Common blogging mistakes to avoid

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to grow traffic and build a reputation online. With the increasing effectiveness of content marketing, more and more businesses are investing their time and money in writing and promoting blogs. 

This includes blogging for their own site as well as carrying out blogger outreach activities and guest post services. Your business blog can make for most of your site’s organic traffic and help you build an authority in your niche. However, many beginner bloggers are prone to making certain common mistakes that can jeopardize your position in the industry.

In this post, we will discuss the most common blogging mistakes that bloggers make.

What is a blog?

Simply put, a blog is a tool that can help develop an online presence, attract leads, and engage with an audience. It’s often a series of editorial content centered around a central topic that demonstrates industry expertise — for instance, a catering company might write blog posts like “The 11 Best Appetizers to Serve to a Crowd” or “Stress-Free Dinner Parties: Recipes that are Prepared Ahead of Time”.

Blogs can help drive traffic to your website, convert that traffic into leads, establish authority in your industry, and ultimately grow your business. In fact, organizations are 13x more likely to see positive ROI by prioritizing blogging.

Common blogging mistakes

Here are some common blogging mistakes that should be avoided.

1. Picking a bad domain name

One of the first things you’ll do when starting a blog is pick a domain name. Your domain name is the address searchers will type into their browser to find your website. It’s critical to pick the right domain name from the beginning so people can find your site easily. Here are some tips to help you:

• Choose an available domain name. When you register for web hosting with HostGator, you get a free domain name. You can search here to find out which names are available. If the dot com version of your desired domain name isn’t available, consider a top-level domain.
• Keep it simple. The shorter your domain name is, the easier it will be for people to remember. It’s also essential to leave out words that people commonly misspell. Finally, keep in mind how multiple words look when they are squished together. You don’t want someone to misconstrue your domain name because it means more than one thing.
• Pick your brand name. The best domain name to choose is the name of your business, brand, or yourself if you’re your own brand.

2. Picking an ugly or outdated theme

WordPress is an open-source platform. This means anyone can develop themes and plugins for you to use. The advantage is you have free and affordable access to so many tools. You don’t have to know how to code to get a nice design and advance functionality on your website. You only have to know how to search for a theme and plugins and press the install and activate buttons. 

On the opposite side of the same coin, not all developers are equally talented, and it’s possible to pick a theme that is garbage. Some WordPress themes are limited, outdated, or bogged down with unnecessary code snippets, which will make your website run slowly. The best alternative is to choose a good WordPress theme from the beginning. Pick a theme that is:

• Customizable
• Speedy
• Mobile-friendly
• SEO-friendly
• Responsive
• Compatible with all browsers
• Updated regularly

It’s hard to go wrong with themes WordPress suggests. Other themes to check out include Divi, Elementor, and Ultra.

3. Choosing the wrong topics

Easily the most common mistake I see in business blogging is companies not writing on topics relevant to their audience. They’re not using their blog to answer questions their prospects have as they navigate their way through a purchase decision. Instead, these companies use their blog to talk about themselves.

They write content that is more fitting as company news than as educational content. And for the most part, your audience doesn’t really care who got promoted to VP of Sales, or what local sports team you sponsored, or who won your annual three-legged race. They’re trying to solve problems of their own, not watch you high-five yourself.

4. Not publishing frequently (or consistently) enough

If you’re going to blog, ought to do it right. And a big part of doing it right is doing it frequently and on a consistent basis. If you’re only publishing once per month or sporadically with quick floods of content followed by long droughts and the occasional sprinkle, you’re not going to get great results.

This doesn’t mean you have to publish every day. Readers typically don’t care how often you publish as long as there is some posting pattern. They only want to know when they can expect new content from you and for you to deliver on your promise. Remember, it’s much better to write well-researched, helpful, and engaging posts less often than it is to post anything every day.

5. Not writing for your audience

The best way to capture your target audience’s ongoing attention is to write about topics that interest them, not you. To find your target audience, look at your current customer base. Use your CRM, data, and market research to determine your customers’ demographics, interests, favorite social media platforms, behavioral patterns, and purchasing decisions.

Above all, dig deep to find out what your readers’ pain points are. Ask yourself what problems your customers have, and then write posts that speak to those pain points. When you’re focused on writing blog posts that entertain, educate, or connect with your target audience, you’ll see boosts in traffic.

6. Not optimizing your posts for search

The primary purpose of a blog is to create a meaningful relationship with your readers. As mentioned above, the topics you pick must resonate with your audience.

However, it’s also critical to remember that it won’t do anyone much good if internet searchers can’t find your content.There are several ways to get more traffic, but optimizing your posts for search is one of the best. Consider the following SEO stats:

• Google’s organic search is responsible for 59.2% of the world’s web traffic.
• The first result in Google gets approximately 32% of all clicks.
• Companies that blog receive 97% more backlinks to their site.

Organic search listings matter. If you want Google to find, crawl, and index your content, you have to learn SEO best practices for bloggers.

7. Not using social media to promote your blog

While stats show that organic search results drive 300% more traffic to websites than social media, it doesn’t mean social media isn’t extremely valuable. This is especially true if you already have a social media following but are still growing your organic search ranking efforts.

Social media is one of the most popular ways people consume and share content. And, the global audience isn’t small either. Statista estimates the number of social media users will increase to 4.41 billion by 2025.

If you don’t have tons of followers, you can boost blog exposure with social media advertising. It’s worth your time to engage new followers via advertising, considering that after following a new company on social media, consumers will continue to engage with the brand. 

In fact, 91% of new followers will visit the brand’s website, 89% will make a purchase, and 85% will recommend the brand. While you’ll naturally share your posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest, remember you can leverage new platforms to drive traffic to your blog as well. 

8. No next action

When you write an article, always keep in mind what the next logical action your audience should take.

• Are there other articles they should read?
• Do you have any premium content that would be of value to them?
• Is there a webinar or trial they can sign up for?

All too often, blog articles end without having the next action in place.Unless they can make a purchase directly from that page, it shouldn’t be the end of the journey. Keep them engaged. Keep them learning from you. You can list out a few articles they should read next and/or include a call-to-action for a relevant offer that can take them further down the funnel.

9. Not updating content

How often do you revisit older content to tweak, update, or revise it? If you’re like most bloggers, I’m guessing that once you hit publish, you quickly move onto the next article and forget the previous. 

It’s one thing to get your content to the first page, after that the challenge is keeping it there. That’s why it’s important to revisit older pieces of content (especially high performing ones) and update them with new information to keep them ranking. If an article consistently generates new traffic and converts leads for you, you’re not going to want those results to slip. 

How do you decide when to update content? You could set a reminder to update articles a year from their publish date so you don’t forget. The beginning of a new year is another great time to sit down and revisit older content (especially articles that have the year printed in the title).

And any time new information emerges or old information is disproven is the perfect time for an update. For example, I recently updated an article I wrote of a review of SEMrush when they made tweaks to the interface. I also updated my Google My Business Tips article when new tools were added.

10. Not repurposing content

Let’s say you have a great article that gets lots of traffic and helps convert leads. What else could you be doing with that content? How could those same ideas in long print form be converted into new mediums to reach a larger audience?

There’s a good chance people are searching for similar answers on YouTube (the second largest search engine).

11. Not defining your target audience

For business bloggers, the most common blogging mistake they can commit is to blog without defining a target audience. The target audience for any business is the group of people who are most likely to be interested in your business offerings because it fulfills their specific needs.

For example, the target audience for an infant food brand will be new parents. So, whenever a new parent comes across your product online and visits your website to know more about your brand, they will come across blog posts that might be useful for them, such as posts on child nutrition, parenting tips, etc. This will help them relate to your brand more easily.

12. Not implementing persuasive content writing techniques

Your content copy has to have a perfect balance of information and persuasion to make a sale. Your blog section is the only part where you share valuable information for your audience and try to offer them value. Beginner bloggers sometimes write sales copy in the name of a blog post. But when you do that, you won’t be able to add value to your content, and it’s also not recommended from an SEO point of view.

Writing promotional content and promoting the same in the name can cause Google to penalize your site. Google considers E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustability) as a ranking factor for websites. This holds especially true for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) sites that deal with niches like medical, finance, and legal. Thus, you need to make sure that you are writing content after doing thorough research on a given topic.

However, it’s also true that content copy that only consists of facts doesn’t appeal to most readers. Therefore, you need to ensure that your content is also enjoyable. To write an interesting and persuasive piece of content, you should follow the AIDA rule. It’s an advertising formula that roughly translates into A-Attention, I-interest, D-Desire, and A-Action.

So, your content should first be able to grab the attention of the audience through an attractive headline. Next, your content intro should be able to grab their interest and persuade them to read further. The body of your content should be able to develop a desire to purchase your product in the reader’s mind, and the conclusion should provide a clear call-to-action (CTA) for the reader to take action.

Conclusion

Blogging is a very profitable career option for individuals and an absolute necessity for businesses focusing on content marketing. If you take into account these common mistakes of bloggers, you’ll be able to develop an improved blogging strategy and drive revenue to your business.

Once you start blogging, it’s easy to forget that blogging isn’t just about getting new visitors to your blog. One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it helps you steadily grow an email list of subscribers you can share your new content with. Each time you publish a new blog post, your subscribers will give you that initial surge of traffic which, in turn, will drive those posts’ long-term success.