When you start your blogging journey, there is so much to learn.
From perfecting your craft of writing, to managing your SEO, to building your social media accounts, to updating your website, and more and more and more. Really there is a ton to do and consider. Although, there are certain things you need to be careful of. Certain things could ultimately make most of your hard work useless if you are not careful!
Why go through all the effort of blogging, posting, managing social media, if only to get a few readers after years of blogging? It is not a good idea, and won’t have any payoff in the long run.
Therefore, do yourself a favor and make sure to avoid these 5 blogging pitfalls as you build the best blog your niche has to offer.
Blogging Pitfalls
There are countless pitfalls and ways you can waste time blogging.
I can only tell you about a few that I fell into and had to experience the hard way.
I truly hope discussing these will keep you from wasting your time down the line, and give you an advantage over other websites that you will be competing with. Remember, the goal is to gain as many readers as possible, that way you can monetize your site and quit your day job. At least, that is one of my goals!
Here are the 5 pitfalls we will be discussing:
- Posting Irregularly
- Not Using Proper Headers
- Paying For Backlinks – Over Spending
- Waiting To Monetize
- Not Being Active On Your Social Accounts
These are all things I have gone through and had to suffer on. The sooner you fix or avoid these five topics the sooner you will drastically change your blogging post’s impact on the web long-term. Lets dive into the first pitfall – Posting Irregularly.
Posting Irregularly
This is a huge issue for most bloggers, and if you do not post regularly enough, you will basically not get anywhere.
On average, you need to at least be posting 3 to 5 times a week on your blog in order to see any impact at all. I personally know several bloggers that try to post once a week in order to build up their site and ended up wasting 2 to 3 years and not getting anywhere.
You do not want that to be you.
The best way to combat this is to try and make a schedule for yourself. I personally blog everyday, so this is not an issue for me anymore, but I tried to do the weekly thing at first. I quickly realized, that there was almost little to no impact in the amount of readers I was gaining.
Therefore, try to pick 3 to 5 days out of the week to make sure you post a blog on your site. Typically it needs to be between 750 and 1250 words as well to rank well in Google and let people spend enough time on the page reading through it.
Not Using Proper Headers
This is just a simple basic part of blogging that everyone needs to learn in order for your posts to rank at all on Google.
Headers are the bread and butter of blogs trust me.
Usually, Google will categorize your posts based on the titles you put for your blog in your headers. The hierarchy of these categories is directly related to the importance of the header tag assigned to the title.
For instance, your blog will rank for H1 header tags in Google before it ranks for H2 header tags in search. Likewise, H2 titles will rank higher than H3 titles on your blog. Most importantly, you do not want to put too many H1 ot H2 header tags in your blog, or Googel will simply not know where to properly put your post.
Take the time to find the perfect header tags by researching relevant keywords to the post you are creating. This is the best way to maximize the impact your post has and the amount of readers that will find it overtime.
Paying For Backlinks – Over Spending
Another common pitfall for new bloggers is trying to rush getting exposure through purchasing backlinks.
Let me just guarantee you that this will have little to no impact on the domain authority of your blog. Yes, the domain authority is impacted by backlinks, but it is based on an average that is generated over time. That means if you buy backlinks for 3 to 4 months and then stop, Google will recognize this and decrease your domain authority accordingly. Worst of all, it could even penalize your blog if you are not careful.
My best advice is to let this happen organically. Write posts that other people with engage with, learn from, and ultimately want to share to their friends.
In addition, if you provide great content that other sites want to use like statistics or solutions then you will ultimately get backlinks from them writing about your posts.
Remember, organic growth is the best option and really the only solution for long-term sustainability. It will save you hundreds and potentially thousands of dollars from paying for fake backlinks that won’t matter anyways.
Waiting To Monetize
This is something I waited way too long to do.
You need to be constantly looking for ways to monetize your websites at all times. You need to try multiple things out as well with your readers until you find a good match that will not only benefit you, but will also benefit your readers.
This is honestly one of the hardest thing for bloggers to do – monetize your site. I suggest you start much earlier on to try and find some basic solutions before more third-party solutions present themselves along the way.
The best way to get started with this is through Google Ads. Going through this process will also enlighten you to the challenges of actually making money with a blog. It is a lot harder than it seems, so go ahead and start that journey now.
Not Being Active On Social Accounts
My last pitfall to avoid is one that I am prone to myself sometimes.
It is extremely easy just to want to post your blogs on your social accounts and then go to bed. Blogging is hard, tiring, and can really take the energy out of you. On top of that, you have to then find the energy to post on social accounts, interact with people, and still maintain that creative flow.
It is pretty hard to do all of this night after night with little impact for months on end.
Although, I have found that I gain the most followers on my social accounts not from my posts, but from interacting on other posts, leaving comments, and having simple discussions. Those the best ways to grow your following. It takes time, and it takes dedication.
In reality, it will probably take 2 years to build out a substantial following on any social account. I suggest starting that journey today, before you look back in 2 years and feel bad that you never did!
Blogging Pitfalls Overview
Thanks for reading this post on blogging pitfalls.
I have fallen into each one of these pits and wastes hours, days, and even months trying to figure all of this out.
Do yourself a favor and make a personal dedication and habit of always doing more than you think is necessary. Post more than you think you need to, leave more comments then you think you need to, and learn more than you think you need to.
If you do all of that, and are consistent with your posts, then I have no doubt that you will become a successful blogger.
Blogging Tips and Tricks
Small side note, if you are new to blogging then I highly recommend reading about some of our tips and tricks to setting up your first blog.
There is so much to learn, and you can waste a lot of time learning it the hard way, or you can read a few posts from experienced bloggers and save countless hours. The choice is yours really, but I would suggest doing everything you can to help you become successful
