16 Amateur Blogger Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Entire Blogging Career!
Are you looking for some amateur blogger mistakes? This article has gathered a few amateur blogging mistakes that will ruin your entire business!
Blogging is a popular way to make money, gain exposure, and live a boss-free life. And a million people will start blogging just for the advantages mentioned above. But, sadly, only a few thousand people will actually succeed.
Why?
Some amateur blogger mistakes can turn their entire website upside down. If you are a newbie in blogger and do not need to screw things up, we have created this article for you.
This post will show you a few amateur blogger mistakes that will ruin the blog and your efforts.
Without any further ado, let’s get into the list.
Top 16 Amateur Blogger Mistakes to Avoid
Below, we have gathered 16 of the most common amateur blogger mistakes that will happen. If you are ready to take a look, keep reading this article.
1) Not Publishing Regularly
When you run a blog, you need to have a publishing frequency.
It can be daily if you have enough authors or time to develop unique content daily or weekly if you need time to research and write.
Publishing frequency plays a vital role in blogging.
Having a regular schedule will help your site get better results; this way, you can increase your overall income.
2) Using the Wrong CMS
The blogging platform is another thing you need to consider. There are multiple blogging platforms available:
- WordPress.com
- WordPress.org
- Blogspot
- Wix
- Squarespace
and so on.
In our experience, WordPress.org is the best platform you can use for blogging. The configuration requires a custom domain name and hosting. Self-hosted WordPress sites give you complete freedom to manage the site.
You own the files and can import/export them whenever you need them. Check out if you need a dedicated guide on starting a WordPress site.
The next on the list of amateur blogger mistakes is terrible website design.
3) Terrible Website Design
If you check for a WordPress theme, you will land on multiple free, freemium, or premium solutions. Some authors are using theme marketplaces like ThemeForest to sell products. On the other hand, you can also use theme clubs like Elegant Themes, Themify, and so on.
However, when it comes to a WordPress theme, you must ensure that the website is neat and has a clear navigation system.
Multiple themes are available, like GeneratePress, and Astra, with many customization options but a decent and neat interface.
You do not need to use any fancy theme. That will increase the page size and page loading time too.
So, keep the website’s design simple and straightforward.
4) Not Using a Good Hosting
Your web hosting can be a crucial thing in the business. Thousands of people offer local web hosting services for a lower price. When you check Cloudways or some similar premium hosting company, they cost around $10 monthly.
But some local web hosting can offer you web hosting services for $1 a month!
Don’t fall for that.
You will pay for the subscription and end up losing all the money.
Most local web hosting companies will use reseller hosting from another company. This way, they can sell multiple web hosting plans and cover all the costs. The main disadvantage of these types of hosting companies are:
- Poor Security
- Poor Uptime
- Poor Customer Support
Your website will be running slow and can easily get infected with malware. As you know, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the entire world, and due to that, so many hackers are trying to find a security hole and get into the site.
Don’t lose your hard-earned money, time, and effort by choosing a local web hosting company. There are a couple of affordable web hosting providers out there.
Some of the popular and recommended ones are:
And premium hosting companies are:
and so on.
When you are a beginner in the blogging industry, you do not need to choose any premium, high-performance servers. Instead, the shared hosting servers would be an excellent fit for you.
Check out our article if you still need help finding the right company.
5) Domain Name is Hard to Remember
Visitors will find your website through the domain name.
Facebook’s domain name is Facebook.com, and Google’s domain name is Google.com. Choosing the domain name is one of the first steps to starting the WordPress site.
The domain name can be registered through any registrar like Domain.com, Namesilo, GoDaddy, or Namecheap.
Once you have registered a domain name, there is no way to undo it or get a refund. So, when selecting a domain name, you have to be careful. First, ensure that the domain contains your business name or a keyword.
Also, try to avoid symbols and numbers from it.
You can use any of the domain name suggestion tools online. Our next amateur blogger mistake in the list is not tracking visitors with Google Analytics.
6) Not Tracking Visitors With Google Analytics
Analytics is a free service offered by Google. It will help website and app owners see how their website/app performs and how many visitors use it. Google Analytics is a free tool that can be integrated with the site with a dedicated plugin or by editing the header.php file.
You must use Google Analytics in your blog. Since the setup is easy, you can do it in about 10 minutes. MonsterInsights is another powerful solution dedicated to Google Analytics and related technology.
With MonsterInsights, you can bring the Google Analytics dashboard to your WordPress site. Apart from that, it can also tell you how your WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads store performs.
Checking these stats will help you understand how visitors interact with the site and how you can improve it.
7) No Proper Writing Format
When you write content, you need to use
- Bulleted lists
- Numbered lists
- Subheadings
- Anchor text
and so on.
This will make the article even better, and the website visitors can easily understand what they are reading. Usually, people will use subheadings over the article, and you can also include bullets, numbered lists, and so on.
It is a must when you write a long/short article.
8) Ignoring List Building
Whether you use your blog for personal purposes or to make money online. You should start list building as soon as possible.
Studies show that more than 90% of website visitors will never come back to the website. This can be a little hard for us bloggers and business owners. With list building, we can save the names and email addresses of the visitors and start sending out newsletters when we release a new blog post.
To do this, you need two things.
- Lead generation software
- Email marketing service provider
OptinMonster, Bloom, and Thrive Leads are WordPress’s top three lead generation software.
To store the emails and send out newsletters, you can use any partners like Mailchimp, AWeber, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, etc.
You must try to generate leads from your existing website traffic.
9) Not Worrying About Page Speed
Website speed can affect conversions, revenue, and user experience.
Multiple tools, like GTmetrix, Google Page Speed Insights, and Pingdom, are available to test the website speed. By using these tools, you can check how your website performs.
If it is slow, you have to optimize the site. A WordPress caching plugin is the best way to optimize a WordPress installation. Caching can help you a lot with website speed.
Another thing you can try is compressing all the images.
There are plugins like ShortPixel can help you with the task. You must try lazy loading if you upload many images to your WordPress site. BJ Lazy Load is a recommended and free-to-use plugin for tasks.
Next on our list of amateur blogger mistakes is Don’t have Social Media Handles.
10) Don’t Have Social Media Handles
Social media can be a good source of traffic and revenue. There are multiple social media websites available like:
- TikTok
and so on.
You can create new social media handles for your blog. This way, you can share every post and attract more people interested in your niche.
Tools like Hootsuite are available to make social media publishing easier. Once you connect all your social media handles with the account, you can publish content from your same dashboard.
Another alternative is Buffer.
11) Not Investing In Tools
To be a better blogger, you should invest in tools and other resources. For example, if you prefer a quality theme, avoid themes from the WordPress repository. They are free and come with only limited features.
Buying a premium theme will cost money, but it is worth it.
Like the theme, you can invest in several necessary plugins, SEO tools, etc. However, spending considerable money monthly on a SEMrush subscription at the beginning of your blogging career is not recommended.
You need to start small and scale.
12) Poor Internal Linking
You need internal linking to reduce the bounce rate and increase page views. When you write content, and if there is an opportunity to link an existing article, you must take it.
Multiple tools, like LinkWhisper, are available to take care of the internal linking feature. You can use it to make the internal linking art easier.
On the other hand, you should manually link them throughout the content. Adding links manually will take some time. But you can easily do it through the WordPress dashboard.
13) Not Giving Credits/External Links
You should give credit when taking an image from an existing source. Similarly, you can add any external link to your article when you mention something they have found.
For example, suppose a website studies any topic, and you publish the overall result. In that case, you can mention “according to a study conducted by ABC [external link]” and complete the sentence.
You can add a no follow tag to the external links if the article is valuable. That’s totally up to you; you can change it whenever necessary.
Next on our list of amateur blogger mistakes is Spending NO Time With SEO.
14) Spending NO Time With SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
The main thing you need to do is
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
With SEO plugins like Rank Math, Yoast, and All In One SEO Pack, you can take care of the on-page SEO. These plugins will show suggestions when you write articles. This way, you can optimize the content for the best on-page SEO.
On the other hand, you need to do guest blogging and link building to improve the off-page SEO. This can be painful for most beginners, but it is worth it.
Once you finish the SEO part, your website will start ranking higher in search engine result pages, and you can quickly gain more revenue or conversions.
15) Not Using a Backup Plugin
Most managed WordPress hosting companies will develop an inbuilt backup and restore solution. But if you use shared hosting and need to take care of the files, you should consider a backup solution.
Regarding backup, there are multiple third-party solutions and plugins available.
You should use a backup solution to keep your hard work and efforts safe. Also, try to generate regular backups if you are frequently publishing.
Let’s say your blog got compromised one day and lost all the published posts, pages, and custom post types. If you have a backup of the previous day, you can restore it and keep it working again.
There will be no issues.
If you are looking for a premium backup plugin with unique features, you should check out BackupBuddy. Or, you can use UpdraftPlus from the WordPress plugins repository.
So last in our list of amateur blogger mistakes is Copying Others’ Work, also known as plagiarism.
16) Copying Others’s Work
Back in 2018, auto blogging was a real thing.
You can use a plugin that will fetch content from any other’s website and publish it under your name. Sounds simple, and as you mentioned, it doesn’t need any effort.
All you need to do is update the featured image and internal links and hit the publish button.
But this is purely wrong.
Other creators might be researching the idea for hours and paying someone to develop the content and graphics. So, by copying content from them, you’re ruining their and your business.
Another thing you need to consider is copyright infringement. If the other website’s owner ensures their contest is copyrighted, it can lead to more legal issues.
So, respect others’ work and don’t copy them.
That’s the end of 16 amateur blogger mistakes you should avoid, comment down if you think we have missed something.
Conclusion
In this article, we have shared 16 of the famous amateur blogger’s mistakes that can happen.
If you are making these mistakes, be better. Ignoring these issues can lead you to a brighter blogging career, and you can probably earn more money from it.
We hope you have found this article helpful and enjoyed reading it. Please consider sharing this article with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media if you do. Also, for more related articles, you should check out our blog archive.
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