Problogger posted a great topic for discussion today, What is the Biggest Mistake That You’ve Made as a Blogger? Can’t wait to read some of the more honest responses to Darren’s post. Visit get some insight on what bloggers perceive as mistakes and post your gaffs.
I wanted to share what I thought were some of the more common mistakes blogger make and my take on why and how to fix.
1. Permalinks: Not Changing or Changing Frequently
Changing permalinks repeatedly or not setting up properly. When you create a post the URL it generated. When you change your permalinks structure;ie, you read that date and title based permalinks are better ( they are) and you run to change them, you change the URLs of all your posts. Why is this bad? Any inbound links are going to pages that no longer exists. Until your blog is indexed again all search results will bring up those non-existent pages.
If you have a newer blog or a blog that has no or few inbound links to deep links or not many posts I would absolutely change from the WordPress default structure. I may even do it with a more established blog and take the hit. I would NOT change them repeatedly.
2. Horrible Post Titles
Another pet peeve. Posts like “Update”, ” What I did today ” , ” New Idea” , ” News” are not good. There are no keywords. You have to use keywords in your post titles. You also must grab your reader’s attention and make them want to read your post. You need keywords in your post tile- your post title is also the page title and one of the most important onpage factors a search engine uses to index and place your page in search engine results pages.
3. You Are Signing Your posts as ‘Admin”
I wrote about recently in Missed Opportunity: Why Are Your Blog Posts Being Made by “admin” ? . A blog author called “admin” screams ” I don’t care” or ” I am new to blogging and don’t know what I am doing” . It is also a potential spot to place keywords or anchor text.
4. Sitewide Outbound Links
This is one of my personal pet peeves- You are literally throwing away and hurting page rank when you place an outbound link with no nofollow tags in your footer or sidebar. Every page on your site has that link sitting on it. Reserve your Blogroll tyor links for a few choice blogs or sites. Do not place links to affiliates in sidebar without a nofollow tag. Remove or add tags the unnecessary META links in your sidebar and footer ‘ ie. ” Powered By WordPress” or links to theme creator. ( I will add nofollow tag to free theme designer AND write post about how great the theme is OR create a link for them that only sits on home page because they deserve that respect)
5. You Are Blogging in a Vacuum
You rarely link out. You don’t mention other bloggers in your field for fear you might be “helping” them. ( You are- but so? ) . You save all your ideas and concepts for writing on your own blog . You don’t post or comment on any other blogs or forums. This is NOT good. Blogging is a social medium. Your blog will not thrive without activity or interaction with others. You can post on other bloggers site- even share your precious information. You will most likely get a link back (if you comment on a dofollow blog) and if your comment offers genuine value ( not just ” Great Info” ) you will get traffic. The blog owner may notice you and mention you in one of her posts. When you are out posting on other sites and forums on your area of expertise you are further branding yourself as an expert. You MUST do this!
6. Hiding Your Best Work
Every once in a while you write a post that is truly great. You bask in the glory of it for a few days… and then its gone… hidden in the archives. Yo may get traffic from other sites who have linked to it or from search engines, however you can do more! Show it off. Have somewhere to showcase your best work. Create something in the sidebar like ” Favourite Posts” or ” Best Work” or ” Post Hall of Fame”. I just use my blogroll widget. You can also hard code into your sidebar template. Also- do not forget to crosslink from other posts.
7. You Never Look at Blog’s Stats And Analytics
You must do this, you can read about using analytics in further detail, . Why is a great post not being read? What are the posts that readers come to your site for? Develop lost article with crosslinks and create other posts that relate to it. If a topic or concept gets a large readership that use that information and create more of it and go into more detail. Where are reader coming from? If you get know traffic from search engines maybe you aren’t using enough keywords. Are you get consistent traffic from a particular site or blog? Seek out more like them and try and get a backlink.
8. You Ramble. Often. And Off Topic
I can be guilty of this. Sometimes post can go on.. and on.. and sometimes we feel it necessary to share all about our cute cats are on a technology site. Posting that you are a new dad is one thing- posting your birth plan and videos is another .Ask yourself- if I was sitting next to myself at a party would I get up a leave?
9. You Are Not Hosting Your Own Blog
This gets mentioned in every single “mistakes list” for a reason. Its redundant to mention yet again- but- HOST YOUR OWN BLOG.
This should have been my #1. This has happened to a lot of people- they start a blog on blogspot or wordpress.org because they think is hard to set up their own or they started blogging as a lark. Trying move it later to your own ISP host is a HUGE hassle.
If your blog is new I would set up your own host now and move everything over. If your blog is older I would also pursue moving.
Why should you move or host your own blog? If you are thinking of monetizing your blog (make money blogging) you will be severely handicapped when some one else owns your blog. Most will not let you use Google Adsense- and enormous potential source of income. Take the time to learn how to set up your own blog- its easier than you think.
10. Erratic Postings
Posting incessantly for days and then nothing for weeks. It is hard to find your groove as well as keep up interest if you are running multiple blogs. Some way sto stay on track- have a schedule. To keep your blog “healthy” post a minimum of 2 posts a week.
If you are running multiple blogs organizing your time and create posting schedules that you can stick to. You can also post date you posts, write generic posts and have them published by changing the time in “Post Timestamp” . Do not start every post with ” I am sorry I haven’t posted in while” and then list a tale of woes.
I know some bloggers will warn readers they will be away, however I think that posting on a public blog that you will not be home for weeks is a bad idea. Announcing that you and your family are leaving for Disney World tomorrow may not be prudent, so keep this in mind.
11. Bad Ad Placement/Too Many Ads/ Cluttered Site/Lost Content
Trying to find a happy medium with ads will be tricky. Some blog visitors will abhor any adds. Most people will be fine with a few well place ads and nearly everyone will be turned off by sites that look like a Las Vegas strip of flashing banners and ads. A common problem I see is all ads and no content above the fold. Literally the entire upper portion of the site is solid ads ( or almost all ads) and not much content and reader has to scroll to find anything of value.
Lots of superfluous widgets and doodads in your sidebar are to be avoided. Ask yourself if they are ADDING value or taking away value. This is sometimes hard to tell as well and sometimes you just have to try and see if it works for you. I have put up widgets I thought would take off and readers would love only to find out they were just taking up valuable real estate. I have also thought they would be a waste and then put them up and later found they had value that didn’t occur to me..
Where is Best Place For Google Adsense Ads Anyway?
There is science to ad placement with payment per click type publishing like Google Adsense and beyond the intended scope of this article. Generally I like a leaderboard in header and square in left sidebar and another one in the post above or Google ads wrapped in the post. These placement get played with constantly.
Google also will curb number of you because they will only publish 3 sets of adds on any given page. Use common sense or ask some one you trust whether you have too many ads. Maintaining a balance of ads that makes your site profitable over a site that loses you potential revenue because of reader tune out is something you have to work on.
How Did You Do? Are You a Blogging Disaster?
Chances are you are guilty of some of the mistakes. All bloggers have made one or more of these mistakes in their blogging career. If you are making one of these mistakes it is out of not knowing any different. Th good news is now you know and can fix. The process of blogging is organic and you can’t know first learn how to do everything and them start. You learn as you go. Don’t let fear of making mistakes stop you from blogging- or anything for that matter.
This is a great post that all bloggers need to read as well as an example of the type of posts needed in this niche of ours…I gave you a digg and subscribed.
Keep it up
p.s.
I’m guilty of #4 but thinks there if the links are masked to my domain I still reap robot benefits…what say you to this?
Caleb’s last blog post..Realizing Versus Actualizing
Hi Caleb- not sure I understand question you have -sitewide OUTBOUND ( going to another site) links? and this helps robots?
Curious to know what you mean.
What I mean is I have masked the aff urls so that it appears to still be on my site…follow the ‘Hidde opportunities’ link to see what I mean. I’m thinking this still has SEO benefits.
Caleb’s last blog post..Realization Versus Actualization Part II
ah- yes no problem I don’t mind affiliate links cloaked or otherwise- as long as they have a nofollow tag. Its the outbound page rank spewing out off every page that should be avoided.
I use nofollow tags on every affiliate link I pop into posts and pages..
In regards to #9, I’ve heard a lot of differing opinions. Some people say it’s better to keep your blog built into your own web site, and some say build it out of your web site, and then cross link to build more incoming links to your web site.
Which way do you suggest?
Nikki’s last blog post..Important for Nurses to Review The Nurse Practice Act
Nikki- in #9 I refer to using a blog hosting service like blogspot or wordpress.org.
What I think you are referring to is whether to have your blog integrated into your business website or have a completely different site and use lots of cross links.
I would only recommend placing your blog on on your site domain. I would not make it a subdomain and I would not have it on a separate host.
Avoid having on a separate domain when ever possible. If you are forced to do so in an unusual circumstance then definitely do heavy crosslinking with the main site.
Many reasons for keeping together include not splitting up a marketing budget, adding content to your site and further branding a yourself as an expert.
Nikki – Lisa is dead on and also in reference to your comment:”say build it out of your web site, and then cross link to build more incoming links to your web site.” …this is a technique that mainly works for affiliate programs.
For instance,you may have a set of micro blogs that all link back to a specific aff program as well as having a signup form on those mocro blogs that allows you to collect email names for list building which of course only further helps in securing more affiliate sales.
Caleb’s last blog post..My Top Secret Posts
thanks for the good tips
pio’s last blog post..StumbleUpon add ons.great tool to have.
im trying to set up a resource blog how would you reccomend that I set up the menu? With what words? Where? And how? 🙂
joe’s last blog post..TypePad
By menu do you mean categories or sidebars? I *think* you mean sidebars. You may find have only the one sidebar tight . Consider switching themes to one with another sidebar.
As for words you mean the name of categories, etc?
testing highligh comments
Another tip: make sure your blogging software uses caching. Caching will ensure your blog has a nice and light footprint on the server. What does this mean? Say you get a spike in traffic – if your blog’s pages are rendered entirely by database calls, it puts an enormous strain on the server. If it’s cached, it just fetches a PRE-RENDERED page from the cache – hardly any server resources used.
If you use WordPress, look for wp-cache plugin.
Well I know for a fact my posts get signed as admin sometimes… I guess I’ll have to take care of that 🙂
I’m sure I’m also guilty of another couple errors like these, but since blogging is a new area for me, I won’t feel so bad and just try to get my stuff fixed up. Thanks for the list and all the tips!
Too many ads is a great one. I can’t believe how even the most popular websites make this mistake. It’s a false economy – you drive people away from your site if it’s hard to read because too many ads in the way. Less traffic equals less leverage for advertising rates. Make it easy on your visitors and your advertisers will pay you more anyway.
Excellent post. Just wanted to say the hyperlink for the anchor text “Google ads wrapped in the post” [under the sub heading Where is Best Place For Google Adsense Ads Anyway?] is broken. Could you fix it please?
I use ADMIN in my blog cos I didn’t want another “kelly” impersonator. I figured no one wants to use ADMIN! And everyone knows ADMIN is the owner or moderator of the blog.
May be I will change “ADMIN” one day!
Your other tips are equally good – thanks!
Some of those tips are really basics to blogging but I do notice people still make those mistakes. They should take a step back and think properly before they reach to a point where it’s too hard to change over. Nice tips by the way! Thanks for sharing!
There is a lot for start blogging nicely & correctly.I want to know How one can host its own blog? Is it same as host your own website?
I think blogspot & wordpress are good for start blogging then why should one need to host own blog?
How that will more beneficial for a business blogs?
Good tips – they made me check back into my blog to make sure I wasnt committing any of these errors. Im guilty of #5 :/
-Jack
Great post – my favourite point is the one about bad headings. So many bloggers use cryptic titles for their posts which make them hard to decipher.
This is Really great article , You are right mostly peoples Are doing these mistakes , Well i think i’m also doing some of them , like i post my posts like Admin, i never check my state of blog . i’ll try to avoid these things in future , thanks again for your post
Hi! I’m new to blogging and am still learning. This article really helped me!
As for #9: Because I’m very new to blogging I joined a free blog hosting site that enables me to create my own blog powered by wordpress and allows me to monetize it.
I think it’s good to start out with free hosting if you’re a complete newbie.