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Blogs are one of the easiest ways to create a Brand identity and help you to interact with your audience. Bloggers often commit mistakes while starting a new blog and it is not so hard to fix the issues. Following are the most common blogging mistakes to avoid.
SEO Mistakes
#1 Keyword Stuffing
One of the most common blogging mistakes is keyword stuffing. Many a times, new bloggers find “keyword research” extremely difficult and stuff keywords to rank high in search engines.
If you stuff your articles with keywords then Google will mark your site as spam.
Avoid keyword stuffing and use Long tail keywords along with LSI keywords to rank for the keyword.
#2 Multiple topic blogs
Another blogging mistake often encountered is about multiple topic blogs.
Many bloggers aim to attract audience from different perspectives but this will only reduce the overall focus of the site.
Define your blogging niche and focus on a single topic blog. Choose a niche which you love to write the most.
#3 No follow-do follow
This is the most common blogging mistake new bloggers often make. A link with no follow attribute will get ignored by search engines and would not count as a backlink.
No follow links is a way to tell the search engines that “Don’t follow the links on the page” and this should be done manually or you can do this automatically with the help of rel=nofollow checkbox.
If you link any site for promotion or if you do not trust the content, you can use no follow links.
Whereas, Do follow links are considered as backlinks and help the page of linked sites by passing link juice and help other websites to rank high in search engine results.
So when you use affiliate links, forums, untrusted content, use no follow links.
If any blog helps you in particular, then you can use Do follow links.
Images
#No alt text
An image speaks a thousand words.
Images play a huge role in storytelling. Not only that they will also bring you a good amount of traffic from image search.
Many bloggers scale images and never add “alt tag” to images. Because you are not adding alt tags to images, Google will never index those images.
Avoid this simple blogging mistake by adding alt tags to each and every image or use plugins that automatically add alt tags to images.
#Adding images from Google search
A common blogging mistake I observe is using copyright protected images. I know few bloggers who have added copyright images on their posts and paid a huge amount of penalty (1000$ +) because they didn’t know that the image was copyright protected.
If you use any copyright image you need to pay a huge amount of fine to the author for copyright infringement.
Always use CCC images which are copyright free and free from attribution. Also, keep a screenshot of the image you took from the site and keep it safely for a valid proof.
#No Image compression
You are a life style blogger or beauty blogger who want to use high-quality images for your users. Many people use DSLR cams to capture the best shots and upload these files directly.
These images are of very high-quality and so you need to compress them before uploading or you can use wpsmush to smush all the images that were uploaded.
Post length
Okay, now you want to write a new article, so the first question you ask yourself is “should I write a short post or a long one”
Write your posts naturally. As long as they create value they will help your visitors and will help you to stay longer. Consistent publishing, both long and short articles is the key for successful blogging.
But here’s the catch, why you should write both short ones and long ones.
Everyone loves organic traffic and search engines show long and detailed posts on the first page of Google.
If your posts are under 500 words then you are not going to rank on the first page.
So if you want organic traffic from search engines then write detailed long posts.
#Short posts: short posts are really good for a topic that doesn’t need too much explanation.
They grab people’s attention quickly and will help you to interlink your articles.
These are supporting articles that help you boost your main pillar article.
#Long posts: Long posts will help your visitors to understand a complex topic in detail.
These posts will help you bring some good amount of organic traffic to your site.
Many blogs that accept Guest posting accept only detailed long posts that should contain more than 1000 words depending upon the topic.
Engaging with your readers
Engage with other people who comment on your blog. Strong relationships are the basis for successful blogging.
Not only does this help increase interest on your blogging page but will also help you for link building purpose.
Many of the white hat link building opportunities are possible when you engage with your readers through conversation or by starting a conversation with others in your niche.
Promoting your content in Social media
You have initiated blogging and published a great article on your site. Now, what?
Promote it on social media and share them as much as you can. Why?
Because your blog is quite new, search engines will take some time to index your site. Sometimes it will take more than a day to index your article for the relevant keyword.
Not only that, your article in SERP will jump from one place to another (Google Dance).
Sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Stumble Upon can drive viral traffic to your site. So share your article on each and every social networking platform.
Quality vs Quantity
Many bloggers blog 3-4 times a week. On a positive note, this will help your subscribers with new content every week but the problem is you cannot post in-depth blog posts.
Search for any high competitive keyword and check the top 30 results from Google. You see that most of the articles contain a minimum of 1000 words and maximum 6000 words.
So if you are posting 3-4 articles every week which are short in length (less than 500 words), then forget about your organic traffic (Honest truth).
Too many promotional posts
In order to get money from blogs, people rely on different monetization techniques.
This will help you to monetize your blog so that you can pay for the expenses. If you rely too much upon promotional posts, your visitor will lose trust because you are trying to convince them every time about a new product as you are getting paid for promoting it on your blog.
Once they lose trust on your site then it is almost impossible to earn them back as your customers. So, try to avoid this simple blogging mistake.
Aggressive pop-ups
Popups, who doesn’t love popups?
Well, I know a lot of people who hate popups and the worst part of it is even though you subscribe to their blog or freebie they keep popping the same, again and again.
Some of the popups don’t even close even after you hit X.
Popup subscription forms really help to get new subscribers to your blog when you give a freebie in return to those who subscribe to your blog.
Hide the popups for existing customers using cookies.
But if you use too many popups then there is a high chance that they are not going to return to your site.
Give them a solution
The main purpose of blogging is to serve the right people with right information.
If the blog is about movies then the purpose of the blog is to give as much information about films/reviews…
Likewise, every blog must understand what their audience requires and whichever problems they are facing.
Your goal should always be focused on how to solve their problem.
Example: Imagine you have a site about “blogging” then your main objective should always be solving other blogger’s mistakes and problems.
Join any blogging groups where the activity is high. Check every day about blogging mistakes and problems faced by other bloggers and then choose a topic.
You can ask them in the group about their problems and then choose the topic that can help them.
There are many new bloggers out there who have started a newly launched WordPress site.
The next thing, they will post is all basic questions in the Facebook groups like setting up Yoast, Blog security, SEO, SEM topics, etc.
There are many posts about blog security and setting up Yoast on many blogs right, so why do you think they ask the same topic again in the Facebook groups?
People like to have someone whom they can trust and someone who can assist them personally when they face a problem.
Many of the authority blogs reply to the comments but do not spend time on Facebook groups where you can convert them into your loyal customer.
Lack of Security
YAY! I created a new blog – New Blogger
I am a hacker and I want to hack one more site – Hacker
I was active on many Facebook groups and more than 50% of the new bloggers focus on the site appearance after launching their blogs.
During the last week a blogger has posted on a Facebook group about the same. He has launched a blog and it has been hacked the day it has been launched. Why because, he did not install any security plugins and has focused more on the blog style.
It is not that hard to hack a site when they do not know how to secure your wordpress site.
So focus on security first and later you can change your site appearance.
No backups
Once you have started blogging make sure you back up your site as much as you can.
There are a lot of horror stories out there who have lost more than 1 year of their blogging work and have started from the scratch, because they never took backups frequently and relied on hosting companies which backup occasionally.
Too many plugins
There are many plugins in self hosted WordPress site that overwhelm new bloggers who start installing all the plugins recommended by many users.
Installing too many plugins will impact your site and this will reduce your site speed. This will also impact your site performance and will hurt your site rankings as we all know that speed is one of the ranking factors.
Instead, check other sites which are similar to your niche and find out what they are using. Once you have figured out all the plugins used by other sites then filter out those and install which you need the most.
No matter what niche you are in you need the following plugins
Yoast
Security (I themes security, Wordfence)
Cache plugin (w3 Total Cache,wp fastest cache)
Image compression (wpsmushit, Eww Image optimizer cloud)
Social share plugin.
Site Architecture
Site architecture plays a huge role in a website and helps in website ranking. It also assists users who are navigating your site. This will increase your site authority by passing link equity distribution and facilitates search engine crawlers to crawl your site efficiently.
This will help you to interlink your popular posts within other articles and help you to boost your SEO and enable sitelinks in the SERPs. (You cannot request sitelinks, Google does this automatically)
No Categories or Too many categories
Lets us assume that you published a great article about SEO and your page does not add categories.
The user wants to find other related posts about SEO but there is no way out there except scrolling down to all the pages.
But if your site has categories and related posts then the user can easily access those articles with one click.
So use your categories wisely and do not add too many of them. If you have a blog about multiple topics then create sub categories for each main category.
Guest posting opportunities
“I want to take some time off and will not be able to spend much time on your blog. What should I do?”
This is the most popular question I come across on many Facebook groups. Allow your friends or your family members who can write similar topics which are related to your posts.
If they do not know the topic then let other people in your niche Guest post on your website.
This will help you as well as the author who does guest posting on your blog.
Conclusion : These are some of the most common blogging mistakes and I hope I have clarified some of your problems here. If there is something you would like to know more about them, post here in the comment section.
Common Blogging Mistakes Every Blogger Should Avoid
krishna chaithanya