Blogging is an extremely important part of SEO. It can be a great way to promote your content, your brand, and at the same time earn money. And as you probably already know, there are millions and millions of blogs out there, so the competition is fierce. You may remember that before you start competing with other you might want to avoid a few mistakes that can effectively kill your blog.
You might think blogging is easy, and it will help you earn some money almost regardless what you will write. But clearly that is not the case. Content of your blog is the ONE thing you should really care about.
So if you are not familiar with a subject - don’t write about it. Learn a few things before you will let your imagination do all the work. Your readers will quickly recognize is content-empty, full of generalizations and might not waste their time to let you know about it. They will just leave you blog. Is that what you want? I don’t think so. If you are seriously thinking about blogging than you should take your readers seriously. They will return the favor.
2. Under- or Over- Post Articles on Your Blog
I am not going to tell you that if you stop writing, you will put your blog to death. That is kind of obvious. I am going to remind you that not only to little posts, but also too many can scare away you readers from your blog.
It is a very simple rule, but try to make a publishing schedule and then keep up with it. When your users are used to reading two articles a week don’t disappoint them staying quite for two weeks and don’t confuse them with publishing every day. If you are going away for a week, or two - inform your readers about it. They will surely appreciate it.
Also, if you are the only person publishing content on your blog (you are not opened to quest bloggers), think for a second about one thing. How would you perceive a blog with two new articles daily? Wouldn’t you question the value of all these posts and doubt there are full of really interesting content (or even consider it spam-like)? I surely would. And most of your readers would to.
3. Ignore Comments (or What is Even Worse - Close the Comment Box)
You might consider yourself a genius. Pure genius with a perfect ability to generate interesting and valuable articles that everyone just loves to read. Well, guess what - not everyone will recognize your genius. And they would even have the nerve to criticize you! I know, I know - they are all wrong. But here is an idea - how about if you respect their right to be wrong and maybe try to value their comments? This might actually work!
Ignoring comments (or deleting the critical ones) is a sure way to lose your readers. And another way to do it is talking down to your readers. You and I know you are smarter, but let’s keep it between us. Nobody else needs to know. So don’t bash everyone who wrote a critical comment. Comments are a sign that someone really read your article - and that is a good thing isn’t it? So value all the comments not just the flattering ones.
4. Don’t Care How Your Site Looks
So you avoided one of the biggest mistakes, and you really took care of your content. Good for you. Just tell me why at the same time you totally forgot about taking care of the outlook of your blog? Was doping both too much? I hope not.
There are a few things you should take under consideration. Is the text on your blog reader-friendly? Or do you just post articles in one huge paragraph without breaking it to make it easier to read. Most readers try to use the “four lines rule”. You don’t have to remake every article to fit this rule. Use your common sense and another rule: “new thought - new paragraph”.
Remember about the layout and composition. Don’t tire the eyes of your readers with a lot of garish colors, thousands of icons and banners. Your blog should be easy to read and composed with some aesthetic sense. This also applies to choosing the background color, font and its color. White text of an article on a black background hurts readers’ eyes and can quickly change his mind about reading your article. Help your reader concentrate on the article. Don’t distract and discourage him.
Don’t Let Your Blog Die
It is easy to start a blog, a little harder to maintain it and much harder to attract readers and keep them interest for a long period of time. It takes hard work, discipline and persistence. Even that won’t guarantee success. But following these four steps will surely kill your blog. So maybe you shouldn’t sabotage your own work, should you?
Author’s Bio:
Jack Samuelson is a contributing author who writes articles on numerous subjects, interested in issues of personal right, online privacy, network security and VPN software. He has been an insightful observer of new technologies (such as VPN service) and their relations with the problems of Internet privacy, freedom and independence.
Featured image (on home page, and on this page) by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
