A WordPress blog starting is quite exciting, but certain mistakes can prevent it from attaining the top ranking in search engines. Ranking drives traffic to your website and increases conversions. So, the first step is to choose a good hosting provider and a theme that is compatible with your content well. Always keep WordPress and your plugins updated to avoid crashes and security issues. Your all plugins are perfectly working after various time testing, promising safety and proper functionality of your website. Your blog will stand on top in ranking if you follow the guidelines in this guide and avoid the common mistakes that can impact your WordPress blog.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A WordPress blog passes through several phases during its formation. Hosting selection, best-fit theme, plugin use and their optimum settings and SEO are basic and essential steps in the growth of a WordPress blog.
A poor hosting provider can directly impact your website negatively. Imagine, a reader clicks on your webpage and it is unavailable because your hosting is down at the moment. It sends negative signals to the search engine.
SEO-optimized websites perform better in search engines and gain the trust of readers, which leads to trust score increases in search engines. A poor SEO can directly harm your WordPress blog and de-rank it.
Similar mistakes are discussed in this blog post that can directly impact your WordPress blog.
Avoid these common mistakes to build your top-ranking online presence in your industry.
Also Read: WordPress Child Theme, How To Create, Common Mistakes To Avoid, and Advance Customizations
Writing a Boring Introduction
An introduction is essential to build users’ interest in the blog post. It is the face of a blog. A reader may get bored while reading the dull introduction, before reaching the heart of your content. It often lacks a context, relevance, or hook that aligns with the interest of the reader or the intent of their search.
Solution
The best way to tackle this problem is to write an interesting introduction that sparks the reader’s curiosity about the benefits they will gain from reading your complete post. Start with amazing statistics, point out a problem or a question that deepens the reader’s interest, and feel knowledgeable enough to read the post till the end.
Missing Proper Headings for SEO
Your content is not performing well enough, another main reason is that you are not using proper SEO-friendly headings and subheadings in structuring your content for both readers and search engines. This reflects a poor user experience and hence decreases visibility.
Settlement
You are advised to use SEO-friendly headings and sub-headings to construct a meaningful structure for your content. Cover your primary and secondary keywords in your H1, H2, and H3 to boost SEO. The heading should be relevant to the content written under it. It helps to understand the content, both readers and search engines, and add value to your post.
Publishing Low-Quality Content
Incomplete research to write content, poorly written or invaluable content leads to low-quality post content. It often fails to engage the users and fails to deliver value to the reader. It poses a negative impact on your credibility. This is a serious issue as low-value content may mislead the users.
Solution
To avoid this problem, you should do complete research, and read and understand the content completely. Then you should create knowledgeable and well-structured content that is insightful and answering directly the questions of the readers. High-value content is the pillar of reader engagement and your SEO success.
Failing to Add Meta Tags
Meta tags are described as snippets of text in a page’s content as they are not visible in the content but are present only in the page’s code. Ignoring them can impact the indexing of your content and the search results.
Fixture
You should use your title tags under 60 characters and the meta description should be under 160 characters. Use your primary keyword smartly in the title tag and meta description for better SEO practice. Always use a hook in your title tag to increase CTR. Keep checking Google’s updates regularly and update your content accordingly.
Missing Alt Text in Image Optimization
Image optimization plays a vital role in SEO best practices. Images missing alt text are a missed opportunity for SEO. Alt text makes the search engine understand the context of the image, which leads to quick indexing and better accessibility.
Solution
To address this problem, add brief, expressive alt text to each image, embedding appropriate keywords where needed. This not only boosts SEO but also presents a user-friendly structure of content for users with visual impairments.
Lacking Internal and External Links
Linking is the best practice to increase the visibility and trust factor of your post. If you miss out on linking in or out of your website, you are depriving your website of SEO benefits.
Solution
Internal links spread the link juice to your website’s different pages and readers can jump easily from one page to another page of interest from that internal linking. For internal linking, you should at least add three other pages of your website to unlock extended exploration.
You should use external links from credible sources for your posts. external linking also adds value to your webpage and elevates its credibility.
Poor Category Selection
Categorize are the building blocks of a website’s content. If you are not constructing categories and do not add posts in specified categories, it reflects an ill-organized website giving a poor user experience. Categorize maintain the structure of your content and make it easy to navigate.
Regulation
There should be relevant categories for each type of post separately to direct and help readers to reach related content easily. This step rich the user experience and boosts SEO as you group similar ideas and topics.
Promotion of Blogs on Social Media Platforms
Social signals on your website are also one of the key aspects for driving readers to your content. Sometimes you perform SEO practices effectively but the competition is so high that you are not getting the desired ranking.
If you are not promoting your blog on different social media platforms, you are missing a huge amount of traffic. Failing to post it on social media can significantly reduce your blog’s reach and engagement.
Solution
Promote your content regularly on social media platforms for your targeted audience. Participate in discussions and engage your followers to divert traffic from social media to your website.
Ignoring Mobile Optimization
There is a 60-70% of the user share of mobile users in traffic in search engines. This is a huge amount of traffic. Neglecting this amount of traffic and not optimizing your website for mobile users, putting a non-mobile-friendly blog, is a huge failure of your website. It leads to lower rankings and often results in de-indexing.
Solution
If you want to get the major share of mobile traffic, you should make your WordPress mobile responsive, and optimize your blog size with the mobile screen size. Test your blog’s mobile responsiveness continuously. But also do not forget its optimization for other devices too.
Also Read: Top 30 Free Minimal WordPress Themes Every Designer & Developer needs to know
The Content Updation
Writing a blog and forgetting about it forever is the best SEO practice, which costs your blog de-ranking or de-indexing. Outdated content may misguide the readers and hurt your SEO badly. Information advances, and so should your content.
Solution
Read the relevant latest blogs and news about your niche and keep updating your posts. This not only increases accuracy but also offers you a chance of higher and better ranking.
Choosing Non-Trendy Blog Topics
Crafting content on topics that are not related to your target audience, is the worst ever thing you can do to your blog. You will not get attraction and there will be no engagement on your blogs.
Research the relevant and latest trendy topics using tools like Google Trends to understand the interests of your target audience. Write your content around those latest topics and it will elevate your ranking and provide you with better ranking and engagement.
Solution:
Use tools like Google Trends, BuzzSumo, and industry news sites to identify trending topics in your niche. Create content around high-demand subjects to boost engagement and rankings.
A Weak CTA Button
A call to action (CTA) is essential for guiding and directing users on what to do next. A poor CTA in your blog can cost you decreased engagement and conversions.
Solution
Your content should contain a strong CTA that embarks readers to take that specific action. It may be a comment, post sharing, click on a relevant article or email sign-up.
Conclusion
Blogging on WordPress offers immense potential if executed correctly. By avoiding these common mistakes and implementing the solutions provided, you can significantly enhance your blog’s quality and visibility. Keep learning, adapting, and engaging with your audience to grow your blog into a trusted resource.
Also Read: Top Premium WordPress Plugins and Themes
