This post is intended at bloggers who have just started to blog. Here are five mistakes that you oughta stay clear of when blogging.

Mistake#1: Staying anonymous.

Unless revealing your name would get you fired or lead to a divorce, stay away from anonymity while blogging. The internet is a place where sweetchick18 could be granny1939. Everybody knows that.

Bring some credibility to your blog. If you haven’t already, add an about me page. Add links to your twitter page and other social networking Profiles. Be human!

Mistake#2: The Advertising Overdose

People come to your site looking for content and not to see if you won the “Maximum number of Ad Networks on a blog” Guinness record. There are a lot of sites out there (especially ones that just link to others’ content and blogs with download links) that would have at least 5-10 different ads from various ad networks on each page.

There exists a small delay(latency) in establishing the first connection to an external site and in case of multiple ad networks, it multiplies. This can increase the page load time of your blog post to an extent that the visitor would just return to the Google Search page he/she was on before and tryout a different search result.

Also, try not to add popup/popunder advertising (or anything that would force the visitor to do something in order to view the content) . They can really vex the visitor.

Mistake#3: Poor page layout or design

First impression is the best impression. A first time visitor to your blog must have a good impression about your blog. Blog design and placement of navigation links are important factors.

When compiling the list of the Top 10 sites for Vector Logos, I came across many sites. Some were old established sites, but had horrible navigation, search facility and design. Probably they must have had a larger repository than a site listed in the top 10 list. But the site design and navigation were turnoffs. Layout and design matters!

Mistake#4: The ‘via’ fever: Copied Content

Copying content and placing a “via: xyz” link is a great way to share posts you’ve stumbled upon and found rocking. Just make sure that the such posts don’t make up a lion’s share of your blog, outrunning original content. A better practice would be to make a post towards the end of each month (E.g: Links for Jan 2008) and dump all your stumbles onto that post.

Mistake#5: Not responding to your commentators

Many a times, visitors ask questions via the comment form. Bloggers never tend to reply to comments. Even a simple acknowledgment of a complement would go a long way. So, if you’ve been avoiding replies, try to set apart a few minutes after you make a new post for replying to comments.
Tip: Get Subscribe to Comments and CommentLuv Wordpress plugins to develop a good commenting system on your blog.

And lastly, a tip. Update your content regularly. Both Search engines and people like fresh content. Do not let your blog be idle for more than a few days.

Dont miss out! Please consider SUBSCRIBING
Reader |