I have been running this blog now for around 18 months. I have been self-taught and have not used any blogging tips and tricks to get to where I am today. I am slowly getting it to where I want it in terms of traffic and popularity etc and am on the whole pretty pleased. I did, however, make some pretty common blogging mistakes along the way.
There is no one size fits all blogging for beginners handbook unfortunately when it comes to blogging.
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There does come a problem when you don’t look online for blogging tips and tricks though or when you read to many blog posts that have the headline Blogging For Beginners.
This problem leads to you making common blogging mistakes. Dont get me wrong starting out as a blogger will always lead to mistakes but you can keep them to a minimum when the following advice from other more experienced bloggers.
All of the following common blogging mistakes I made were easily avoidable had I had the prerequisite knowledge to avoid them.
The one thing you will soon learn as a new blogger though is that there is so much to learn that it can all become a little overwhelming.
You might have learned something that the next blogger hasn’t and vice versa. It is a very steep learning curve but ultimately if you stick with it very rewarding.
The following mistakes are listed in no particular order and I aim to give a little advice in each one for you take away and apply to your own new blogs.
Blogging Mistake 1: Theme Envy
When you start a new blog everything is shiny and new and you look around at other blogs and see them all looking fantastic and you want that.
Unfortunately, all you have is a series of free themes for your blog to run and none of them look like the ones online you have been looking at.
If this sounds like you then dont worry I have been there. I spent way too many hours looking at all of this when I should have been writing content.
The funny thing is that there are quite a few blogs out there running free themes and still making lots of money in revenue every day despite not looking quite as good as they should.
I eventually purchased a theme and although expensive the options I have with this theme make it worthwhile. Mine is the Foodie pro theme running on the genesis framework which you can get from StudioPress – Themes
My blogging for beginners’ advice would be to not worry about the way your blog looks for the first couple of months. As long as you have a sidebar and a header etc and everything is in some kind of order it will all be fine. Work on creating great content people will want to read.
Blogging Mistake 2: Ignoring SEO
If you are looking for pretty big blogging mistakes to make at the start of your blogging journey then ignoring SEO is a pretty big one. I won’t go into the whole ins and outs of SEO as it would be a blogging for beginners series all of its own.
What I will say is that even if you learn some of the basics of SEO and keyword research and apply them to your very first posts then you will see success later on down the line.
It can take months for you to start seeing the benefits of SEO but once you do you will see that this is what helps you rank high up in google bringing you more traffic and in turn bringing you revenue.
Just for beginners, I would recommend you use either the Rankmath Plug-in or Yoast Plug-in. Either of these plugins will help you learn a little about SEO. They won’t do it for you and they are not a one-stop-shop for SEO.
They are more of a guide for beginner bloggers to help remind you to do certain SEO related tasks while you are creating your content.
Do not ignore SEO. I did for the first 10 posts on my blog and ended up having to go back and redo large chunks of my articles at a later date.
Blogging Mistake 3: Broad Niche
When I started Earningsportal I wanted it to be a place where people could come to learn a bit more about making more money or how to save it efficiently or how to be more frugal and so on.
The only issue was I also wanted to talk about myself a lot as I thought it would make me seem a bit more human. It didn’t work and I found myself going off-topic and making my niche too broad, especially when I started talking about some of my passions such as health and fitness and gaming etc.
It is fine to inject some of your personality into your writing and content but stick to what your niche is about.
If you have a cooking blog but also love Cats, try and do a second blog about cats or just keep it as something you talk about with friends or in Facebook groups, etc.
Keep your niche focused on one thing and do not deviate. You could also niche down to something within the topic you are talking about.
Blogging Mistake 4: Short Posts
One of the blogging mistakes I was guilty of right at the beginning and I still see it happening today amongst other new bloggers.
My first post was about how I made good money writing on a revenue sharing site called Hubpages. It was a great article and came out at around 600 words. This isn’t enough and I had to go back and add to this particular post.
You will come across a lot of blogger guides giving you lots of figures on how many words you should aim for and mine is no different but The figure I use has been suggested by a lot of SEO experts.
You should try and aim for around 2000 words per post. This post is 2525 in case you were wondering. Not only will you be able to potentially rank for more keywords per post but Google will also potentially rank your article higher than others.
This, of course, all depends on other factors but if you are knowledgeable about your content and it is longer than another person’s article then yours should in theory rank higher.
Blogging Mistake 5: No Email List
So this is one blogging mistake that you want to avoid. You may think that your blog only has 5 articles and isn’t going to be read by anyone but the important thing about building an email list is these subscribers can never be taken away unlike Facebook group followers or Instagram subscribers.
If any of those platforms fold or change an algorithm you could lose all of your subscribers and leads.
Your Email list is exactly that it is yours. If I’m being honest I still haven’t worked hard on mine and have around 50 subscribers at the moment.
It is difficult especially in full-time employment to do everything right for your blog but I do believe that this is something that should be done right at the start and then you should try and promote people signing up.
Blogging Mistake 6: Being Antisocial
Ok, so I dont mean antisocial as in I went and did some graffiti on the side of another bloggers house. What I mean is that to begin with, I didnt join many facebook blogging groups or blogging forums, etc. This is one of the blogging mistakes you don’t want to make as a new blogger.
Like most bloggers, I am a little introverted and a homebody and am quite happy staying out of the limelight. This, of course, is fine but as a blogging beginner but you do need some company albeit online.
The first few months can be tough and if you join groups on Facebook and other such platforms then it can be great to go and vent when you are having a bad day or you are stuck trying to achieve something.
Everyone on there will relate and it will make you feel so much better. I would say at least 80% of bloggers quit their blogs in the first year because they feel like they are getting nowhere.
If only they had had some guidance or understanding just before they quit then they might still be creating that awesome blog. Luckily for me, I had already dipped my toes in the blogging and making money online world so I knew how much patience this blogging work can take.
Blogging mistakes like this can actually cost you your blog so make sure this isn’t you.
Blogging Mistake 7: Rubbish Title
When I started with this blog I would just put a title up that would let the reader know what the article was about but you need to do more than that.
When it comes to SEO and ranking your blog posts you need a title that is keyword rich and has lots of other points.
CoSchedule is a really good website that can score your title on a variety of points. This can give you a good inclination as to how good your title is. You should also look to get your main keyword in the title and preferably near the beginning.
My titles were absolute rubbish at the start of this blog. Luckily I have gone back and changed nearly all of them.
Blogging Mistake 8: Ads
Now having ads on your blog is one of the main ways to earn money from it. It isn’t the only way and it certainly isn’t the most lucrative but it is the go-to for most new bloggers.
We write 2 or 3 posts and then whack Google Adsense on our blog with no clue what we are doing.
To begin with, having ads on your site when you are only getting 5 views a day is a bit pointless. Not only that but it takes a lot more views to start to earn an income. The views really need to be organic views as well as these tend to convert better.
I put ads on my blog straight away and to be honest it was a waste of time for the first 6 months I would say. Leave it and when you do start using an ad network it will pay off.
Blogging Mistake 9: Consistency
One of the easiest blogging mistakes you can make is Consistency. In fact, this was one of the biggest blogging mistakes I made when I started and I’m sure that this will happen to you too.
When I started I had this notion that I didnt want to burn out by writing 3 posts a week and this is fine. Some people can manage this but I knew I couldn’t.
It was fine and I wrote 1 post a week steadily for the first 12 months. There was then a short period where I had writer’s block combined with some very busy periods at work and I was being lazy when it came to writing.
This definitely caused a slump in my viewing figures. Try and keep consistent. Not only with the quantity of your work but also do not let the quality drop because you are trying to push out or rush the quantity.
Blogging Mistake 10: Distraction
Some people can be the most focused people ever who have a task and get it completed with the minimum of fuss and zero distraction.
Well, not this guy. This is one of my biggest blogging mistakes and I can still do it now. I can be writing a post and doing really well for like 30 minutes or so and then my phone will bleep or I will see one of the tabs on my pc has been open for ages and it is google analytics so I will go off and see how my stats have improved.
Or let’s see how one of my competitors is doing over at Ubersuggest. Let’s run their blog through Neil Patel’s site and see if they are utilizing good keywords.
Honestly, I do my own head in sometimes and this can be detrimental to your blog if you are easily distracted.
This is without a doubt one of the most common blogging mistakes to make as a new blogger but also one of the easiest blogging mistakes to fix. Move your phone away, turn the TV off. It’s so simple.
The two ways I have now used for when I’m writing content is to place my phone far enough away I would have to get out of my chair which helps a lot. I have also started writing my content in a separate section to where all my open tabs are so I dont see them and get distracted.
Blogging Mistake 11: Under Researched Content
When I started this blog I did have a clear goal of writing one post per week. That was the limit where I felt I could produce good quality content and not sacrifice my soul to get it done. Aside from the odd slip in the last 18 months, I have done exactly that.
The only real problem with having this kind of content creation goal is occasionally it puts you under pressure to write. You may have had a lot of stuff going on in your life in the first few days of the week and then you are left chasing your tail at the weekend when everyone you know is going out for BBQs etc.
This was one of the common blogging mistakes I always fell into and still have to give myself a talking too now when I catch myself doing it.
This rushing to get a post out towards the back end of the week more often than not leads to really poor content which is not going to help your blog.
My advice is to stick to your content creation goal but do not let it rule you. Try and get the bulk of your research done and content written early on in the week so there is no mad rush towards the end.
You know what though if you need to take longer to write a post because life got in the way then that’s fine, skip a week it really won’t hurt your blog. As long as it doesn’t become a habit and you end up only producing one post a week then you will be fine.
Summary:
So there are the 11 common blogging mistakes I have made and I would like to bet money on the fact that you are guilty of at least a couple of these. We are all human and we all make mistakes so dont worry too much.
Blogging is one of the hardest things to be successful at but if you work hard and are consistent as well as learning a thing or two along the way then your blog will flourish.
What common blogging mistakes have you made? I would love to hear all about them.
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