Blogging can easily be one of the toughest careers to venture into and succeed, while also being among some of the most profitable and fulfilling careers out there. But in order to succeed you need to make sure you’re not making common blogging mistakes that can cost you.

If you don’t know what you are doing wrong then you won’t know what to correct.

I made so many mistakes when I was just starting out as a blogger that cost me both blog traffic and income. For many of them, I was just clueless and had no idea how they were costing me.

It was only after I got a blogging coach that I began to recognize and correct some of my mistakes.

Many of us are starting as experts or studied something related to it in school, we tend to make more mistakes than expected and keep ruining our progress, knowingly or unknowingly.

That’s why I want to share some of those mistakes here so that if you are making them as well, you can correct them and start seeing better results in your blogging journey.

You Are Not Using Your Analytics

Analytical tools help you to keep track of changes and progress in your site. They also let you keep track of the behaviors of your target audiences and more.

Using Google analytics for example, you can find out information such as; where your traffic is coming from and how long they are spending on your site.

When you know what is driving traffic to your website it helps you to leverage your efforts and make better use of your time by focusing on the platforms that are bringing you the most results and seeing what kind of content is most popular with your visitors.

With this data, there is a lot you can do and improve on; this is why it will be an excellent blogging mistake not to leverage your site analytics.

You Are Not Doing Keyword Research Effectively

Keyword research makes the difference between getting a decent amount of traffic coming to read that excellent blog content you spent hours writing about and getting viewed by just a few to none.

This is why it is essential to do your keyword research and target keywords that are relevant and accumulate high monthly searches on search engines.

This way, the search engine algorithm would recommend your content to more people searching for content relevant to yours.

Should you want to start your keyword research, there are hundreds of tools out there and if you’re wondering some to pick from, below are the most popular, which are being used by most bloggers to rank their content based on keyword phrases.

–KeySearch (This is what I use and recommend if you are just starting out)

– Google Keyword Planner

– Ubersuggest

– Keywords Everywhere

– SEMrush

– Ahrefs

– KWFinder

There are several of them out there, but whichever you decide to use, it is essential to consider using longtail keywords so you can rank better.

If you reading this and you don’t know what, I’m talking about, here is a detailed Keyword Research Guide that will show you what it is and how to do it.

You Don’t Have A Defined Niche

There’s a famous saying; “jack of all trades, but master of none.” This happens to be the case for many bloggers. Instead of finding an area or two of focus, they tend to cover generalized areas within their blogs.

With the blogosphere getting saturated daily, it is becoming of utmost importance to niche down and focus on a specific niche or two.

When I want to learn all things blogging and entrepreneurship, I know the Female Blogpreneur blog is where I go to.

It is better to be known for one, two, or three topics than to be all over the place and not have anything specific people know you for and can refer other people about.

Jane learnt something new about decorating her apartment when she visited your blog. When her friend Sally, asks her how she can learn more about home decor, instead of trying to remember the name of the post she read, she knows your blog covers a lot of things in the home decor niche.

So she refers Sally to your blog, because it is one place she can find a lot of inspiration for home decor.

If you didn’t have a niche and talked about random things that come to mind then, Jane would have referred Sally somewhere else like Pinterest or another home decor blog that she has quite a lot of content her friend can benefit from.

When you narrow down, it is easier to build a concentrated audience and easier for people to come back to your blog when they know they can find content around a specific niche there.

You Are Not Consistent

When it comes to blogging, consistency is key.

A good blogging practice is having a posting schedule. One that is realistic and reasonable for you but one that you can also stick to.

Your loyal visitors would also keep tabs on when to expect new posts from you, and they will become consistent return visitors.

If this is an area you struggle with, its fine to start with a schedule that you can manage.

Having a posting scheduling also keeps you accountable because you will know that you have a regular deadline to keep up with.

An added bonus is that it helps search engine crawlers to crawl your web pages periodically so they can index your newer blog posts, which in turn brings in more traffic for your blog.

You Are Trading Quantity over Quality

In content marketing, quality speaks for itself, but quantity doesn’t.

Some people believe having many posts on their blogs is key to getting more traffic. Well, as much as this is true, it wouldn’t be the case if you are giving your audience poor quality content.

We all know that retaining visitors on our sites decreases bounce rate, but if the content isn’t good enough to hook them up, there’ll be no way we’ll be retaining them.

If you can come up with just a single blog post within the space of one week that is of utmost quality and contains relevant keyword phrases, you should go for it instead of degrading your site quality with content that wouldn’t add up your site progress.

You Are Using Clickbait Titles

Never use a deceptive means to get blog views. People will always bounce out in frustration as soon as they notice that what they are expecting to see isn’t what your blog posts entail.

With your blog, you’re looking for long-term success; it isn’t a social media page or YouTube channel where someone could do anything to get their videos viewed even without decent audience retention.

So, it is essential to remain genuine in your titles and know that there are several ways to come up with compelling titles that cover the actual context of your post.

This way, you’ll be able to turn your visitors into returning leads, and subsequent conversions with time.

Not Having an Email List Strategy

This is a great blogging mistake to avoid because without having an email list, you’re losing a whole lot of opportunity from your blog.

Search engine updates may hit your site and make you lose a lot of blog traffic and income. You can lose your social media accounts and have no access to your audience. There are many things that could happen and cause a drawback in your traffic.

However, with an email list where you get your visitors to subscribe to your newsletters, you have access to your readers and can communicate with them at any time.

Your email list will always be in your possession and serve as a direct way to communicate to your subscribers any time you want. So, it is a great way to convert one-time visitors into loyal ones.

Stats say about two-third of your site visitors never come back, and since you can hook a lot of them with an email list, you have a way to invite them to come back again.

If you want to learn how to create an email list the right way and make money from it Click Here.

Choosing a Bad Domain Name

Coming up with a domain name is the first move you’ll make in your blogging career and is equally crucial for your blog.

You should make sure that whichever blog name you’re going to choose reflects the niche you are about to blog about. It doesn’t have to cover your keywords, but you’ll stand a better chance of ranking if it does.

Also, make sure it makes you stand out and is easy for your audience to recognize. It is worth noting that your domain name would come in handy when considering building your blog into a brand in the future.

So you want to make sure it is professional, not too long and doesn’t contain special characters.

You Are Still Using Free Hosting

Maybe when you decided to venture into blogging, you were still unsure whether you wanted to dive in completely and make the sacrifice to paid hosting or perhaps you just weren’t there financially.

Because of this, you may have found yourself grabbing the free domain and hosting option on content management systems (CMS) such as Blogger, Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, and others.

It is okay to practice for free, but if you are serious about growing traffic and wanting to start pursuing your career in blogging, a paid hosting plan is a worthwhile investment.

Having a free hosting plan and domain will negatively affect your potential reach because search engines don’t index sites with a subdomain like “domainname.wix.com” as well as premium domains like “http://www.domainname.com“.

Because of this you won’t be maximizing your blogging potential and will only prolong your success as a blogger.

Free hosting plans usually come with many restrictions as well. It also takes away from your professionalism as a blogger which will cost you when you try to monetize later.

If you are just starting out, I’d recommend that you choose WordPress as your CMS. With other CMS options you will most likely want to switch later on.

Here are some reasons why:

-It is the most flexible when it comes to modifying your blog.

– With less than $100 a year, you can operate a functional WordPress blog.

– Free plans sometimes come with Ads you can’t control or earn from.

– WordPress CMS is easy to use and would help you to blog at your full potential.

– It is the most popular CMS, and on every corner of the web, there are varieties of tutorials and fixes for one or more issues you might face on it.

– There are tens of thousands of plugins and website theme templates available on the WordPress CMS, which can’t be found on any other, free/paid CMS out there.

If you are looking for a hosting I recommend Bluehost. It is easy to use if you are a beginner.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up your web hosting and start blogging the right way (Click Here)

Using Nulled Themes and Plugins

Some themes and plugins can be pretty expensive to our likings, and while we can get them for a paid sum in the official stores, many people are willing to help us out with those themes or plugins for free, and sometimes, their cracked versions commonly known as nulled plugins or themes.

Because of this, we tend to opt for the accessible sources that we can use on our blogs, but what you should know at this point is that many of those kinds of themes and plugins are infected with malware.

So, the result is that your site gets infected with malware and might end up causing great havoc.

They may result in a realistic drop in any site ranking, and even with the hard work that comes in cleaning the site up, it most of the time takes a longer duration to bring a place affected by these types of nulled themes or plugin into the right shape when it comes to SEO.

The way forward here is never to install nulled things on our sites. Instead, learn to use officially free or paid plugins and themes only.

Under-Researching

Another blogging mistake to avoid is not doing enough research. Whether this is research for your blog posts or research to improve yourself and your skills as a blogger.

For every blog post, you are about to write, doing in-depth research is crucial even if you have the experience already. It will help you provide more value to your audience and makes sure you are giving them more than just what you know.

The objective of your blog should be to inform and not to misinform your audience; this is why making proper research about your topic of discussion would always remain a better idea if you want to serve your audience better.

As a blogger, you should also be putting in some time to learn and grow yourself individually. You can’t pour from an empty cup, so make sure you are refilling your cup as often as you can.

Making Your Posts Too Short

I still remember the early days in my blogging career when I created blog posts less than 250 words and got them published, but without any success.

However, I noticed that bigger sites and more seasoned bloggers were creating content that significantly longer than mine, and began to wonder if that made a difference as to why I was seeing the results I was seeing with my blog.

When I began to look deeper into writing short posts, I realized search engines don’t favor such posts for ranking, and except in the case of keyword stuffing which isn’t an option, shorter posts were not gonna stand a chance at ranking and only kept my visitors on my site for a short time which increased my bounce rate.

Just then, I realized the power of lengthy posts, and not only in terms of SEO, but your audience also tends to build a long-lasting connection with your blog when they stay on your site for longer, reading your blog posts.

The fact is that 500 words are ideal, but having 1000 or more words of content on your blog is way better. However, don’t write a whole book as a single blog post, people don’t have time.

Learn How To Create Content That Is Evergreen so that you can continue to drive traffic to your site, long after you hit publish.

Not Minding Your Website Speed

Poor website speed can negatively affect your user experience and affect your audience retention and bounce rate. Many people will choose to leave your site when pages take longer to load.

How long people stay on your website is something search engine algorithms take into account when ranking your posts.

Therefore, if you haven’t been minding your site and making an effort to improve it, this is your sign to start working on it.

Final Thoughts

If you are making one of these blogging mistakes it’s time to correct them so that they don’t cost you any further.

The sooner you fix them, the sooner you can start seeing better results with your blog traffic and income.

If you need a coach to walk you through your blogging journey, and help you prevent some mistakes that could be costing you time, effort and money, Check out these Blog Coaching Packages.

Which of these mistakes have you been making as a blogger?

If you’re clear and are not making any of these mistakes, which other ways could cost a blogger their blog traffic or income? Share them in the comments below!