5 Mistakes That Bloggers Make That Hurt The Growth Of A Blog

When I started my other blog of selling Photoshop templates to photographers, I was very excited about the income I was making from the products in the first year.

After a year later, my website wasn’t getting as much traffic as I wanted it to be. This is a common problem that almost always revolves around a small list of common mistakes made by the blogger. If you think you can sit back and expect the blog will do all the work for you, you are probably mistaken on the approach of blogging.

Great blogging takes a certain amount of dedication and hard work to make it successful. It is not an easy to get rich program. You have to put effort into a blog to sustain and grow it, especially after the first month or so of completing the design. We often get excited and work hard during the initial design phase that we lose the momentum after it is complete. To avoid this happening to your blog, check out these five common blogger mistakes that can hurt a blog.

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Inconsistent Updates

One of the biggest mistakes a blogger can make is unable to post frequently and consistently. I see that the successful blogs are those that get updated with new content several times a week. Some larger blogs are constantly being updated. Readers will tend to loose interest in your blog if they have to wait several days for new material. You should try to create new posts as often as possible, at least once a week to 2-3 times a week on a regular basis.

Come up with a content post calendar, plan months in advance and publish blog posts consistently. If you miss a day here and there, it will be no big deal. However, if you miss several weeks without posting, you will lose readers who are looking for new content from you. To keep readers coming back to your blog, you have to take a few moments to create interesting posts or content.

These are some of the popular blog post ideas to give you inspirations:

How To / Tutorial Post
List Posts
Product Review Post
Round Up Post
Resources / Freebies
Gift Guides (for holidays)

If you follow the above blog post ideas and research on the questions that your target audience is seeking answers for, writing new content for your blog should not be that challenging. If you make your blog updated as a priority and write relevant posts to your target audience, your blog will continue to thrive in the years ahead.

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Too Much Advertising

As a blogger, we want to have the goal of monetizing the blog and earn an income from it. However, I will be mindful about adding ads to the blog and make sure I do so with caution. There is nothing wrong with a few appropriately places ads that offer viewers links to places that correlate with your blogs content. However, adding a massive amount of advertisements on your blog is a blogger mistake that you want to avoid. If you have a bunch of flashy ads on your blog, your content will get lost within the ads. Therefore, you should always limit your ads to three or less per page. Make sure you place them in appropriate places that let your content shine through. Don’t allow enormous ads to fill up your pages either. They will simply annoy readers. Be smart about including advertising on your blog!

Unprofessional Website

The appearance of your website does matter when it comes to your blog. The more professional and legitimate your blog looks, the more your readers will take you seriously. If you are running a selfhost WordPress blog and are interesting in boosting traffic, you should consider purchasing a premium WordPress theme for a more professional blog layout. I recommend Bluchic WordPress themes for their professional templates, ease of use and great customer support. If you choose to do it yourself however, you must make sure the end result is professional. One of the blogger mistakes is to have a blog that looks homemade. With an unprofessional looking blog, you will not likely get a great response. Try different layouts and approaches to see what gets you the most traffic.

Graphics Overload

Bright and colorful images can add a ton to your blog and draw in more readers. However, when done excessively, much like ads, images can drive people away. The main reason too many images can ruin a blog is because graphics overload can take an excessively long time to load the webpage. This in turn will likely drive them and anyone else with this problem away. Try limiting to a few pictures per page, and include only images that are related to the content. Don’t forget to use Pinnable images that are optimized for Pinterest sharing to drive traffic to your blog.

Unhelpful Content

Many bloggers write about topics that they are interested in, but they make the blogger mistakes of neglecting the topics that their target audience are looking for. Therefore, a great way to keep blog readers coming back for more is to understand who reads your blog and write content that is directed towards them. If you are a stay at home mom and write about your life at home with the kids, provide informative and helpful content that can help solve problems that your readers may encounter. Writing about the events happened to your family without providing helpful information to your readers will not keep your readers coming back to your blog.

Consider writing topics around time management with kids, meal planning for a family, and family budgeting. Write content that is entertaining while evoking an emotion. Your readers would be interested in the things that attracted them to your site in the first place. Engage with your readers and ask them what they want to read about. You can gain a better understanding of your readers interested by adding a poll on your blog post or social media and encouraging your readers to comment and respond to you via email.