Highlighted below in this article are some of the most popular mistakes that bloggers (whether old or new) make, which affect the performance and ranking of their blogs. These mistakes must be avoided at all cost if you want to make any serious headway from blogging.
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Choosing the wrong topics
Writing the wrong topic has to be the most common mistake bloggers make is writing on topics relevant to their audience. Initially, your blog should answer questions that your audience and prospective clients might have, especially if you own a business or sales blog that directly or indirectly led your readers to make a purchase decision. But instead, you spend the whole blog post to talk about yourself. For example, if you write for students they may be interested in coursework help service, etc. You have to understand your audience is n your blog to solve problems of their own and not to read about who did what during the company’s dinner or who got promoted and what local sports team you support.
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Not frequently publishing (or consistently) enough
Another common mistake is inconsistency, and most bloggers do not pay enough attention to keep their audience fed at all times. You have to understand that the quality of your content is not enough to keep readers coming back. No matter how interesting it is to read your blog, if it takes weeks or months for you to most new content, the most loyal reader will seek answers elsewhere sooner or later. Regular posting keeps your website indexed and ranked higher, as it also suggests to search engines that your website has a healthy post.
3. Content not user-focused
Your content strategy is fundamental in your blog’s survival and success because, at all times, you must always ensure that your content is user-focused. When readers land n your page with the hope of finding answers to their questions, but if instead, the content of the page is all chest-beating and rambling about how great your company is, then readers will seek answers elsewhere and certainly would avoid your page next time they are searching for answers.
4. Articles aren’t comprehensive enough
Even though search engines prioritize lengthy blog articles, however, that is not enough excuse for you to get lost in ambiguities while trying to make your articles lengthy. In anything you write, you must always ensure that your readers would understand at first glance. If you leave your audience more confused than they were before they landed on your page, then you are probably blogging for the wrong reasons. One way to check this is to bog only on topics you are very familiar with or researched so well.
5. Poorly formatted content
Even if your article as all the answers that your readers seek, if it is not well-formatted and arranged, readers will find it stressful to read.
So how can you fix your content to engage readers?
- Remove all whitespace
- Introduce bullet points to make your text easier to read.
- Use bolded text for titles and subtitles.
6. Not linking to other content
Forget the benefits linking your content has n your SEO ranking. Linking is also great, especially for readers. For example, let’s say a reader comes across your page via search, and the article answers their question, but they want to know more about the topic or relating topics. If you have those answers on your site or know a site with those answers, do you have the link embedded somewhere within the original post or somewhere on your site’s page to make navigation easy?
7. No next action
When you write an article, you should guess what your reader’s next action would be. Sometimes, readers want to purchase because your article was that compelling, or sometimes they want to explore your blog and read other articles. You have to keep your readers engaged at all times, and one way of doing this by listing out a few articles they can read next or a call-to-action, a newsletter they can subscribe to, or a webinar they must sign up for.
8. Not updating content
For most bloggers, once they hit the publish button, that’s the end of the road, and they are already working on their next article as quickly as possible. If you do this, it’s time to stop because you are killing your blog in more ways than you know. Particularly for your high performing article, you have to regularly go back to edit and update them with new information.
9. Not repurposing content
Not repurposing your content is another way you are slowly killing the performance of your blog. To repurpose your blog’s content, for instance, identify the high performing articles that are generating a lot of traffic or conversation and recreate them for an audience outside your blog. Since people are continually searching for answers on different social media channels, some want to read; others want to listen to a podcast while some want to watch the video. To repurpose your content, why not make a podcast out of your high performing articles or shot a video? It keeps the buzz revolving around your log and all channels associated with it.
10. Terrible titles
The titles of your articles and contents will either make or mar your blog because your title is the first thing that pops up when the search engine returns with the result. And it’s only understandable why most people would click only a catchy title, inviting and related to their search. Therefore, sometimes, even with great content which probably answers their questions, they would still overlook an article because of the title. It would, however, be best if you do not use clickbait or misleading titles.
