5 Blogging Mistakes that I Made that You Don’t Have To

Blogging for your business or personal brand plays a major role in how successful you are. Let’s look at a few findings on what blogging can do for your business:

• Businesses that publish more posts get more traffic and leads
• If you write longer blog posts, you stand to get more backlinks to your domain
• Sixty percent of people buy a product after reading a blog post about it
• Blog posts are one of the top most shared content types
• Blog content is considered to be the 5th most trusted source of information

It’s evident that blogging is a serious activity that brings in more traffic, more leads, and creates more sales. 

However, starting a blog and making it a success is not as easy as it seems. Blogging should be a serious part of your marketing strategy. Done correctly, it can transform your business and create rapid growth. 

My business today started from the creation of a blog and over the years, it has led to the development of several top WordPress plugins. 

When I first started the WPBeginner blog it was with the intention to free up more time. I was making websites with my teammates for clients who didn’t have the skills to start their own online website. 

And every time they needed a small change, they would approach us for help. Because of this, we created a free WordPress blog with tips and how-to instructions that would let people start and manage either own websites. And they could do this even if they had no coding knowledge at all.

The WPBeginner blog grew rapidly and other developers started sending their clients to our website. 

Today, we have millions of visits a month. But the real benefit that our blog creates is that it helps us redirect customers to our marketing products. Through our blog posts, we help people solve their WordPress problems and we also show them how to use plugins and other tools to grow their own businesses. 

I’ve learned a lot of mistakes when it comes to building a blog. I’ll share what those mistakes are so you don’t have to make them when carrying out your own blogging activities. Let’s get started!

Opting for an inexpensive hosting platform

Many people choose to invest in a ‘free’ or cheap hosting platform by reasoning that they don’t know if their blogging will be effective. And also, it’s always possible to transfer your domain to another platform. 

However, this is not a good idea. Your hosting platform impacts SEO. The connection between SEO and your hosting choice is the speed at which your page loads. Search engines prioritize websites that load fast. And making sure that you’re using a good hosting platform is a key way to optimize your site speed.

You also want to work with a strong hosting provider because they help protect your website from malicious hacking attacks. And if something goes wrong and you lose your website data, your hosting provider will likely have backup solutions to help you regain your content. 

It’s critical that you do your research and find a hosting platform that specializes in WordPress (if that’s what you use) and to invest in one for long-term peace of mind. 

Not building your email list from day one

The majority of people who visit your website will leave and never return. But you can re-engage at least a small portion of your visitors by capturing their contact information. 

One of the first things you should do when your website is up is to build an email list or you may miss out on hundreds or even thousands of potential newsletter subscribers.

All you need to do is sign up with an email marketing company and create an optin popup form for your website. 

It’s easy to integrate an email service provider with your popup plugin. A good optin form plugin will make the process user-friendly and will also give you great templates to use. 

Whatever you do, build an email list from the very first day your website goes live. In fact, you can build your email list even before your website is complete. Create a welcome landing page or a coming soon page and add a newsletter form to it. And your audience can sign up and connect with your business even before it’s live. 

Not having a clear focus

Blogging took off as a way for people to express themselves online. This has led to many people and even businesses using blogs to create a random assortment of posts.
If you want to use your blog for marketing purposes, you need to have a clear focus for your blog early on. 

For example, you could focus on Conversion Rate Optimization rather than just Marketing in general. Even if you want to write a personal blog, it’s a good idea to focus on a key lesson or message. There are moms who’ve started blogging and they focus on recipes, raising children, or some other theme. 

You can write about multiple topics in a single blog, but you experience the most success when you have a clear focus for your blog. 

If you’re blogging to grow your business, your theme or topic is quite clear. It’s what your audience is interested in. My blog helps users build their websites and businesses. And under this general theme, there are relevant subtopics and categories. 

Not leveraging tags and categories

This is an extension of the previous point that especially matters for people using WordPress. The WordPress platform lets you create tags and categories so that you can organize your posts. 

For example, on my website, I have broad categories like ‘Security’, ‘E-Commerce’, ‘Email Marketing’ and other categories. Tags can be more specific and mention brand names or specific issues users might face.

When planning your blog, make sure that you know how you’re going to organize your posts. Plan what your broad categories are and use tags too. 

When your website starts to hold more and more content, this will make it easier for people to find the right information. Well-organized content also sends positive signals to search engines. 

Not being consistent

A major mistake any blogger makes is not being consistent with content creation. Blogging has to be a priority for your business. You may need to hire dedicated writers or work with top-notch freelancers if you don’t have the time to build posts yourself. 

Search engines take note of blogs that have gone ‘stale’ i.e. they haven’t updated their posts or added anything new in a while. 

Because information keeps changing, people and search engines will assume your content isn’t relevant anymore and will look for other blogs with fresher material. 

Make it a point to post at least once a month or once a week. Ahrefs is a recognized SEO platform that typically publishes just one post a month. But they make sure that each piece of content is high quality. 

Commit to posting on your blog regularly and once you’ve built up a solid body of work, you’ll start to see the results. 

Back to you

I’ve shared the top mistakes you should avoid when blogging for your business. If you take these points seriously, you’ll be able to keep more subscribers, get more traffic, and build leads.

Get started on blogging today and you’ll give your brand the best shot at becoming successful online.