Blogging is an essential part of getting any business off the ground and keeping it there. But it’s not as simple as throwing a few words together and hoping for the best! Good blogging requires skill, dedication, and proper research to ensure your website achieves great results.
Read on to learn about the top five mistakes you should avoid when building your website blog.
1. Infrequent or inconsistent publishing
When it comes to blogging, consistency is key!
Publishing your blogs frequently and following a consistent schedule is paramount to your website’s success. Publishing only once a month, or interspersing quick bursts of content with long bouts of nothing, will only lead to failure.
Depending on your budget, and the time you have available, you should set a blogging schedule you can keep up with. Don’t plan to post five times per week if you know you can’t keep up with it!
Instead, set a realistic schedule of one blog per week or three blogs per month and stick to it. The more interesting content you publish, the more chance you have to catch the attention of potential clients. But if you post inconsistently, search engines (and customers alike) may start to doubt the quality of your website and your business.
2. Avoiding links
Adding helpful, genuine links throughout your blog is a great way to keep visitors on your site and answer any extra questions they may have. Intelligent linking is one of the best things you can do for your site’s search engine optimisation performance.
Make sure not to include too many links, however, as this can look unattractive to website visitors and negatively affect your search rankings.
3. Ignoring the social world
As soon as you’ve posted a new blog, one of the first things you should do is share it among your followers on Facebook, Instagram, and any other social media sites you frequent. This encourages interaction, broadens your blog’s audience, and allows potential clients to leave feedback in the comments of your post.
This way, you can engage with your audience and better understand their needs. Maybe they’ll suggest blog ideas to use in the future, or pose a question your business can solve.
Blogging and social media marketing go hand in hand. A good website isn’t complete without quality social media pages to back it up! Social media is one of the simplest and most effective ways to connect with audiences and generate more leads for your business.
4. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a sure-fire way to kill your website’s SEO and drive traffic far, far away from your site. While keyword stuffing worked well in the early days of web search, today’s search engines are much more sophisticated, with several technologies in place to detect keyword stuffing and squash any websites found abusing the tactic.
Keyword stuffing may involve:
- Repeating words and phrases unnecessarily
- Words and phrases used out of context
- Inserting large blocks of the same keyword
- Using irrelevant keywords
Good blog content will educate, inform, and entertain your audience. The overarching goal shouldn’t be to drive traffic to your website, after all, you want quality traffic, not just anything and everything the internet has to offer!
By using keywords sparingly, and in the correct context, you can attract legitimate visitors to your site who are genuinely interested in your content and the products you produce. This is a much more effective and honest way to engage with your potential clients.
5. Going in blind
If you go into blogging blind, you’re unlikely to see any measurable success for your website. Good blogs start out with a defined, well-developed content strategy, based on a foundation of audience research. You should know exactly who your target audience is, what they’re interested in, and how they browse online before you begin blogging.
Let’s say you run a website selling children’s toys. If you write a blog about how fun toys are, it might interest kids, but think about who is actually browsing for your products. Parents! Instead, center your blog around how toys can benefit a child’s education or imagination. This way, you’ll be dialing into the needs and interests of your true audience.
Looking to start a blog?
If you’re planning to start a blog to boost your web traffic and interact with your customers, it can be hard to know where to start. At Design Point, we provide professional advice and services for small and large businesses ready to reach their website goals.
To chat with one of our experts or obtain a quote, simply get in touch with us today.