13 Dec 2017
5 Blogging Mistakes All Beginners Make
Most people have a perception that there’s not much to blogging. You simply write what interests you and subsequently publish it for others to read.
Contrary to popular belief, successful blogging usually requires a set of rules to be respected and it’s these rules that differentiate rookies from professionals.
Every beginner blogger has made mistakes that gradually led to less traction and attention. And while mistakes like these can be a valuable learning experience, there’s only so much you can figure out on your own, especially today when people just don’t have the time to experiment with their blogs.
We’ll highlight some of the most common rookie mistakes regarding blogging and what you can do to fix them.
Writing Too Many Articles in the Beginning
One of the most common issues revolves around being full of ideas, so it’s only natural to write one article every day, right?
Wrong.
You won’t have that much to write about once the starting period’s over, and by then you’ve set up a schedule that you can no longer keep up with.
Sure, you can publish your articles unpredictably, but just ask yourself: would you constantly check whether your favorite TV show has aired if you had no idea when it’s airing?
This is why it’s recommended that you publish realistically at a pace that you’ll manage to fulfill. Most bloggers don’t publish more than 2-3 articles per week, so if you don’t have a starting point – let this be it.
And try to never, ever, publish more than one article per day. Just let it breathe (unless, of course, you’re into publishing news or other time-sensitive content).
Being Unaware of Who Your Audience Is
This mistake isn’t necessarily exclusive to beginners. In fact, plenty of bloggers have absolutely no idea who they’re writing for.
The main problem is not focusing on a narrow niche that they’re specialized in, which makes it difficult to figure out who’s reading your blog.
Additionally, most people don’t use surveys to actually ask their audience who they are and what they like. Sources like Google Forms and Survey Monkey can greatly assist you with this.
Your Blog Isn’t User-Friendly Enough
The best way to make sure your visitors leave the blog early is to have something wrong with it, whether it’s too slow or they feel overwhlmed while navigating it. Here are a few ways to make sure your website is user-friendly:
- Navigation – almost every blog reader out there wants to browse as easily as possible. This means having a noticeable navigation panel – preferably toward the top of the page – that won’t disappear as you scroll.
- Speed – Most people leave the page on any website if it won’t load in under 3 seconds. You can use this Google tool to figure out why your speed is lackluster.
- Bad usage of whitespace – This one’s extremely important, as whitespace decides if an article is readable or not. Every creative agency would also recommend you to break the paragraphs with an occasional image as well.
Not Being Proactive About Promoting Your Blog
While it’s clear that high-quality content is the most important asset of a blog, there’s not much use if no one even knows it exists.
Rookie bloggers are usually shy about their articles and opt not to share it on social networks, or rather – they won’t share it enough.
At the very least, you’ll want to email your blog subscribers whenever an article goes live.
If linking to another blog, you can contact said blog owner and ask to share the article; they’re usually happy to spread the word as it promotes their blog as well.
You can even use Facebook Ads for advertising purposes once your financial situation allows.
Too Many Popups
It’s true that popups are generally better than banners when it comes to yielding clicks. But too much of a good thing can sometimes be a bad thing, you know? Remember user experience (UX) is highly important.
Even more important is to keep them relevant to the content, otherwise your overall conversion rate (and reader loyalty) will suffer in the long-run.
Bottom Line
The sooner you get good at blogging the more hyped you’ll be to continue doing it. Avoiding these mistakes won’t only save time, but you’ll also spend/use fewer resources while trying to figure out what works.
Always try to focus on a niche and write about it, as focusing on too many things might cost you the trust of potentially targeted readers.
Damage to reputation isn’t something that can easily be fixed, so do your best to avoid these traps and you’ll be just fine.
25 Jan 2018
6 SEO Trends to Watch in 2018
The constantly evolving landscape of SEO has entered into a new year. Experts at Google, Bing or Baidu are continuing to implement changes in indexing and ranking algorithms to better serve the growing internet user-base.
Increasing search engine sophistication is matched by attempts to optimize for it through various SEO strategies. Over the years, some strategies have managed to maintain their relevance, others saw an increase in prominence, while others yet became completely obsolete.
There is little indication that 2018 is going to be any different in this regard.
Some practices will doubtlessly continue to remain relevant (the focus on quality content, for example), others will probably see a decline (desktop-first optimization), and a host of new ones are already looming on the horizon.
The latter of these are probably the most interesting for SEO laymen and experts alike, as they present new opportunities for websites to get ahead in the search ranking game.
Being up to speed with what’s new and cutting edge in SEO is quintessential for building and maintaining a strong online presence, so the following list of search engine optimization trends in 2018 should prove to be useful to anyone looking to stay ahead of the curve.
Focus on Speed
And if a significant portion of this time is spent waiting for the page to load, the user will barely get a glance at the content before deciding to move on.
Teams at Google are keenly aware of this fact, which is why they stressing that load times below 3 seconds is the new standard. Pages with longer loading times will have significant reduction in their rankings, which means speed is likely to become the major factor of SEO in the coming year.
Featured Snippets
Search engine algorithms are starting to pay more attention to search query forms, showing results in new kinds of formats. Featured snippets is one such innovation.
When a search query is phrased as a question, a special block called a featured snippet is shown at the top of the results page with a summary of the answer.
Optimizing web page content for the featured snippet format increases the likelihood of websites being featured at the top of the results page, while their organic search rank might actually place them lower on the page. The Q&A format of content writing is likely to see an increase in 2018 as a result of this.
Linkless Backlinks
Backlinks are often taken as the gold standard factor of SEO. Investing in link building services and having numerous, quality inbound links from relevant websites is the foundation of having good search engine rankings. However, in 2018, things look like they are about to change.
Sophisticated search engine algorithms are getting better at content analysis day by day. They are starting to recognize particular brand names based on the textual content around them, giving them an indication of a brand’s online relevance without direct links to a website associated with it.
This trend is likely to have a significant impact on SEO content creation, and backlinks could potentially lose some importance due to this change.
Voice Search
With the rise of increasingly sophisticated voice-recognition software, more and more people are using their electronic devices hands-free through voice commands, and this goes for online searches as well.
However, the difference between how search queries are phrased in speech and in writing can be significant.
Search engine optimization now has to involve creating content with a greater focus on long-tail keywords and informal sentence structures associated with everyday speech. How one is asking the question is becoming as important as what is being asked.
Mobile-first Design
Ever since their rise to prominence online, search engines ranked websites based on how optimized their content was for desktop users. With the new index, the optimization of content for mobile will become the new priority.
This shift comes in the wake of recent research which has shown that mobile browsing has, for the first time ever, surpassed its desktop counterpart. And while this piece of news was already around a year or two ago, search engines will continue to evolve their efforts around this method throughout 2018 and beyond.
SEO strategies focusing on mobile-friendly content are likely to become the standard as well.
Image and Video Search
AI-assisted pattern recognition in the medium of images and video is now becoming relevant search factors. Traditionally, search engines had to rely on descriptions, meta-data and references to image names in order to assess the relevance of images and video for a search query.
Advances in machine learning have made it possible to gauge this content independently, creating a new ranking factor in the process. This will make the appearance of non-textual SEO content creation strategies all but inevitable in the coming years.
Your Turn
Are you aware of other changes coming throughout 2018? Are you looking forward to any of these as an online publisher and business owner?