Blogging is a journey of earning through learning. Mistakes are also common phenomena in this journey.
What about if you quickly enter the intermediate level? Is it even possible? Yes, you can enter here by avoiding mistakes. The Intermediate level starts when someone stops basic blogging mistakes which beginners do.
Here only practical blogging mistakes for beginners are explained. It is collected through the experience of dealing with newbies from different countries. So, why wait? Let’s dive into the transformation toward the intermediate level by learning from others’ mistakes.
26 blogging mistakes for beginners with solutions
Mistakes are the steps to success. The difference creates how quickly bloggers accept any mistakes and correct them. You may enter into this article after knowing that some mistakes are on the way. I hope, you have at least solved a few mistakes already.
It possesses a comprehensive list. Read carefully each one and note it down. It will save you time in the Blogging journey. Moreover, When you are on the right track, you are energetic to run fast. So, let’s know the first blogging mistakes for beginners.
1) Shy to do perfect blog editing
It is a very popular thing among newbies. You can get related things in Quora, and Reddit in a vast amount of discussion, especially among freshers. What is the reason behind that?
Most blogger does not want to consider investing time in what is already written. In starting, there are huge effort takes to write a single article. That’s why bloggers want to consider it final. Then what is the solution?
Let me clarify that the market is not worried about you. If you cannot compete, then give the chance to another. It is the hard side of it. There is one more side which is the soft side.
You may realize that after reading a few articles it is relatively easy to write a new one. Similarly, it takes time to edit at the beginning. After dozen of editing, you are quite comfortable with it. Surprisingly, you may get that you are falling in love with editing. Why?
i) It can produce far greater value than your investing time.
ii) Any single bad content can lose the trust of your authenticity. Editing saves you from it.
iii) Your previous content may not be excellent enough from the current one. It is common because you have upgraded yourself. A regular habit of editing makes your content run parallel with your improvement of skills.
iv) Search engines like editing. If Search engines find this site has regular updates, you will get the priority.
There are plenty of reasons why bloggers have to keep editing their content when it is needed. Therefore, start your editing this week if it is not continued.
Now, look at the next popular one.
2) Deviating from content and starting to write about ownself or own knowledge
Did you notice this thing?
All bloggers find it at least a few times in the beginning. There are three types –
i) Deviating from content to fill it. It happens when the target is writing a long article but the collection of words is less.
Solution: Research more and increase your collection of words.
ii) Writing about yourself where it is not relevant. It happens because many bloggers enter into blogging to express their views.
Solution: There is nothing harmful if you place it in relevant areas. Before writing look if it is best to fit for content or not. You can focus more on content. You have to add which adds more value to the article, i.e, the content v/s your views. Place them which is best.
iii) Suddenly started to write what is in the mind in irrelevant places.
It is the most common one. People like to write what they know. When the topic is written, some extra portions are known by the blogger. Many times these things break the flow and deviate the reader.
Solution: The written should be always with consciousness. If you know, you are writing it for adding value to the respective point that is fine. Edit the things if it does not match perfectly with the content. You can read aloud and check things for the best result.
Now, the next one.
3) Critical blogging mistakes for beginners is not considering site speed
It is discovered when people ask about traffic increase. In the beginning, people give priority to attractive design over speed. After a certain level blogger spots that speed is worth considering element. Then what to do to increase speed?
You can select a lightweight theme/template. It is better to use less JavaScript or optimize it properly. After that reduce all the elements (which reduces speed) as much as you can. Finally, check it in the page speed insights tool. It has the following range –
i) 0-49 refer to Bad
ii) 50-89 refer to Medium
iii) 90 or above refers to good.
Try to keep your mobile page speed at least 50 or above. Now, look at another one.
4) Not including support for argument through quotes, statistics, etc
It is a common fact that people want facts rather than assumptions. Your opinion or data reaches its peak when you provide logical support data. It can be quotes from famous persons, any strong reference, current blogging statistics, surveys, etc. Therefore the solution is –
i) Search related blogging statistics to support your data.
ii) Search on the internet to find relevant quotes and put them in your content.
iii) Provide strong references. It can be any famous person or successful relevant people.
Next, it’s time to discover a hard fact.
5) Not maintaining the criteria for rank-worthy content because of a hurry
Almost 10% of bloggers try to write their best. The rest of them try to increase the quantity of the content at the beginning. What is the reason behind it?
Most beginners enter the market by thinking they can earn money easily. In the meantime, it is understood that publishing a few dozen of content is essential. Up to that, the matter is ok. The thing goes wrong when they know what is good content and still stick to not making posts in that way.
Solution: The solutions are lies within you. Here is a few important consideration.
i) You can try to understand more deeply the present market competition. The more you go in deep, the more your content shines.
ii) You have to understand a clear-cut thing. To rank content, you need to make better content than the search engine results in first page. At least create equivalent quality content if you want to target more traffic.
iii) Keep in touch with your good fellow. Good-fellow means with whom you can grow. It is also better to keep in touch with those whose quality is higher than yours. It will motivate you to produce quality content.
6) Lack of learning attitude
Blogging is a long journey. It is commonly found that newbies want to earn as soon as possible. There is nothing wrong with it. The actual problem occurs when learning does not take place consistently. How to overcome it?
Solution: i) Keep an eye on a few successful people. They often use, “I am still learning”.
ii) There is not any option to earn without learning. Blogging needs 100+ things to consider. Once a person can fight in the market, earning becomes easy.
iii) All the bloggers complete their basic learning of content writing. The more you delay the processes, the more it takes time.
7) Delaying to know about the keyword research
Keyword research is one of the elements which comes at first place in Blogging. However, the gap of it found in a larger amount. Its possible reason is bloggers enter into blogging for writing content. How it can be solved?
Solution: i) It is not very easy to do keyword research on the first attempt. Blogger learns to identify the keyword first. After that Keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC, etc considered. Long tail keywords come in the next place. Then some practical steps like User intent, etc are considered. It is not good to satisfy with the limited knowledge here. It is the thing which you need to go in the whole journey. It is better to know How to do keyword research properly.
ii) It is far easier than writing rank-worthy content. It also takes relatively less time. However, practice is needed to grasp it. Whenever you have time, you can spend the time with related keywords.
iii) The golden rule is finding the keywords by tools and selecting one which best fits the user and goal.
Now, some are not acceptable things.
8) Including copyright content or a portion of it
Believe it or not, maximum bloggers ask before starting whether they can copy the content or not. Many people start to paste massive copy content like 50-300 on their sites. It does not help them at all and ends with frustration. Until you learn basic blogging, your market-compatible journey will not start. The next thing is very common.
Copy some portion of the content is very common in the beginning. A few people express that it is one type of grid that need to be controlled. The below consideration may help to avoid it –
i) Copying the content hinders your possibility of shining. The long habit of it can be difficult to reverse. It is better to research the content with the fresh intention of producing unique content.
ii) The best way to be banned by Google is to include copyrighted content. It is also a good way to give someone your hardworking money for free as a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) penalty.
iii) Sometimes the copied paragraphs are found without the intention of it. There are billions of pieces of content found on Google. Some paragraph or line match is common in the Blogging journey. Therefore it is better to check for plagiarism before publishing your content. You can use one of the most popular tools named “Small SEO tools plagiarism checker” for it.
9) Including any images found on Google
It is also one of the reasons why blogging looks very easy at the beginning. It is common thing that images are already on Google. Just by searching and including the images very good content can be made!
Apart from the mistakes some cases people did it intentionally. These are the short-term decision thinking site owner cannot identify them. Both are equally dangerous and cause many headaches in the future. The below consideration can help here –
i) There are many tools especially for identifying the image copied from one site. There ate lots of examples are found where heavy charges are imposed for using copyrighted images. One viral fact is the $4000 Copyright penalty for using one image from other sites in an illegal way.
ii) Thankfully many websites allow you to use images for free. Before using those images you can also recheck the license. You can also consider these 25 Copyright-free image websites with license proof.
iii) Including rich images is part of grabbing the attention of readers. It will also help to rank images and increase traffic. You can start to create it. After practicing, bloggers can make awesome graphics which is attractive.
Now, some fundamental mistakes –
10) Not defining the goal
The major reason for slow growth among newbies is not defining the goal. Most things are hazy and very random. It is also obvious at the beginning. How to overcome it?
Solutions: i) The first way to overcome this is to read the content more and more. Just think if you already read some mistakes, it saves you time. Here lots of people share their useful content so one can save time. Initially, it is hazy but the more you research, the better the foundation will be.
ii) You can consider the following things to define the goal
a. What is your business about?
b. Who is your target audience/ customer
c. Which country/ city do you want to target?
d. Who is your competitor
e. Which resources do you need to stand out on the market?
f. What quality do you have and what quality do you need?
g. Where you want to see yourself in the short term (few months) and long term (5-10 years)
h. What is your plan to achieve that?
iii) Keep spending your time wherever you find knowledge about your businesses.
Here is one more –
11) Selecting a niche based on Money only
It is one of the blogging mistakes for beginners that hurts most. money is an important factor but not the only one. It is easy to create 10-20 posts in a niche but what about creating 100 posts? There are two cases. In one case people gain interest over time. In another case, people are exhausted to research the uninterested topic. How to resolve it?
i) You can consider these four things for selecting your niche –
a. You have the best or one of the most interesting to grow with this topic.
b. It has a marketable value which is trending types of blogs.
c. You have some knowledge of it.
d. You can continue it for 5-10 years.
ii) Search your niche on the internet. Look deep at the content results of the first page. If you can able to produce better or equivalent content like that then go with your niche.
iii) You can number your priority with the above consideration. For example, By reminding all things to prioritize the following niche –
a. Technology
b. News
c. finance
Here technology comes as the priority. Therefore it can be chosen.
Now a thing which likes by a search engine.
12) Not considering alt text
We can easily look at images but what about visually impaired people? It is our responsibility to reach them about the images. By adding alt text they can know about it through a screen reader. Google loves those who add late text. Alt text has two major effects –
i) Enhancing the accessibility of content
ii) Ranking of the images.
Some examples of alt text can be “A stadium full with the crowd”, “A person giving a presentation to team members”, “Today’s zigzag pattern on nifty 50” etc. How you can add it?
Solution: i) For WordPress do the following –
a. Open your post
b. Click on images on which you want to add alt text
c. You can see a pencil icon. Click on them to edit.
d. Put your image description in the “alternative text box” and it’s done.
ii) For Blogger you can do the following –
a. Open your post
b. Click on the images
c. You can see a setting icon. Click on it.
d. Add image description in “Alt text box”.
e. Click on save and it’s done.
Now, look at another flavor –
13) Not using popular SEO tools
Using SEO tools is a must for bloggers. It can track whether you are going on the right way or not. In the beginning, people stick to plagiarism checkers only. That is not the right way. Try different SEO tools and look at which is the best fit for you. Some must-use tools are –
a. Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Semrush for keyword research
b. Seobility, Siteliner, etc for the whole website check
c. GT Matrix, Page speed insights for speed checking, etc.
You can know more about this in these 50 free SEO tools list.
14) Not including meta description
A meta description is shown below the image title in the search engine result. Look at the below example of the meta description.
This meta description has 3 major benefits –
i) It uses for the call to action. Many people read the meta description and decide whether to click or not. In the above images, people who read both descriptions will choose which fits best for them.
ii) It is used for SEO. If it is blank then it can consider your starting lines which may not fulfill your goal.
iii) It is used for keyword optimization. The best practice is to include a keyword before 120 characters in the meta description. The overall length is good as it has less than 150 or 160 characters.
Now, look at another dimension –
15) Not considering domain authority
We have discussed many things about on-page SEO. Off-page SEO includes increasing domain authority as a priority. It can increase by building the backlink in your site. In these days’ highly competitive market it is difficult to rank without backlinks. It does not mean that you will start to build backlinks from day 1. However, it takes time to build this. Therefore it is necessary to know about and give a specific time to build Domain Authority and Page Authority.
There are many ways to build backlinks for free but these three can be considered the most.
i) Finding Broken links and pitching to the owner for adding your quality post
ii) Analyzing competitor’s backlinks and pitch them your quality post if they like to add
iii) Write your content on guest posting sites regularly.
Now, look at one of the vital blogging mistakes for beginners.
16) Not spreading their content on Social media
If you do not consider social media at all, you may miss a huge thing. Why do you consider it?
i) It will drive traffic to your blog from the very beginning. After 5 or 10 years it will be so huge that you can get a huge percentage of traffic from social media only.
ii) It is the perfect place to increase brand awareness. When you are active on social media people rely upon you and your brand.
iii) It is an opportunity to interact with diversified people and also get backlinks by doing nothing.
Some most famous social media people go for –
a. Facebook
b Facebook page
c. Twitter
d. Instagram
e. Pinterest
f. Linkedin
g. Whatsapp
h. Tumblr
i. Quora
j. Reddit
Now one thing for rich content.
17) Not including enough images in the content
Google recommends images where it is helpful to users. It is found in statistics that those who use more images get better results.
 |
| Credit – Orbitmedia |
It is good practice to include a few images to fight current trends. Even this decade shifts towards rich images. You can find top-ranking pages that include rich graphics and images frequently. It is good practice to include images to stand out from the crowd.
It’s time to discover a very popular mistake.
18) Not interlinking the content
The interlinking option is completely in your hand. It is the first indication for a new website that content how much important.
Interlinking refers to when you link an article on your website to the current page of your website. Here is an example of an internal link. How to write a good post in 30 vital steps. When you click on this link it sends you another article.
Do not forget to create a mesh of internal links. That has two major reasons –
i) You user can easily reach other useful posts created by you.
ii) Search engines can understand that your website is mature enough and users can easily navigate through the website.
Now, the related staff.
19) Not create the association of essential things like Google news, Google search console, etc
These things are not mandatory. However, connecting with this help to grow faster. Some considerable things are –
i) Google news:
You can find it in the news section of the search result. If you have a technology, sports, news, etc. niche then must go for it. It also causes huge traffic to your blog when your news goes to the first page.
ii) Google search console:
It is an excellent staff of google where you can track your organic traffic. Apart from that, it is far easier to check if any page has an issue that prevents indexing. You can also submit an XML sitemap for the best indexing results.
iii) Google Analytics:
Here you can find lots of variations to track your post clicks. The country, engagement rate, comparing between elements, and lots of things it can analyze. You can also set your criteria to track your visitors. Understanding the audience is essential to growth and Google analytics is ready to help with it.
iv) Custom robots.txt set up:
It is used to give suggestions to the crawler on which page should be indexed and which one is not. It helps to –
a. Prevent indexing old unnecessary pages.
b. Optimize the crawl budget and fast index the page that you want.
You can know more about custom robots.txt from here.
It’s time to familiarize yourself with one worst thing.
20) Buying invalid traffic
It is the easiest way to ruin your website. What is the reason for it?
i) The traffic is not readers and they will act on your website in different ways.
ii) Suddenly increasing traffic and that too in one hour is just kidding with the algorithm.
iii) Suddenly drop in traffic will help to identify there is invalid traffic in a new website.
These will cause your website on a consideration list for manual action in the future. If anyone wants to grow then they should forget this type of option is exist anywhere.
21) Buying toxic backlinks
Google does not like any paid backlinks. What about toxic backlinks?
Toxic backlinks are those which pull back to your website. Some examples are below –
i) A website has a food niche and gets lots of backlinks from cryptocurrency. Can you find any relation? This helps to identify Google as having invalid practices.
ii) Many websites in this connection have bulk orders of backlinks. They also use wrong practices to keep domain authority high. It is a high chance of increasing spam score day by day. After a certain period, these backlinks can be considered spammy links.
iii) When persons invest their time to acquire toxic backlinks, missed the actual way to get a good backlink. It causes a long time to stand out the website after reversing all the things.
It is better to use a legal way to get backlinks. It takes time but it can give you worthy results in a long run. You can use a Google ad campaign if this works for you.
Now, few rich resources that everyone does not tell you about.
22) Keyword optimization
It is very common to know about the keyword among folks. A beginner (without courses) slowly learns about keyword optimization. The first thing they know keywords can be included in the body. After that may be in the title. In that way, it takes a long time to get the perfect idea for keyword optimization. It is better to learn fast in all in one guide for keyword optimization where you have to consider 14 places for keywords.
Always remind, don’t put your keyword where it is not natural. These things are termed keyword stuffing. It can cause penalization by Google. Apart from that do not use your keyword too much. If it comes naturally then it’s ok. You can consider 0.5℅-1.5℅ keyword density. However, 0.5%-1% is more recommended. Keyword density refers to the ratio of keywords in your total words of the whole content. For example, You can include keywords 5 to 10 times in 1000 words of content. you can read the full keyword density guide to know more.
23) Image optimization
The bloggers are few who know about proper image optimization. It can be done in simple 6 steps –
i) Download fewer size images:
At the very beginning, it does not consider. When a blogger set large size images like 5 MB or 10 MB then the total size of the content is large. It reduces the speed of your pages or websites. Therefore download the images which are already in fewer sizes like 500 kb or 1 or 2 MB.
ii) Compress images:
It is necessary to compress images for the best optimization. When you compress any images it can reduce the size by 30%-75% even without losing notable quality. “Tiny png” is a tool of very popular in this regard. You can look at 35 free image compression tools to stick in your few favorite tools.
It is recommended to reduce your image size to below 100 kb. For very rich images you can exceed it. However, in these competitive days, it is good to keep the images below 50 kb.
iii) Rename your images:
It is the most skippable thing in the blogging area. when you rename your images, it is ready to serve in google more. It is also easy to rank images in Google because of less competition. After a certain period, it also causes getting organic traffic. What things to remind your images –
a. Use only small letters
b. separate the words by a hyphen
One example is – “blogging-mistakes-for-beginners-thumbnail”.
iv) Add alt text (already discussed) on your all images.
v) Add image title/ caption in your images.
vi) Add a keyword at least one time in an image URL, alt text, and image title in your whole article.
24) Not collecting the email list
It is very common at the beginning. Perhaps getting no response for providing an email is the main reason.
Initially, it takes time to build an email list. Whatever, you cannot skip it. Email is the thing where you can get the most traffic for impressions.
You can keep a newsletter on your page to collect emails. If your content is good then people like to share their email. Make sure you add value to users. With time you have an email list. Care for the theme. Add value to them without spamming.
Apart from that (more effective) to add value to users in different social media. It is highly effective at the beginning. People like to spend time where they can find something. Be a reason for it.
25) Not publishing blog posts frequently
It is one of the major reasons which hinder a blogger’s growth. This can be found at the advanced level too. Whatever, do not forget that in the beginning, it hurts the most.
When you have irregularity in writing posts it will not be considered worthy enough by a search engine. There is already a huge competition. You can stand out here by choosing best practices. For it –
i) You can make a calendar for scheduling your post and stick to it until you get success.
ii) It is also effective to make a highly regulated friend circle and post regularly there.
iii) The more you write posts, the more it is easy for you. In one day you have to reach where a blog can be made in less time. It comes after writing enough amount of blogs. So why wait? Start writing frequently and reach this position soon.
Now the last but not least one on Blogging mistakes for beginners’ journey.
26) Not increasing the professional connection
It is one of the major reasons why bloggers do not grow fast. Increasing professional connections will give you lead in this way-
i) Find a different perspective to grow your blog or business.
ii) Your questions and even hidden questions will be solved through posts or queries.
iii) Interact with followers and understand what they want.
iv) Sharing each other’s knowledge and growing together.
v) Keep up to date by noticing the trends for a particular niche or business.
vi) Motivation to improve more by noticing better content.
vii) Providing credibility behind your blog or business.
It is useful in different dimensions. Don’t forget to include a little time on it in your busy schedule for better growth.
Wrap up for this blog
Here you found a diversified mixture of blogging mistakes for beginners. These are made like that it is helpful in the beginning. Every single element is important here. Don’t forget to revisit these mistakes to not waste your time more. By avoiding these you are ready to name yourself a professional blogger. Celebrate it. You can also free to ask any blogging query on Twitter or email.