Some Blogging Mistakes

1. You don’t focus on Google updates

Google is known for its frequent algorithm updates. Each time it updates a new algorithm (be it Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird), you will either lose or gain more website traffic. Nothing happens if you gain more traffic but the problem is most of the times, you will lose a lot of traffic from search engines after an update from Google.

Most bloggers unfortunately don’t spend time on these Google updates and they blame themselves for not getting enough traffic from Google. In other hand, if you spend some time learning few SEO basics and hone your SEO writing skills, you can drastically improve your organic traffic without having to sweat much.

Here are few ideas on improving your traffic after every update from Google.

• Always give top priority to creating highly relevant content that is helpful for your readers. Stop writing for the search engine bots. Don’t ever try to stuff your pages with the same keywords, keyword stuffing is the surefire way to get penalized by Google Panda updates.
• Read the beginner’s guide to SEO by Moz. It’s one of the most comprehensive and widely read articles on Google.
• Subscribe to all the major SEO blogs including Moz, Search Engine Journal, Matt Cutts, Search Engine Land etc. to spy on all the latest updates from Google.
• Also read this helpful guide to recover from Google Panda updates if you’re ever hit by Panda!

2. Your web hosting sucks

Whether you believe it or not, your web hosting plays a crucial role in your website’s success. If you are not getting the website traffic as you deserve, that might be because you are using a web hosting service that is either cheap or unreliable.

You may think that does website hosting really affects SEO. In fact, it’s true that your traffic and loading time depends majorly upon the hosting service you choose.

So don’t go for a cheap or free web hosting service just to save yourself a few bucks, it may cost you even more in the long run. If you are really serious about making money online, invest wisely on the reliable hosting service.

If you are facing frequent downtime issues, immediately consider moving to abetter web hosting service something like Bluehost or HostGator. These hosting services are not only used widely but they are in the hosting industry for over a decade now and they offer excellent features to their customers.

3. Your website is not user friendly

One of the biggest blogging mistakes most beginners make while launching their blogs is they don’t focus on their website user experience. Bad user experience can kill your readership and can badly hurt your SEO.

Your site is not mobile responsive: Make sure to create a mobile friendly version of your blog or website. You can use plugins like WP touch to easily make your site mobile responsive. If you want to increase your overall website traffic, make sure your website is loading pages smoothly across all the devices including smartphones, tablets and PC’s.

Your site is taking ages to load: If your site takes more than 3 to 4 seconds to load your web pages, your visitors will find another place to search what they want. Online readers are extremely lazy and they will abandon a site if the loading times are slower. So speed up your website by using a faster web host, less plugins and a installing a cache plugin.

Your site is not search friendly: Make sure your navigation is easy. Showcase all the important pages such as about us, contact etc on above the fold to easily get found by your website visitors. Use search engine friendly themes such as Thesis or Genesis framework to improve your search traffic. Also use SEO plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast to optimize your blog posts and web pages for search engines.

4. You don’t have clear Call To Actions (CTA’s)

A Call To Action is a graphic or phrase that provides a link to the clear action that has to be taken by a visitor on a blog. I have discussed plenty of time about the importance of having call to action (CTA) on my blog.

Never end a blog post without having a CTA. You can use anything from asking your readers to like your page on Facebook to subscribing to your email updates.

If you are not using proper call to actions on your blog, you are not really engaging with your readers. User interaction is the single most element that will make or break any blog’s success.

Here are few solid ideas for including call to actions on your sites.

• Make sure to use attention grabbing headlines on your blog posts and web pages.
• Always call your blog readers to take action after reading each blog post by giving them an email subscription option to subscribe to your email updates or share your posts on social media or even commenting on your posts.

5. You don’t perform keyword research

Finding profitable keywords is the first step to increasing your website traffic from search engines. Unfortunately most beginners don’t focus on keyword research.

They keep on writing blog posts without worrying about the usage of proper keywords and in the end they get pitiful of traffic that won’t make any difference on their website success.

So how to perform proper keyword research like a SEO expert, here are few solid tips to get started.

• Use keyword research tools such as Keyword Planner, Long Tail Pro or SEMrush to get the best suggestions for the keywords you want to rank for.
• Always make sure to choose the keywords that are of less competitive. Ranking for huge competitive keywords is almost impossible especially if you have a fairly new blog.
• Prefer long tail keywords almost every time you are doing keyword research. Long tail keywords generally contain more than 2 keywords and are often rank well on Google search results.

6. You spend more time on content creation rather than promotion

This is one of the most dumbest blogging mistakes anyone can make. Most blogging gurus suggest that to increase traffic you have to publish more contents on your blog. Is that really true? No, it’s not!

If posting more articles can send you more blog traffic then everyone will be updating their blogs multiple times a day. The real secret to increasing your website traffic is to create less content and promote more.

Make sure you reach to thousands of people with each and every article you publish. Use these promotion strategies to get more exposure to your blog posts.

• Whenever you hit “Publish” button, immediately share your stuff on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.
• Use your email lists to notify your subscribers about your newly published blog posts. If you don’t have an email list yet, build one as soon as possible.
• Find and promote on the blogging forums in your niche. Actively start engaging with other bloggers and make sure to use your latest blog posts in your social media accounts.
• Tweet your latest posts multiple times a day to reach out to more people.
• Link to other bloggers in your niche. Make sure your links are all relevant. And when you publish your posts, outreach to all the bloggers who you have linked to. This is also called “blogger outreach strategy” widely used to get incoming links and social shares from other bloggers.

So there you go! These are the 6 blogging blunders that are you costing you website traffic and sales. Avoid them at all costs if you want to build a successful blog that makes money.

Final thoughts about the blogging mistakes to avoid

Choose your web hosting wisely and always focus on the latest updates from Google and make necessary changes to improve your overall website search traffic.

Always learn SEO as search engine optimization is an evolving process that needs proper SEO writing skills to master website traffic generation. Focus on improving your blog readership instead of solely focusing on SEO. If you make your readers happy, Google will always reward you.

Don’t quit if you are not getting enough traffic and sales. Building a profitable blog from scratch always takes time and making money blogging is not a get-rich-quick-scheme.

So what are your thoughts about the blogging mistakes mentioned in this post? Do you make any of them? If you like this post, please share it with others so they can benefit.