There is a new occupation in the rising. It is called blogging. What started in the early 1990s as a hobby is a 31.7 million user strong community. In fact, I will even call it an industry since there are countless numbers of bloggers who have successfully turned their blogs into revenue streams.
Blogging has also become a mainstream marketing channel. According to HubSpot State of Inbound 2018, “Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their efforts.” Blogging is no longer a hobby. It is now a full-time vocation that is slowly evolving into an industry.
Although the interest in blogging and the number of blogging platforms have increased substantially, not every blogger is able to taste success. Mistakes come in their way turning their blogs int idle assets that receive little or no traffic.
As a blogger for myself, I have gone through almost every single imaginable mistakes of this kind. I have made so many mistakes and also learned so much from them I can write a book on it.
For now, I will settle with a quick blog, which is this. In what is to follow I will cover up some of the most common WordPress mistakes that newbie bloggers make. These mistakes if not rectified can undermine the long-term success of your blog thus putting all your hard work to rest.
So, let’s get started,
#1 Lack of Focus
Steve Jobs once said, “Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no.” As a blogger who is just stepping into action you could be all pumped and enthusiastic about writing on every topic excites your brain and vocabulary. If you are to follow your emotions, your blog is most probably going to look at a cluttered table with too much on it.
A cluttered blog is never going to be a winner. You have to focus on a range of niche topics where your expertise and interest lies. Also, you have to ensure that you create focused blogs on those niche areas that are unlike any other blog out there. Staying different from the herd is the secret to the first-level success of a blogger.
#2 Failing to Do Proper Interlinking
Alright, now you have started publishing blogs on niche topics. They’re getting a good response. Now what? Are you interlinking them? Interlinking is used to redirect readers to other blogs that they might be interested in.
Why should you interlink your blogs? For two reasons. First of all, it helps increase the visitor’s dwell time on the Internet. Secondly, it contributes a lot in improving your blog’s SEO-friendliness. Without interlinking your blogs would be standalone posts that may or not get the traction that they deserve.
#3 Missing to Optimize Keywords for Blogs
SEO can make or break your blog. In my beginning days as a blogger, I used to think of SEO and the whole exercise of keyword optimization as something of a responsibility of marketers. If you are thinking on the same line, get ready to change your thoughts. As a blogger, you ought to have a little bit of marketing expertise in you too.
While writing a blog and also after publishing, make sure you are optimizing the blog with the right choice of keywords. The choice of keywords should pertain to your niche topic and also have a good amount of search volume. Luckily, you have tools like SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, among many others that can help you find the right keywords that will help your blog rank higher.
#4 Not Making the Most of WordPress
WordPress is not just a word processing editor. It is an impressive blogging platform that comes with a suite of tools that can take your blogging prowess to a whole new level. WordPress has its own ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and themes.
You can use WordPress themes to make your WordPress look absolutely unique and specific to an industry. For instance, you can get themes that resemble a fashion blog, or a cookery blog or even a tech blog complete with social media sharing buttons and much more.
You can even get extensions and plugins that can do everything from securing a website to boosting your SEO-friendliness.
#5 Compromising on Security
My first two blogs do not exist today. Cybercriminals took them. Not that my blog was a world-class one that had millions of organic traffic on a daily basis. Still, my blog was taken over by hackers who put up a graffiti demeaning a political party. The second one is now a breeding ground for spamverts (spam + adverts).
In other words, all my years of hard work has gone down the drain because I ignored one crucial aspect of blogging – cybersecurity. Not many people (even IT professionals) are going to advocate the need for security. The majority of the world’s population is living under the safe comforting lie that the Internet is still a safe haven. The truth is, it is not.
Every single day thousands of websites and blogs are taken down by hackers. Sometimes they are motivated by a purpose, sometimes just as a hobby. No matter what their intent is, if your blog is not secured it can fall into the hands of hackers. If you don’t want that to happen it is recommended to secure with an SSL certificate. It will also give you an HTTPS address bar that will also give an SEO edge.
Key Takeaways
Every expert was once a novice. If you are one of all newbie bloggers today, it is time for you to take these mistakes seriously so that your blog’s future is safe. You don’t have to make all these mistakes to learn from them. Sometimes it is better to learn from the mistakes of others.
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