Why Blogs Fail – 4 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

We all want our blogs to be successful. We want a constant flow of new readers who will enjoy our blogs and be inspired by them. We want new readers to come back to our blogs and check other pages and posts too. Ideally, we would also like them to subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media.

But it’s not always easy.

It takes a lot of hard work for the blog to grow and for the traffic to pick up.

This can be disheartening to bloggers who put a lot of work in but don’t see the results they want. Many times they wonder what they are doing wrong. Why is their traffic not growing? Why are the numbers stagnant? They don’t realise but they are certain things that can hinder their progress. Whether you have a personal blog or blog for business, here are some of the mistakes people make when trying to grow their blogs:

SEO

If you don’t know what SEO is and what it can do for your blog, you are definitely missing out. Not paying attention to SEO means that you could be potentially losing lots of traffic.

In order for your blog to generate more traffic, you need to make sure it’s optimised for search engines. This is what SEO is about. It’s about making sure your website is technically sound so that it can actually rank in search engines. It’s also about making sure that your content is of good quality and something that people would search for on Google or another search engine. These are just some of the things to pay attention to when optimising your website for search engines. There are many other things to consider as well.

SEO is complex and if you don’t know much about it and want to get started, the best thing is to read this Beginners Guide on Moz.

It may all be a little bit overwhelming and daunting to start with but don’t worry, I will be giving you more guidance on SEO in the future posts.

Design

The look and feel of a website plays such an important role if you are trying to attract new audience and grow your blog.

You may have some success driving more website visitors to your blog but if your blog is poorly designed, that audience will quickly leave your site.

Who wants to stay on a blog which uses a font that is difficult to read (handwritten fonts are the worst)?

And who likes a dark background with a light or colourful text on top? I find it so difficult to read and as soon as I see it somewhere, I leave the site straight away.

I’ve seen so many poorly designed blogs over years and some were really really bad.

Some people think that if they use lots of bright colours and fonts, that would be more attractive. But it’s not.

You need to try and keep it simple. Use simple, easy-to-read fonts and don’t use too many colours.

You should also pay attention to your layout. Too many elements on one page can quickly confuse and overwhelm your readers. If they cannot find what they are looking for, they will quickly leave.

The bottom line is: Bad design equals people leaving your blog and never coming back. And you don’t want that when trying to grow your blog, right?

Content

Whatever you blog about, it needs to resonate with your readers or whoever is browsing your website. If they don’t like the content, they will leave. If they like it, they will check other posts out, they will follow you on social media and even subscribe to your newsletter.

When you are writing a new piece of content you should always think about your reader. How can you help them? What tips can you give them to make their lives easier? Will they be interested in what you have to say? Will they be interested in your story? Why?

Many years ago I came across a blogger who was posting new content every single day. I read a few of her posts and quickly realised that she was writing only about herself and her life. Her blog was basically her online journal. What she did that day, what she ate and things like that.

While I like reading personal blog posts, this blog put me off as the content just wasn’t exciting. I didn’t get anything out of it by reading it. The truth is, it was a little bit boring.

So I left that blog and never came back to it again (the design was also terrible on top of that – I apologise for this harsh criticism but that’s being honest).

The point is, if you think that writing lots of new content will help you grow your blog, think again.

This is a mistake some bloggers make. They just write without thinking too much about what they are writing about.

At least there should be some kind of value in your content. It should be something that is interesting, useful, inspiring, thought-provoking or anything else that would grab your audience’s attention.

The content you create should stand out in some way so that people will be interested in reading it. If you create something that people will search on Google, even better. Of course, it doesn’t harm posting things sometimes which don’t exactly meet these recommendations (maybe you have an announcement to make or something else).

Frequency

Another mistake that is causing blogs to fail is not posting often enough.

When I first started my health blog I committed myself to posting at least once a week.

But at some point I realised that posting once a week is not often enough. It doesn’t attract enough audience and page views and it also doesn’t result in much organic traffic from Google.

So I decided to post more frequently. I went from around 4-5 articles a month to 6-8 articles a month.

Looking at Google Analytics now I can see that posting more often no doubt made a difference to my blog and it definitely attracted more traffic. Here is a screenshot from Analytics showing a level of traffic when I was posting 4-5 times a month and a level of traffic once I started posting more often:

The bottom line is: if you want to progress, post as often as you can; and write an SEO optimised content whenever possible.

So there you have it, some of the things bloggers do or don’t do which prevent them from progressing further. Do you agree?