Beginner Blogging Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Blog – 25

There are so many beginner blogging mistakes that can potentially ruin your blogging career!

I made so many of them when I started my first blog that greatly impacted it,

This led to me having to shut down my blog for good…

I know sad right?

Imagine wasting all your time and effort and still not getting anywhere

and worst of all, not even knowing what you are doing wrong.

Am sure so many beginner bloggers face this problem,

This is why I have compiled this massive list of the top 29 beginner blogging mistakes I see beginner bloggers make that are constantly setting them up for failure.

Most of these beginner blogging problems are things I was guilty of as a beginner blogger so don’t be worried, they are fixable,

I have made these mistakes so that you don’t have to.

If you are ready, let’s get right to it!

25 Biggest Beginner Blogging Mistakes Ever!

1. Blogging About Anything & Everything!

This is one of the most common beginner blogging mistakes I see newbie bloggers make after starting a blog,

Now don’t get me wrong,

There are a good number of blogs out there that are multi-niche and are successful,

but these blogs are so huge, that they are run by big teams with different people specially delegated different tasks that make the blog a success.

One person to handle email lists and newsletters,

one person for outreach, one person for design, social media, blog posts, SEO, and the list goes on and on and on.

Don’t forget that they also have more funds to invest in their blogs,

They can get access to really great blogging automation software and tools needed to make a multi-niche site a success.

Why am I telling you this?

As a solo blogger, you are still figuring things out,

you have so much to do every single time, and the work you have to do is multiplied by the number of niches you are concentrating on.

That means if you are doing outreach, link-building, or even email campaigns,

you have to do them separately for every niche on your website for it to be successful.

Otherwise, you will end up bombarding your readers with blog posts in every niche when they are only interested in just one.

Most of them will end up unsubscribing from your email list if they even subscribed at all.

My advice, niche down,

let people know you for a specific thing, it’s easier and faster to build authority in one niche than in 5 different niches on one blog.

2. No Purpose Behind Each Blog Post

This beginner blogging tip took me a long time to learn…..

Previously, I would just push out blog posts without any purpose.

I thought, if the post fits the niche, write it, right?

Wrong!

There should be a purpose for every blog post on your website,

In other words, what is the reason you are writing a specific post?

Is it to build traffic by guest posting? To make an income through affiliate marketing? sell a product? grow your email list? Or to create topic clusters?

Without having a good strategy and defining the purpose of every blog post you write,

you are simply posting blindly without any goal or feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

Before creating any blog post, ask yourself what you hope to accomplish by posting it,

Define your goal, and outline the strategies that will get you to that goal and how to implement them in your posts.

This way, you get to know if your strategies work and which ones don’t, and if yes,

Which one works better so that you can modify and focus on that particular growth strategy?.

3. Writing Static, Unreadable, or Boring Content

By definition, a blog is an informal way of writing, more like a discussion or storytelling…

This means that you should write like you talk…

Writing huge blocks of unreadable content like blog posts will only get you one thing – No Readers.

Don’t forget that you are talking to people, not robots,

It is one of the most common beginner blogging mistakes I see,

Try to write your content in such a way that it’s easy to read and understand.

Break up your article into smaller paragraphs to make it easier to read,

and use pictures, graphs, infographics, and videos to add life to your posts.

Add humor, and show your personality in your writing,

Don’t let your articles be one of those ones on the internet people click right out of because it is too complicated to read or boring.

Yeost SEO plugin can help you with this,

it gives you ideas on the different ways to make your content more readable before posting them.

You can also use Grammarly to help you understand how your sentences sound to the reader,

Always aim for a friendly tone.

4. Not Creating Topic Clusters

Building authority in a particular niche should be your main focus, not traffic or money.

Aim to be the best source for a particular niche,

and provide the best possible information, resources, and data that your readers could ever want or need.

What better way to do that than to create a cluster of topics that serve the same purpose?

For example, if someone searched for the keyword “how to start a blog“,

You know they would need a step-by-step tutorial, blog name generators, domain and hosting company recommendations, and even a tutorial on how to write a blog post.

How about creating these blog posts that act as a web of content interlinked that points to the main keyword – how to start a blog?

This way your readers don’t have to go searching for a particular post or tutorial on a different website when they are already on yours.

It will help to increase the dwell time on your page, reduce your bounce rate, and skyrocket your blog traffic!

5. Depending On Only 1 Traffic Source

Now am not saying you should try to optimize your blog posts for all search engines and promote them on all social media channels,

that takes a long time to do and can be really really exhausting if you try to do it all at once.

Try to optimize your website for at least 2 search engines and 2 social media platforms,

then just focus on these platforms and try to grow your authority on them.

The reason you need to focus on more than one platform is that,

This is the internet and in your blogging journey, you will come across multiple updates to search engines, and even social media platforms alike.

If all your traffic depends on one source, imagine what would happen if an update affects your blog negatively,

you would lose all your traffic and depending on the issue, it might take a while to get back on track.

For example, following the recent Google may update,

Many bloggers have reported a continuous decline in their website traffic while others have soared,

To be on the safe side, always diversify your traffic sources.

6. Not Promoting Your Content

Most newbie bloggers think that the work is done after you hit the publish button to make that awesome blog post you just wrote go viral but that’s far from it.

According to the famous marketing expert Neil Patel, owner of Ubersuggest and now the owner of Answer the Public,

You should spend 20% of your time writing blog posts and 80% marketing them.

Think about it, nobody is going to know how much value you can provide or how great your article is if no one gets to read it.

And nobody is going to read it if they don’t know it exists,

You need to bring your content in front of your audience continuously with SEO, Ads, and promotions.

7. Wanting Fast Results

When I started my first blog, my mindset was simple.

I thought I would publish one to 10 blog posts that would go viral and set me up for success automatically.

I know so many bloggers think the same way too, but a year or two down the line, you realize, blogging is a lot harder than it looks.

There are no fast results, and it is not a get-rich-quick scheme,

it is a lot of hard work and a continuous journey of learning new things.

No miracle spike in traffic will happen

Unless you work towards it every single day and never stop learning.

So stop checking your Google Analytics every day for the number of page views and get to work, you can do it!

8. Publishing Inconsistently

You publish one blog post today, the next post a week later, and the next one after a month,

and you probably don’t know when you will publish the next post because you are so tired and can’t get yourself to write anything.

Does this sound like you?

Don’t worry, you are not alone,

Burnout is real and as bloggers is something we experience so much that we start to get used to it.

The biggest impact of inconsistent blogging is that your users forget about you before you publish your next blog post,

They don’t see you as an authority because they can’t even remember you, and when they finally see you,

They don’t trust you enough to listen to what you have to say.

Being active and publishing content consistently tells your readers and the search engines that you know more about your niche topic,

You are here to stay and not someone pursuing money and quick traffic, it shows your dedication and how serious you are about what you do.

This way, your readers, future customers, and Google itself can take you seriously.

9. Not Proof-Reading Your Posts Before Publishing

How would you feel if you came across content that had so many grammatical errors and mistakes, that you could not read it at all,

Now think about how your readers would feel if you had so many grammatical errors in your content,

You would have people fleeing right off your blog regardless of the quality of the value that you provide.

Checking your posts for grammatical or spelling errors, helps you put out high-quality content that people would like to read,

it is easier for them to understand what you are saying and place you as an authority in your field.

So take 10 or 20 minutes to cross-check your post for errors, you would be surprised at how many of them you find.

Personally, I like to use Grammarly or other proofreading software for writing,

it automatically highlights mistakes as you go and even tells you how your writing sounds to a reader, it’s great.

10. Waiting For Perfection

I was guilty of this once, I wanted every blog post to be perfect,

I’d spend hours writing a blog post, choosing pictures, and constantly changing website themes to look and feel perfect

I would even go as far as designing and writing content that never saw the light of day because I felt it wasn’t perfect enough for me to publish it.

This resulted in me being frustrated with a lot of things including tiny little details that had little to no significance or value.

What’s my point?

If you are a new blogger, the truth is, your first post is most likely going to suck,

you are going to look back at it in a few years and think, “What was I thinking when I posted this?”, it is like that for everyone…

Don’t spend too much time trying to get started that you end up not getting started at all,

You can build as you go, make changes, make updates to what you have learned, and be better, but before you get there,

You have to summon up the courage to hit the publish button and get started first.

11. Not Offering Any Takeaways or Freebies For Your Email List

This is a crucial part of building your email list,

As a blogger, your email list is one of your biggest assets besides your website,

You want to make sure that you are constantly creating free items full of value and knowledge and offering them to your audience in exchange for an email address.

This is important because the people who subscribe to your email list are your best customers and your loyal readers,

They are usually the first people to click on a link in an email you sent or they out your products or even read your blog posts.

They are the ones who are really interested in your content and in what you have to say

That is why you need to invest more in them by making sure you are constantly providing fresh helpful tips to help them achieve success.

12. Investing In Every Blogging Tool Or Not Investing In Any

When I first started blogging, I wanted to be successful at all costs and I wanted to do it fast,

I wanted quick results and I was willing to invest in any and every tool that promised to get me to where I wanted to go.

In the world of blogging, there are hundreds of tools that will sell you what you want to hear, the only difference is,

you may not get the same results even after using those tools.

For a while, I kept investing in blogging tools, for this and that until I understood one thing,

Investing in tools is great, they can help you on your blogging journey,

but you need to know how to use them first, what they do, how they work, and why they are vital to the growth of your blog,

Ask yourself what you would achieve by implementing that particular tool into your blog before you go paying for it.

The other thing I see most bloggers do is that they don’t invest in any tool or theme at all for their blog,

This could work but not for long,

If you are a newbie blogger then you don’t really need expensive blogging tools,

You are just starting out and you could leverage free available tools for your blog.

But once your blog starts to grow, you want to make use of tools that can help accelerate your blog growth, improve your blog theme, etc.

13. Not Making User Experience A Priority

Many bloggers think this is not important,

Since it is so easy to forget this while you are too busy worrying about SEO,

you forget that web vitals like website speed and easy navigation for your blog are actually a Google ranking factor,

it affects how Google sees your website and then recommends it to users based on that.

If you landed on a web page that kept loading for more than 3 seconds, would you remain there?

Most users including myself would bounce right off the website after more than 4 seconds and your users will do the same.

Make sure you optimize your images, and so on so that they don’t slow down the loading of your web page,

make your navigation easy to use so your readers can find the content they want easily.

You can use the Google Pagespeed insights in the Google search console to check your website speed,

they also show you the different ways you can optimize your website for free.

For other options, try other tools like Pingdom and Gtmetrics to get more advanced information on your website performance.

14. Blogging About What You Want – No Keyword Research / SEO

Another mistake I made when I first started my blog was to just blog without having any target keyword or knowledge of blog SEO,

I was just publishing blog posts with no direction or purpose.

I ended up getting a loyal fan base of people who liked my content when they came across it on Pinterest,

but no traffic whatsoever from Google and in the long run,

That was something I wanted so I decided that optimizing my blog posts for Google was really important to me.

This was the first time I came across keyword research,

you see,

Every article on your website should be optimized to target keywords that are typed by a user into Google, and your web page matching the search intent shows up in the search results.

How can your page show up if you don’t optimize it for the search engines?

Of course, if you are a hobby blogger, then you don’t care about SEO,

but if you are someone who depends or will depend on search engines for website traffic,

then keyword research and optimization should be at the tip of your fingers.

15. Not Backing Up Your Blog Regularly

Imagine what would happen if you spent so much time designing your blog,

Writing your blog posts and then not backing them up,

only to find out that a plugin or WordPress update has affected your blog and resulted in a loss of everything you have worked so hard for.

It happened to me once and I was really shocked, lucky for me, it was still quite early on in my blogging journey so I hadn’t really lost much.

I also had a backup of my blog posts saved as Microsoft Word files on my laptop and so I bounced back from it very quickly.

Not everyone may be so lucky…

Try to back up your website at least every week either with your web hosting company or with a plugin,

in the meantime, I would recommend the Updraft Plus backup plugin for WordPress,

it is what I use and I like it so far.

16. Having No Social Media Presence

Many of 6 Figure Blogger’s loyal readers are from social media,

These are people who have come across your social media page and like what they see,

They discover more about your business from there and then become subscribers to your blog.

Social media can be a really great tool for putting your content out there for people who need to see it.

According to a recent study by Orbit Media, social media platforms are the most popular source of blog traffic for all bloggers.

Since a lot of people use social media apps like Facebook and Instagram,

it has become a very effective way of reaching your target audience and building authority online.

These people can become mentors, loyal readers, and someday even customers,

That’s why it is important to make sure that you are constantly engaging with other bloggers in your niche on social media,

It makes it easier to exchange ideas and build long-lasting relationships in your industry.

Here are some high-converting social media management tools to help you grow your social media presence.

17. Writing Content For Search Engines Not People

I see a lot of bloggers make this mistake,

yes, you do need to optimize your content for search engines but write for people because at the end of the day,

The search engines won’t buy your products, people will.

Focusing on just building your content around keywords to draw in search traffic but providing no value at all is useless,

the result is,

you will get the traffic, but then without any value, your visitors will bounce right off your page to another website that provides value.

Another website provides more information that they can’t find anywhere else.

The best strategy is to create epic content that people will love and then optimize that content for SEO so that people who are searching for that epic blog post you have written can find it.

18. Using Boring Images & Titles

According to a study by Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko an SEO and Marketing resource website,

your blog post headline is probably the most important element in your entire blog post,

this is because it is the first thing people see and they judge if they will click through to your content or not depending on your blog post title.

Optimizing your headline to spark a reader’s curiosity is vital to increasing blog traffic,

for example, did you know that headlines with a question mark, a number, or brackets that are 14 to 17 words long outperform short headlines by 76%?

That is a huge percentage, isn’t it?

Think of it this way, your headline is your chance to convince people to click through to your blog,

The best trick is to spend more time crafting your blog post title

and keep tweaking it till it becomes something that people can’t wait to click the link on to read about.

If you need help you can use blog title generators like Fatjoe, or SEOpressor,

these tools help craft really awesome blog titles that will drive clicks to your website.

I think they are worth a shot.

19. Not Branding Your Blog

Most people think branding a blog means simply choosing colors and designing a logo,

but it is far more than that,

It is your identity, your belief, your mission, and more importantly, it is your voice.

It is what people see when they think of you,

it is what you stand for, what you represent, what you are known for, and what your readers and everyone will remember you with.

In order words, it is who you are as a blog,

Specifying all these things in your blog and creating uniformity in brand identity and brand voice across all platforms is a really great way to establish authority and ensure that your readers know and remember you.

This way they can associate your identity with your value and remember you when they think of your niche.

20. Copying Other People’s Work

When I first came across blogging, this was a really common thing and it still is,

you see a lot of repeated content everywhere on the web, the same blog post, written differently with different words with no added value.

Sometimes the same exact words are copied from another blogger’s website and used on your own website,

This is called plagiarism and is a big No-No in the eyes of Google, and you could get penalized for it.

Not to mention that you could get sued for copyright violation if the blog you copied from becomes aware of content theft, etc.

The best practice is to write your own content,

Even if you need to borrow ideas, just make sure you are adding your own unique twist to it and saying it in your own words to improve the value being provided.

21. No Data To Backup What You Say

It’s easy to say things without any data or statistics to support what you are saying,

and while this might work for other kinds of blogs that do not deal with informational services or data, this might not even be necessary.

But if your blog relies heavily on analytical data statistics or information to properly drive your point home,

you want to make sure that you are constantly attaching statistical data to back up what you say and not claim any survey result or information as your own.

Most importantly,

it will give you more credibility and authority and maybe even backlinks since your readers can share your statistical data in the form of infographics to their web pages and social media platforms.

It is worth it.

22. Digressing From Your Blog Post Topic

I was once very guilty of this when I first started my blog,

I would choose a good blog topic and then somewhere along the way during the blog post,

I’d forget what I was supposed to talk about and go completely off-topic into something else.

The impact of this is that you end up providing value on something else, not what the user has searched for,

This results in an inability to satisfy the search intent of your focus keyword and leads to people eventually bouncing right off your website.

I overcame this issue by properly outlining what I wanted to accomplish in each blog post before writing them,

Addressing all the problems in my post, and numbering each and every point to make sure that I didn’t go off-topic.

Remember your readers have limited time and are looking for a solution to their problem,

so just be straight to the point and provide value first.

23. Not Utilizing Your Google Analytics & Search Console Data

This is one of the biggest things that is often overlooked and I feel like it shouldn’t be so,

Most people focus on Google Analytics and Google Search Console as a medium where they can check their blog traffic each day but it is more than that…

Your Google Analytics and search console tell you literally everything you need to know about your website and its users.

What time they visit your blog, what pages they visit, on which devices, what browsers, how they came to be on your website, i.e the source of the traffic, how long they spent on your website, and what they did while on your website, etc.,

The amount of insight provided is endless, this information should help you determine a lot of things,

which posts are more popular so you can improve them, what posts are underperforming so you can optimize them,

What posts are making the user bounce right off your website,

How many search queries are you currently ranking for so you can optimize the posts even further to increase your ranking position and so much more.

Spend time studying your website data, believe me, it will do your blog a lot of good.

24. Buying Spammy Backlinks

As a new blogger, the thought of this has probably crossed your mind, buying backlinks to help grow your blog faster.

Unfortunately,

According to Google, buying backlinks to increase search rankings is a way of manipulating the search engines to think that your website is valuable and then increasing traffic by ranking it higher in the search results when it is not.

This can result in a website penalization by Google (your website will be completely blocked from indexing and you won’t be able to appear in the search results)

The reason is simple, buying backlinks, from low-quality sources.

which is full of a lot of low-quality, high spam rates, PBN backlinks from very low-quality blogs and forums are really bad for your blog.

Since the building of do-follow links passes link juice to your blog,

if you are linked to a high-spam website, your website is viewed as high-spam and low-quality as well.

Instead of buying backlinks, try guest posting on high-quality authoritative blogs in your niche instead,

this will help you build backlinks to your blog safely and increase your website traffic.

25. Not Networking With Other Bloggers

As a blogger, thinking that you can do it alone sometimes is easy,

just do this and do that and you are successful, right?

Wrong!

You need other bloggers and they need you too!

We all need each other to grow, other bloggers in your niche probably have more connections, knowledge, tools, and even ideas than you need.

You simply need their help, since no man is an island,

Try talking to other bloggers, explain the issues you are facing, what you are going through, what you need help with, and what you would like to accomplish,

You would be amazed at the amount of help you could get and how it will affect your blog growth.

Believe me, I know.

Beginner Blogging Mistakes – Conclusion

There it is!

my massive list of beginner blogging mistakes that you should avoid making on your blogging journey.

If you are currently making any of these mistakes,

don’t fret, it’s an easy fix,

just it one step at a time and try to correct the problem and you should be fine.

If you liked this post, agree with me, or maybe even want to leave me a tip on how to do better,

am waiting for you in the comment section, I would love to hear your opinion!