Do you plan to take your blog to the next level? Then you must avoid these blogging mistakes that beginners make. And if you are making these mistakes then you should fix them.
Here is the list of mistakes that we will be talking about in this article.
Each one of us in our blogging pursuit has made a few of these mistakes. Making mistakes is the norm when you start something new. You should get over these blogging mistakes and move on.
Without any further delay. Let’s start with the first item on our list.
Not Treating Blogging Like A Business
This is the number one reason why the blogs don’t survive their first 3 months. What if you have to start a business?
- Will you start in a hurry without any planning?
- Will you leave everything to chance?
No, you will have to dedicate a good chunk of your time and energy in making the business a success. Especially during the initial stages of your startup.
Most newbie bloggers dream of overnight success. That too without consistent efforts of making the blog a success. They hustle a lot without any planning for a few months before finally giving up.
Solution:
Treat blogging like a business, and plan out everything before you start creating content. Chalk out your short-term and long-term goals. You must start with a content hitlist. So that you keep out churning content and turn your blogging journey into a grand success.
Launching Your Blog Too Early
When you start your first blog, you are excited. And you want to launch your blog as early as possible. So most of the newbies go online with very less content on their blogs. Sometimes even with a single post. One or two posts are not sufficient for keeping the visitors engaged.
Low content on a site is a big turn-off for new visitors to your site. They will bounce off your site and never return to your site again. You fail to make any impact on your visitors as there is not enough content on your site or blog yet.
Solution:
Before you launch a new blog, you should have at least 5 to 10 blog posts on your site. These posts should be of a minimum of 1500 to 2000 words. This will keep your visitors busy till the time you add more content to your blog.
Selecting Wrong Domain Name -Serious Blogging Mistakes
Most beginner bloggers start with a free blogging platform like Blogspot or WordPress.com. They pick up a free sub-domain. Though these platforms are free, you don’t own the platform or domain name. Your blog can be deleted and shut down by these platforms as and when required.
If you are serious about your blogging business and want to make money from your blog. You should invest in a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress. Choose a reliable and fast hosting service along with a suitable domain name.
Solution:
Get a headstart in your blogging business with a good hosting service like Bluehost. You also get a free domain name and a lot of other freebies. Bluehost has a free daily backup of your blog giving you complete peace of mind.
Picking Up The Wrong Type Of Hosting
Do you know why 95% of bloggers fail? They start the blogging journey by hosting their site on cheap or low-quality hosting. The problem with these types of hosting is that they are painfully slow. And visitors don’t like slow-loading pages, this results in a high bounce rate and your site loses ranking in the search engines.
On cheap hosting providers, a lot of sites share a common server. If one site has a lot of traffic it will use most of the server resources. Which in turn leads to slowing down the other sites on the same server. I have seen sites giving “resource not available” warnings on these cheap hosting sites. Leading to a loss of rankings and visitors.
Solution:
Avoid cheap shared hosting, always prefer the managed WordPress hosting. It helps in loading your site faster. You will get a lot of love from Google if you have a faster loading site. Faster hosting will save you from a lot of blogging mistakes down the line.
Selecting The Wrong Type Of Theme
There are hundreds and thousands of WordPress themes on the internet. Oftentimes the new bloggers select the wrong type of theme. The snazzy feature-rich themes have a lot of unwanted and bloated code. These features are not of much use they only add to the weight of the theme making it slow to load.
The other mistake beginner bloggers make is not selecting a mobile-friendly responsive theme. Google now operates with the mobile-first approach. If you are not selecting a mobile-first theme your website may be penalised and lose search engine rankings.
Solution:
You must check your website requirements before going in search of a WordPress theme. Always select a mobile-friendly and responsive theme that is fast to load. You should also ensure that your theme is SEO optimised.
No Keyword Research – Biggest Blogging Mistakes
I hope you have selected a perfect niche for your blog. The next step is to find out the keywords related to your niche. The words that your niche audience may use to find your blog. For beginners, this topic is very confusing. They don’t want to take extra pain. And start creating content based on their own assumptions.
As you are not satisfying the search intent of your audience. Your blog may not be able to reach out to the right audience. Thereby leading to very less traffic and high bounce rates. Not doing proper keyword research is a recipe for disaster for your blog or website.
Solution:
Take your time in learning to do proper keyword research. You should always do keyword research before you begin to write a new blog post. You should place these keywords in the appropriate places in your content.
Not Using Research Data In Your Post
All through your post, you will be sharing your views on the topic. People have diverse types of views on all the topics that you are writing about. You must always lend credibility to your idea by backing it up with some data.
Backing up your claim with data makes it more credible to your audience and builds up your authority. Your visitors trust your content as you are making an extra effort to dig out and research the topics.
Solution:
Before you begin writing your post, thoroughly research the topic. Always try to include relevant data and statics in your post. You can use data from these sources:
Inconsistency In Creating And Posting Content
When you start a blog there is a lot of passion and positivity. A newbie blogger starts posting consistently sometimes many times a day. As time progresses, this multiple posting in a day comes down to weekly postings. And slowly and steadily it dies out and you completely stop posting and abandon the blog.
There are many reasons for the inconsistency in posting content. For. e.g you may have lost interest in the topic or you are postings multiple times a day leading you to burnout. This inconsistency in posting schedules keeps your visitors in a dilemma and they stop following you.
Solution:
You should decide your frequency of posting based on your strengths and weaknesses. And whatever frequency you select stick to it. It doesn’t matter how much you post but maintaining the frequency of posting does matter.
Writing For Yourself And Not For Your Audience
When you start the blogging journey you are unknown in the blogosphere. Nobody will give you importance. The visitors will visit your blog to look for the solution to their problems or queries.
If you address their problems well and help them find a solution. You will gain their trust and they will start recognising you. Some of them will eventually follow you and listen to you.
Solution:
Write useful content for your audience that addresses their pain points. Your writing should talk more about them, and not about you.
Giving Up Too Early
Many beginner bloggers start blogging to make money online. They are under the impression that blogging will make them rich overnight. They don’t realise that to make money they need to have traffic on their blog first. Then there should be effective monetization to convert the traffic.
As these novice bloggers start their blogging journey. They realise that blogging involves a lot of hard work in creating content. Once the content is written you have to promote and market it. Even after putting in the effort, 90% of the bloggers get very low traffic. This discourages these novice bloggers and they stop blogging altogether.
Solution:
Blogging is not a sprint it is a marathon. You must always be ready for a long grind before you see any tangible results. Do not give up, work hard and persevere eventually you will find success.
Not Selecting A Proper Niche
This is one of the most common blogging mistakes newbie bloggers make. They select a broad niche that is highly competitive or a narrow niche that nobody cares about or reads. Some novice bloggers follow in the footsteps of a five-figure blogger. Without finding out their own interests and passions.
These bloggers eventually find it difficult to survive in the blogging world and quit. Because they are either competing with too many established bloggers or they do not have competition at all as there are too few readers in their niche. Or they have a niche they know nothing about and run out of ideas quickly.
Solution:
Select your niche carefully, it should neither be too broad nor too short. Do not follow or copy already established bloggers. Choose a niche you are passionate about or want to learn more about. You will have a better chance of success.
Using Too Many Ads
One of the most common beginner blogging mistakes. They put a lot of ads on their blog so that they can start to make money quickly. But they forget that to earn something they need to build the audience first. A lot of ads irritate the visitors and they leave your site. Which increases the bounce rate of your blog.
The latest page ad layout algorithm by Google affects search engine rankings of the site or blog that have too many ads. So a ton of ads not only discourage the readers but it is also frowned upon by the search engines.
Solution:
You have to strike a balance when it comes to placing ads on your site. Always check out the AdSense heatmap to place the ads in suitable places. Be careful not to scatter the ads here and there on your blog. Use the ad placement strategically.
Not Proof-Reading Your Content
Do you read your content before you press the publish button? Skipping to proofread can result in leaving a lot of grammatical errors in your content. You will not be able to recognise the flow of ideas or any typos in your content.
This simple habit of proofreading can clean up errors and add punch to your writing. Although there are tools like Grammarly for spell check and grammar, these tools are unable to catch tricky issues.
Solution:
Make it a habit to proofread your content after you finalise your draft. If possible include some of your friends or family members to help you out. It’s far better to have more eyes scanning your content.
Conclusion
In this post, we have covered the blogging mistakes beginners make. Here are the most common types of blogging mistakes that we have discussed.
- Not Treating Blogging Like A Business
- Launching Your Blog Too Early
- Selecting A Wrong Domain Name
- Picking Up The Wrong Type Of Hosting
- Selecting The Wrong Type Of Theme
- No Keyword Research
- Not Using Research Data In Your Post
- Inconsistency In Creating And Posting Content
- Writing For Yourself And Not For Your Audience
- Giving Up Too Early
- Not Selecting A Proper Niche
- Using Too Many Ads
- Not Re-Reading Your Content
I hope you enjoyed reading the article,
What is the most common mistake that you have made or come across in your blogging journey?
Please let me know your views. I would love to hear from you.
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