is must for blogging. Mailing list is new for me. I will keep it in mind next time. Thanks for sharing this useful info.
yes thats why i am so careful in managing my blog settings and functions
I am learning this article. Search engine traffic will always best and better. I am agree for only search engine traffic.
The first two points are what kills most newbies. They do not blog regularly and they do not post unique content. You gave good tips. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Nwosu,
I totally agreed with the point on content quality. I personally kind of love quality content but most bloggers nowadays are more concern with just having post on their blog without putting into consideration some factors that could put some wow effect into their blog post. I was just searching for blog mistakes when i came across you blog, I recently did a post on blog mistakes to but i titled mine “blog content mistake” if you don’t mind you can check it out here
http://www.sureblogger.com/blog/7-blog-content-mistakes-that-could-kill-your-blog/ I really enjoy you blog and i am bookmarking it right away.
Have a great day man.
Adegoke Ajayi