Many blogs are established every day on the net, but very few of them become successful due to various factors, both known and unknown.
Throwing yourself into blogging without knowing the best practices that will enable you to be a successful blogger is like starting to drive a car without even knowing where the brakes are.
In this post I mention and explain 12 things that kill many blogs; and this is given as an advice to help you know how to avoid them on your blog.
1. Poor writing style
Writing is an art. Therefore, you should carefully observe your writing style so that it will not lower the rank of your blog. Many bloggers fill their posts with poorly written posts and ideas. If you want to acquire the readers’ attention you should always observe your writing style.
Things to observe on blog writing style:
- Write short sentences
- Avoid ambiguous words
- Space your paragraphs and sentences
- Outline important points
- Use correct grammar and syntax
- Ask questions from time to time
- Employ proper fonts and colors
A good writing style attracts readers to read your blog posts. Always make sure your blog posts are easy to read so that readers can quickly grab your ideas. You can use readability test tool to test the readability of your post.
2. Lack of images and infographics
Selecting proper images and infographics for every blog post is time-consuming. That is why many bloggers tend to neglect images in their posts.
No matter how well-written your post is, if it lacks images it is weak to some extent. Always try to select appropriate images and infographics for your posts. You can use sites like Pixabay to get high quality images.
3. Copying Other People’s Posts
To prepare a good blog post is costly, in terms of time and resources. This makes many bloggers to be tempted to copy posts from other blogs. Copying posts from other people’s blogs makes you lack authority and creativity.
Writing a blog post sometimes requires citing from other blogs but it should not make you copy to the extent of making your posts plagiarize their contents. Always try to write what you know about the subject you are covering.
4. Neglecting comments
Many bloggers have no time for reading readers’ comments. If you want to improve user engagement on your blog you should not ignore readers’ comments. Always ask questions in your posts and provide a room for users to write their views and don’t forget to respond to their opinions.
If you have a problem with adding commenting functionality on your blog, you can use cross-site platform like Disqus to enable readers to comment on your site.
5. Writing space filler contents
Have you established a blog and you want to publish even twice a day in order to compete with big figures on the net? If yes, you should be careful about your decision.
Many big blogs you see on the net started a long time ago with 0 posts or even only one post per week. How can you produce high quality content or post within a short time?
The goal of blogging is not to have many blog posts but rather to have successful blog posts which will have good Return over Investment (ROI).
Don’t fill your blog with poor contents simply because you are pressurized by big blogs. Understand that you are supposed to publish on regular basis but not to publish garbage or irrelevant stuff that will kill your blog.
6. Poor SEO optimization
Do you think that SEO optimization is for SEO geek or marketing giants? If yes, you are totally wrong. Always make sure your pages are well optimized so that it will not affect you search engine rankings and finally kill your blog. There are many fine tutorials on how to optimize your site SEO. You can visit sites like MOZ to learn some SEO hints.
Tips for making your blog search engine friendly:
- Improve your page loading speed
- Add alt text to images
- Add Meta descriptions and keywords
- Use Google webmaster and analytics
- Reduce the size of images, but do not sacrifice quality.
Also there is a plugin called Yoast SEO that can help you to optimize your site.
7. Lack of consistency
Bloggers start blogging as an extra task or less important job. This makes many bloggers to lack consistency. The more you publish the more you get higher rankings in search engines.
Search engines’ crawlers came to your site and found no new content. It came again and again and still there was no new content. This tells search engine to lower the rank of your site because there is no new content to index.
Therefore, if you want to avoid killing your blog by downranking it from search engines you should be a consistent blogger.
The more you post them more you get indexed and increase your traffic. (Chart Source: Neilipatel)
8. Lack of internal linking (Interlocking pages/posts)
I always call for internal linking in blogging as interlocking posts because it makes posts in your blog to become locked together and enhance search engine indexing and ranking.
If you have heard about bounce rate, one of the ways to avoid bounce rate is making use of interlocking blog post. Readers can navigate from post A to B and even to C and finally this will reduce bounce rate on your site.
If you mention or explain a point or idea which you have already covered it in details on another post I don’t see any reason of not linking to the post containing that point or idea.
Wikipedia is a good example that has used this technique to increase its searching indexing and ranking.
9. Lack of statistics and examples
You are not supposed to be a mathematician or statistician in order to write a blog post but you are supposed to support your ideas with some examples and statistics. Using relevant examples and statistics shows that you know what you are talking about. Many bloggers have been underrated by readers because of the so-called posts with feeble arguments. You can use charts and figures from different recognized sources and increase your blog rating.
10. Poor social media coverage
Do you think that social media is the only platform where you can post your personal pictures? Many bloggers tend to neglect the role of social media in developing their blogs. You can establish a Facebook page and invite your friend and other people to like it – make sure you share every blog post you post on that page.
This will help you to make your followers to become your readers and finally increase traffic into your blog. If you don’t want to kill your blog by lacking social media presence, make sure you present your blog on as many relevant social media as you can.
11. Lack of commitment
Blogging, like the other jobs you are already familiar with, needs commitment. Yes, blogging needs commitment. When you start a blog without commitment, after sometime you will obviously give up.
When you give up you will be like a person who dug up the house foundation, laid down the foundation stone, poured mortar, but finally quit the construction job. This person lost his money and time because he could not get a house.
Many blogs die because bloggers lack commitment. A friend of mine once remarked correctly: “No pain no gain”. If you want to see real results in the blogging career be committed and face the storms.
12. Neglecting linking with other blogs
Do you think outbound links are worthless? If yes, you are not alone. I was also thinking that only inbound links are useful for my site ranking and indexing, but after the update of Google Panda things have changed.
Many bloggers reject the role of outbound links because they perceive that they are driving traffic and other benefits to another site.
Believe it or not, your site ranking on Google can be affected by the way you link your content with authoritative domains. Google considers you as the site with relevant information linking with relevant sites. Remember that you should control the number of links because many links can destruct user readability.
To conclude, explained here are a few things that have been picked out by many blogging experts as things that affect the success of many blogs. I advise you to take action to improve the area of your blog where any of these points here reflects it. This will help you to make sure that you get a good ROI.
Does any of these 12 points face your blog? Do you have any other idea? I would like to hear from you.
