Mistakes You Maybe Making With Your Blog

When it comes to blogging, or building and marketing any website really, there is a lot of time and work invested into most projects, even ones that appear small at first.

One of the most frustrating things that can happen when building or writing your blog is finding out later that a specific task that you were spending time or money on was actually working against you and your blog’s progress towards it’s goals.

There are a number of mistakes that many people make every day with their blog. Some mistakes are harmless, relatively speaking, but others can cause people to never come to your blog in the first place, come to your blog but not like the look of it and never come back, or come to your blog and decide to not come back again after reading your content. Conquering this problem is fairly easy, just stop making these mistakes.

Here are 10 mistakes you may be making with your blog:

1. Long Paragraphs - Most internet readers do not have the time or patience to read long paragraphs, in fact many people reading your blog actually just scan it looking for certain words that may jump out and grab their attention.

If your blog consists of a number of long paragraphs, you may be chasing away readers before they even give your content a chance. A great way to solve this problem is by either breaking up your long paragraphs into short ones or by using a writing style tool like numbered lists.

2. Lack Of Images - With the majority of websites consisting mainly of text, one of the best ways to bore your readers is to blend in with the crowd and not post images on your blog.

Using images is a great way to have an eye catching blog post. It works even better if the image ties directly to the subject of the blog post, this way the reader may see the image and immediately have an idea of what the subject of the post is.

3. Lack Of Bolding - If a blog post does contain a good deal of text, one way to appease the readers that just scan through it to get an idea of what the post is about is to highlight or bold certain terms or sentences so that those words leap out for the reader.

Using bolding as a way of getting the reader’s attention is a great way to get someone to read your whole post when they may have skipped over it before because they weren’t sure if it was information that would interest them.

4. Being A Used Car Salesman - From the time people spend in a business to the time they spend watching commercials on television, most people eventually get tired of the feeling that someone is trying to sell them something.

If your blog is related to selling or promoting an item, finding a way to do so objectively or passively is a must. If through the first sentence or two of a blog post the reader gets the feeling they are just being either sold something they are not interested in or being prepped for a sale, they may leave your blog and not come back.

5. Thinking Too Much Of Your Opinion - There is an old saying: “opinions are like noses, everyone has one.” This is true when it comes to blogs too. While you may think that your opinion is absolutely fascinating, thinking everyone else will think that too is a fine way to make sure your blog resists the temptation to become popular and widely read.

While the opinions of established people in all walks of life are sought out, the opinions of unknown people are not. This can work for you if you have established yourself as an expert in your field, then your opinion may be welcomed by your readers.

Even so though, make sure to also include a good amount of factual information along with the opinions in your blog post, this also goes a long way in making your readers believe that your opinions are actually based on fact.

6. Recycling - While recycling is great in the environmental world, recycling in a blog is not something to be proud of. If a reader decides that a large amount of the posts and information they find on your blog is actually being copied, rewritten, or even just being also written about on other blogs, they will most likely lose the need and motivation to read your blog. The best way to keep readers coming back after their first visit is to consistently provide information that they cannot get any where else. This is indeed challenging.

7. Fluid Layout - Blogs with a fluid layout almost always result in the post column growing wider to fill the screen. In a time when we are all trying to consume more information than ever before, this is a mistake. There is a reason why newspapers don’t spread their columns way across the page. This study at Wichita State University found that a medium line length of between 65-75 characters per line, or about 15 words, was the optimal length for online reading. Readers need to be able to scan articles easily, and they will take in much more of what you write if the line length makes it easy for them to read quickly.

8. Resolution Too Wide - What’s the right resolution for your site? That question is always answered by looking at your stats. Any decent stats program will show the resolution visitors are using. A good rule of thumb is to try and not tick off more than about 5-7% of your readers with a resolution that is too large for their screen. It can be difficult to squeeze everything so it will fit those old 800×600 resolutions, but depending on the niche one is in, there may be no choice. Particularly if there are ads in the right sidebar, it only makes sense to make sure that the maximum number of users can see them.

9. Important Stuff in the Footer - I really like blog themes that have an extended footer, such as Brian Gardner’s Vertigo theme, but don’t put things down there that are too important or keyword rich. Rather, include things such as badge farms, Flickr sets, monthly archives in that space. Don’t count on many readers scrolling down far enough to see it either. The more keywords something contains, the higher up in the page it needs to be, for obvious SEO reasons.

10. Not Enough White Space - Read any good design book and one of the key elements of good design is use of white space.

White space is often referred to as negative space. It is that portion of a page left unmarked: the space between graphics, margins, gutters, space between columns, space between lines of type or figures and objects drawn or depicted. (Source: Wikipedia)

While it is very tempting to cramp as much information into as small a space as possible, the result is a cramped site that is difficult to read and navigate. An overwhelming or cluttered site makes readers uncomfortable, and reading from the web is rather hard on the eyes as it is. p

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While most people focus on what they should be doing and what they are doing correctly while they blog, it is also just as important to make sure they don’t make some of the basic mistakes that can chase readers and potential readers away. Most good blogging rules are basic common senses, but common sense is sometimes not so common, so at times it is just as important to state the obvious.

It is entirely possible for most people with well informed opinions and specific knowledge to write blogs that have a chance at becoming successful, but it is also possible for a blogger to unintentionally sabotage themselves by making mistakes they just don’t see for themselves.

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* Optimal Length Of Blog Post Title