Many people are inspired by pro bloggers who are making a living out of it, and just by reading their success stories many people choose to make their fate in the world of blogging. From the first look it may seem to be an easy task, but in fact, it is not so simple to make a successful blog and drive a lot of traffic to it as they say “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.
There are many elements which need to be addressed to make a successful blog, and many of these are simple yet important takes which need to be taken care of. I will be telling you some of the mistakes and also their fixes which most of the newbie bloggers tend to make whose consequences are discouraging results, and eventually, many bloggers quit.
1. Networking with other bloggers
Networking for your blog online is as important as networking in real life. Networking with other bloggers creates a reputation for you, and at many times when any of your blogger friends likes a post that you have written, he will mention your posts on his blog which will give you a backlink from your niche and traffic too.
2. Cheap or free WordPress Theme
It is not recommended that you should pay for a good theme, but you should check for the faulty ones. Regardless, if they are free or not. You might have to put in some money, but a good WordPress theme would always pay off in the long run as it will also aid in giving better loading speed. We know that WordPress keeps on updating at regular intervals and free themes or even cheap ones do not have regular updates which are why they do not support the newer versions of WordPress. Vouch for the default themes of WordPress, and once you are in a position to upgrade, then I would recommend the Genesis Framework of Studiopress.
3. Choose a Topic from Your Niche
Choosing the right topic to write about and that too from the niche of your site is very important. When a reader comes to your site, he/she would be expecting something similar to your website’s niche, and it may make them run away. If there is a very appealing topic that you want to write about, guest post on some related website or even start a new.
4. Poor Web Hosting
Always try to get your web hosting from a trusted web host whose service is never down and capable of handling a significant amount of traffic. If someone visits your blog and its server is down, then you are self-destructing your blog. There are a lot of affordable options like hostgator.com, godaddy.com, bluehost.com, etc.
5. Over Advertised Blog
Advertising is usually the primary source of income for most bloggers, but it should never be undone. Lots of advertisement and promotion banners create an unprofessional and spammy image of your site, and the user may never come back to your site again. So, it is important to keep the number of advertisements in moderation.
6. Your Blog is not Mobile Responsive
It is imperative to have a mobile responsive site so that mobile users do not find any difficulty in reading your blog. Replace your current theme with a mobile responsive theme.
If you want to test a few pages, you can use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
7. You don’t Write Consistently
Writing consistently is part of the game. If you publish articles after a few weeks, then readers might think you think that you are about to abandon your blog and to publish fresh and unique content and that too in a consistent manner is appreciated by Google.
8. Simplify your writing
Simple yet correctly written blog posts are readers favorite. Adding unnecessary and difficult vocabulary can complicate what you are trying to convey to your reader and can leave a bad impression about your blog.
9. You are writing for search engines
Doing SEO for your blog is an important thing to be taken care of, but it should not be the sole purpose of your articles. Your readers are humans, and they would quickly notice if your post is poorly written and stuffed with keywords, even search engines now don’t like these posts. Don’t bother about SEO in your posts, if your posts are high quality and well written then automatically search engine will give them good rankings.
10. Security of your blog is a low priority
Web security is essential and even though WordPress upgrades its security shortfalls but everything is not covered for. Adding features like IP filtering, reducing the number of login trials, etc. would strengthen your site security. Secure your blog by Installing the plugin known as iThemes Security.
11. Lack of research
To impress your readers, it is eminent to have made an in-depth analysis of your topic. You should give your readers an impression that you know the ins and outs of what you are telling them about.
12. Your post lacks an introduction
Whatever type of post you are about to write, whether it is a list or a paragraph one it should have an introductory paragraph or two which give an idea to the readers what is the post going to be about.
13. Your website doesn’t have a sitemap
Users Sitemap & Archive – WordPress Plugin
A sitemap is the structure or map of your site, and it is to be submitted to the Webmasters Tools powered by Google so that the contents of your site are known to Google, and the contents get properly indexed. Without a sitemap, the contents of the site can never be indexed. You can use the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin to generate a sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster Tool.
14. Publishing lots of posts
If you are publishing a lot of posts daily, it is going to do you no good. A large number of articles means that you are sacrificing quality while generating quantity. A few high quality and well-written posts are worth more than a lot of low-quality posts so make sure you don’t stress out yourself and maintain quality in your articles.
15. You ignore what readers comment on your posts
Ignoring comments of your readers shows that you don’t care what anybody thinks about your posts. If the comment is a positive one, then you should thank them and engage with them and if the comment is a negative one, note what the reader complains about and assures him that it’s never going to happen again. Replying to each comment shows the readers your sense of commitment.
16. Your heading is boring
The heading is the primary difference between a hit and flop post. Heading should always be an interesting one, something which creates a spark into readers’ eyes and attracts them to open the post page. Perfect headings are concise and striking.
17. Long paragraphs
The readers more like short paragraphs and pointer than the longer ones. They are easier to scan and sift through which maintains a reader’s interest in your blog post.
18. Non-moderated comments
Comments should always be moderated because there are a lot of spam bots and even real people who spam, just to get a backlink for their site or for the sole purpose of attracting traffic. You should carefully monitor each comment, and only allow those comments which add value to the discussion being made.
19. Non-scannable content
Most of the people scan the blog post before reading the entire post in detail. Having content in a well-written format which includes an excellent introductory paragraph, short yet informative paragraphs, some related pictures and a useful conclusion would make the visitor become a reader.
20. Check your post before publishing it
Checking for errors in your posts is essential, publishing posts which are full of errors leave a negative image of your blog to the readers. As you can witness yourself, you can rarely see a mistake in the posts of most of the pro-bloggers. They proofread every time they are about to publish a post on the internet.
21. Your blog lacks an “About” page
Telling your readers about yourself and your personal life story can build a strong bond between you and the reader. You can put an opt-in box here to get more subscribers since everyone visits the about page when visiting a new blog.
22. Discard unnecessary plugins
Take out some time to look for all the unnecessary plugins and get rid of them. Doing this will in return aid you while you are trying to improve your site speed. Go to Plugins, then Installed Plugins and deactivate the unused plugins and then delete them.
23. Catchy Logo
The logo is the identity of your brand. Create a simple yet meaningful logo which would make an impression in the users’ mind. They will remember your blog and its logo if it is an amazing one.
24. Stop checking your web page analytics
You might hamper your productivity by constantly refreshing your analytics. Check your analytics not more than 2-3 times a day.
25. Don’t have a favicon for you blog
Favicon is the small image beside the title of your blog on the browser’s tab, it gives and a professional look to your blog and makes it easily recognizable among other opened tabs. When getting your logo designed, ask your graphic designer to make a favicon for your site too.
26. You don’t do internal linking
Internal linking has two plus points: 1) You will have a much better bounce rate because whenever you internally link something, you are letting the user know that you have some other relevant material as well. 2) You will have better SEO. Check your older posts and link them to any relevant material that you have recently posted and make it a habit.
27. Installed WordPress in a subfolder
It is better to change your subfolder when you install WordPress because otherwise, your blog homepage would look like “http://www.myblog.com/wordpress”, which obviously doesn’t look good. Install your WordPress using the root directory and don’t use the subdirectory.
28. Put social sharing buttons
Social media is a great way to get targeted traffic to your blog, having lots of likes or subscribers of your blog page can boost search engine friendly traffic for your blog. Putting up straightforward and easy to use social sharing buttons can rapidly increase your page’s shares and likes. If your blog is hosted on WordPress, then you can easily install great plugins which are specially made for this purpose.
29. You don’t write how to’s
How to tutorials are very popular amongst the readers. Many people search for different problems they face and usually prefers a how to a tutorial which addresses to their particular issue. If someone searches for the problem whose solution is posted by you in the form of how-to posts then it is highly likely that he will end up on your blog.
30. You use pop-up ads
Placing certain advertisements on your blog can be quite irritating for the visitors especially when you have pop-up ads in your site because they tend to block all the content written on your blog. Moreover, you do not benefit from these pop-up ads even in the long run. The benefit is not worth reducing your visitors.
31. Having so many categories
The primary purpose of categorization is to enable you to list things in an organized way, but creating a new one every time would not serve the purpose; in fact, it will make it more difficult for the readers to look for the relevant material. Create a few distinct let’s say 4 to 5 categories and be precise. Define a new category only if needed.
32. Slow site speed
If the site loads in 3 or more seconds then a huge chunk of the users would leave it; 40 % to be precise. SEO depends on the user experience, and a site which has a slow loading speed means that the user is unsatisfied, hence poor SEO. The reason behind this is that most of the users lack the sense of patience. Firstly, see if the web hosting you have is reliable or not as mentioned earlier. Secondly, quicken your site by installing a cache plugin.
33. Find the right audience
To get a good conversion rate, target the people from your niche. Attract traffic who would have an interest in your niche then only you will be able to get a good conversion rate. Promote your blog on similar forums or sites.
34. Blog lacking a contact form
Aid your users by putting up a form, so that every visitor gets a notification through email and in case they want to get through to you they can call you up for an ad or maybe a sale. Keep a simple contact form on your site and never use a complicated captcha making it easier for them to get to you.
35. Analytic tools
Keeping track of the number of visitors visiting your site daily is very important because it will operate as a feedback to you as to how well are you doing. For this reason, you need a web traffic analytics, and the good news is that you can have an excellent analytics for free. Sign up for the Google Analytics; it is the best.
36. Change your default tagline
If the tagline mentioned above is also your tagline, then configure your blog and change it because it is the default tagline of WordPress. To fix it go to Settings, then General. Identify the tagline and change it.
37. You are not storing your images locally
Earlier in the days, the webmaster would host the images on some sites externally to any image hosting firm and very often one would notice a phrase saying that the “Image is unavailable”. Nowadays, storage is quite cheap, and web hosting also provides us with unlimited storage, which gives us all the more reason to host our image and keep it stored. Upload all your externally hosted images into your WordPress media.
38. Using the default username and password should be avoided
It is better to change your default username and always try to keep a different username. The password should be secure containing a variety of different symbols, letters, and numbers.
39. Not testing site features
Always test your freshly added plugins by running some basic test to make sure that everything is working fine or not. Whenever you add a new plugin or a widget, check out the basic working of your site.
40. Broken links
If a reference link in any article of yours pointing to some other site ceases to exist anymore, then it is known as a broken link. It is important to find such links because they severely affect your user experience. Get a Broken Link Checker plugin and always keep a check on your links.
41. Get your images optimized
A big size image is harmful to site speed as the larger file would take longer to load, so it is wise to scale your image size down to a smaller size. WP Smush.it is a great plugin to Resize your images.
42. Indexing unnecessary pages
Sometimes there are some pages on your blog that don’t need to be indexed and having them indexed would not serve your purpose. If you want to de-index a page, configure it on Robots.txt. By doing this, you are limiting the web crawlers from going to that page. In case, that page is already indexed, you can remove that URL by using Webmaster’s tool of URL removal.
43. Background music on your blog
It is a bad practice to put up some music as a background to your site because it can happen that you might be the only person who is enjoying that music. The user would no be able to turn it off, and there are chances he might prefer, not visiting your site at all. Never put any music forcibly on your blog.
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