You want more blog visitors, but the ones already visiting visits and never come back again. You’re literally driving them away.
Blogging requires proper strategy and implementing things the right way. In a situation where you fail to do the right thing, in the right way and at the right time, the number of your blog’s visitors reduces.
I had a terrible time trying to build my online business through blogging. At one point in time, I felt like to quit blogging entirely and focus on my regular job. On the other hand, a friend of mine, also a blogger, was successful with his blog. He gets not less than 60,000 monthly visitors. The funniest thing is that I’ve been in the blogging field before him but it seemed he’s my ‘master’. I always wondered how he did it and later I came to realize that I’m the reason behind my ‘failure’. I was making so many mistakes. Most of them were so common that I overlooked them not Knowing they’re the basics to attracting blog visitors.
Many bloggers, I believe, especially when starting out, has made these mistakes at one point in time. It’s normal. Blogging is an ongoing process, so we make mistakes, learn from them and make adjustments where necessary.
However, I see so many bloggers still making these mistakes (you may be one of them) and I always wonder may be they’re not aware or something. That’s why I decided to write this article explaining 5 most dangerous mistakes that drives away visitors from your blog. Like I said earlier, most of them are common, but you have to take them seriously and make amendments.
1. Bad Blog Design
You might have heard: “You don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. To some extent, it’s true but don’t let that deceive you. Visitors judge a website by it’s ‘cover’ (i.e the design). Having a bad blog design is terrible. Imagine navigating on a website with poor/unstructured navigation menu, conflicting colors, unresponsive images, eye-soaring fonts or texts etc. I bet you won’t take up to 10 seconds to hit the ‘back’ button. If that’s the case, Why give your blog a bad design?
If you don’t have web design skills, hire a professional web designer. Make sure the blog is good and responsive, if possible, try to contact a blog consultant to survey your blog and tell you where amendments are needed. The survey may come at a cost or free depending on the understanding between both of you but it’s worth it.
2. Writing for yourself, not your audience
Have you ever engaged in a conversation where the other person only talks about himself as if you’re not there with him? You feel how awkward and irritating it is. Similarly, writing for only yourself irritate your visitors. For God’s sake, they are the reason you started the blog at the first place, and writing only to please yourself means that they should back off; they aren’t wanted. You have to carry them along; write in a two-person conversational manner. For instance, instead of always saying “I”, why not use “you”. It’s more personal and your visitors will fell engaged.
However, I’m not saying you shouldn’t put your own personality into your content or add a post or two about something that happened to you and is noteworthy, but write about stuffs that interests your audience. Readers are selfish. They want information they can use. so find a way to provide it.
3. Poor writing
If you want to impress your readers, then you need to have good writing. Remember, your focus should always be helping people – especially if you plan to make money and so, take time to research the facts and ideas in your posts. Make sure you proofread before posting. use spell check and review your readability statistics. Always bear one thing in mind – poor writing is a surefire way to turn away new readers.
4. Slow website loading time
Visitors hate low speed websites. In fact, if your blog’s load time is slow, you’re indirectly telling your visitors to back off and never come back again. Also, your google page rank will be negatively affected and you know what it means. It was discovered in a recent survey that blog visitors can only, at most, wait for 2 seconds for a site to load, thereby creating the need to make blogs load faster.
5. Lack of focus
Focus. I’ve have to find focus in what I’m doing before seeing appreciable results. I’m a tech blogger and Internet marketer. That’s my focus and I build my blog around it at one time or another.
Many bloggers make the mistake of covering every topic and they loose their clarity. This annoys readers. Imagine visiting tech blog and you end up seeing sports articles, you would be confused and eventually annoyed.
Stay on one topic. Develop expertise in your niche. Become an authority. That’s the key.
6. Not responding to comments
Readers come to your blog to find a solution. If in any case they drop a comment, respond to it. It shows you really want to help them.
Well, I’m guilty as charged. I made this mistake back then but not anymore. Right now, I respond to every comments on my blog.
Try to do the same. Click through to visit other blogs. Network. Grow your friend base.
7. Not using images
“An image speaks more than a thousand words”. I believe you’ve heard something like that. There’s truth in that statement. Images appeals the eye. Man cannot live on bread alone, likewise bloggers can not live on text alone. Readers feel bored to read long posts without images to break the ice at one point in time. Spice up your posts with images.
Conclusion:
Admit it, you might be making a fewer of these mistakes. be honest with yourself. You don’t have to feel bad, it’s normal to make mistakes. But the bad part is ignoring them. So address ’em and correct your steps.
What other blogging mistakes have you noticed? What steps are you taking to correct them? Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
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