When we start a new blog we are Amateur Bloggers and prone to make those silly mistakes that cost us high in the long run. So here I’m to save from making those deadly mistakes that really you should avoid.
In this article you will read 11 mistakes that every Amateur Bloggers makes and how you can avoid them and save your blog’s credibility.
It’s a common thing that we made mistakes when we just started our journey as a blogger.
But on the other hand it’s also our own responsibility to not commit those Amateur Blogs mistakes that can cost us high.
Amateur Bloggers Mistakes
New Amateur Bloggers always makes mistakes. Even though I have made many mistakes when I started my blog.
Take an example of mine, I knew I was doing that thing wrong (building backlinks) but I was still doing it because I had no other option to not to do that mistake.
Sometimes we unintentionally make some mistakes and sometimes by knowing the consequences of the mistakes, we still make it, and that is making low-quality backlinks.
We will talk more about backlinks later.
11 Dumbest Mistakes Amateur Bloggers Make That Can Put Your Blog On High Risk
1: Not Starting Email List From Day 1 of Blogging
That’s a huge mistake in the eyes of every professional blogger. The best advice any professional blogger can give is to start an Email list from the first day of your blog.
An email list can have a big impact on your traffic as well as revenue.
An email list is simply a list of email addresses that your blog will collect whenever a new visitor visits your blog. Later you use this list later to build connections with your subscriber and send out emails.
Read: How To Start A Blog? Ultimate Guide
You can use this list to send your new blog posts, any announcement on your blog or even sell your product or services.
So, a lot of new bloggers who are Amateur in blogging don’t realize how important an email list is.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has a 4300% average ROI (return on investment) for businesses in the US.
Here are some more reasons why you should start your email list as early as possible.
1: Get Visitors to Return by sending regular updates from your blog
2: You Own Your Email List
3: You’ll Make More Money
4: A big email list makes you more trustable
5: You learn more about how email marketing works.
6: Last but not least, A big email list can save your blog even if you get hacked or Penalized by Google.
And many reasons. But these 5 are enough for any beginner blogger.
So start your email list as soon as possible.
Read: 20 Proven Ways To Earn Money From WordPress Blog
2: Not Choosing a Good Web Hosting
Hosting is the foundation of your entire business. If you choose bad web hosting and it goes down then your entire business will also go down.
Mean no one can access your blog or website if it’s down.
Similarly, if your website hosting is too slow and takes too much time to load a web page then people will look elsewhere for the same information.
Then the result will be a customer loss.
Bad Web Hosting Can Affect Your SEO.
A bad web hosting can never let you up in the Google Ranking. Google makes sure to remove or lower the result that takes much time to load then other pages.
Never Go With Poor Web Host
Even if you have a lower budget still don’t go with any bad hosting provider.
The best solution if you have a budget issue is to wait for some time until you have enough money to buy a better hosting.
I am not encouraging you to always go with Pro Hosting Providers or go with VPS or dedicated plans.
Instead, I always recommend you to choose shared hosting over VPS or Dedicated when you are just starting out, but with good hosting providers only.
Do you know what makes a Hosting Provider More Better?
There are so many factors behind this to find a good hosting provider, Here I am making it simple for you to understand in minutes.
1: Security
Security matters a lot in Online Business. You don’t want your blog or website to get hacked and leak your customers information.
2: SSL Certificates
Secure sites rank higher. Google is all about making sure that all the websites that rank higher must have SSL installed, otherwise their algorithm will put those sites down or even remove them from the ranking.
Why are SSL Important?
SSL makes sures that the information such as credit card information gets encrypted so it becomes inaccessible by any third party authorization.
So make sure your hosting provider gives you an SSL certificate.
3: Cost
Every Blogger who wants to start a blog goes through the budget issues. Every good web hosting costs you more money.
In that case, it’s better to choose shared web hosting because it’ll cost you less and best for every Amateur Bloggers.
4: Backups
Even though after providing you with the best security solution. Still there’s always a risk of getting hacked or corrupt your hosted files mistakenly.
Thus, make sure your hosting provider provides you with regular backups or gives the option to backup manually.
5: Best Uptime Guarantee
Make sure to double check your hosting provider’s uptime rate. Because you don’t want your site to be down for a minute.
Choose Bluehost, Because Bluehost provides you all these features I mention above and also gives you the fastest shared web hosting.
Bluehost also provides you with a free domain name. Additionally, free SSL Certificate which is necessary to make you look more secure to trust you.
So hows this deal?
Better naah,??
Go with Bluehost
3: Not Going With Self Hosted WordPress
Now you know and it’s clear in front of you that a good provider is necessary to choose.
But there is one more thing that hits you harder if you neglect this.
And that is,
WordPress.
Many Amateur Bloggers make a big mistake by choosing a free web hosting such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com.
Remember that every free web host never provides you with the full functionality that you need to become a professional blogger.
Therefore Never ever go with a free web host.
Here are a few reasons why I am saying to choose Self-Hosted WordPress over Free Blogger and WordPress.com:
1: Free Web Hosting Providers Are Not Reliable they can shut your blog anytime they want. You have no full control over your site.
2: You Don’t Really Own Your Own Site
3: No Customization, No Support
4: Limited Storage and Bandwidth
5: Not secure and you can’t monetize them to earn money.
6: Don’t guarantee on regular Load time and uptime
For this reason, you always choose a Self Hosted WordPress over any other free Hosting.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a free CMS (content management system) that makes it really easy to handle all the stuff that your blog needs.
WordPress provides you with a huge supportive community and thousands of plugins that can do anything you want with just a few clicks.
It also provides a huge library of beautiful and responsive themes that can make your blog look elegant in minutes.
Now if you want some reasons why to choose WordPress, here it is,
1: The most popular CMS in the world
2: Highly customizable with thousand of Free & Premium Themes and Plugins
3: WordPress is Fully SEO Friendly
4: Safe and Secure
5: WordPress is Easy To Manage
6: Makes you look more professional.
4: Building Tons Of Low-Quality Backlinks
Yes I Know that backlinks are the first need to rank your site high in Google.
But there is one thing to note that every type of backlink is not good for your blog’s health.
Bad backlinks are just like junk food for the human body. It makes it unhealthy and degrades the quality of your blog.
Read: 10 Awesome Blogging Tips & Tricks For New Bloggers
Every Ameatuer Blogger made this mistake. He thinks that he just needs backlinks and not differentiate between good vs bad backlinks.
By building tons of bad backlinks you can get algorithmically downgraded by Google or even worse, a manual action.
Google is constantly updating his algorithm to find out good and bad backlinks and take action.
There are few types of backlinks that you should avoid building.
1: Discussion Forum Links
Just one to two links are a good signal if they are coming from an authoritative discussion forum, yet too much can hurt your SEO.
2: Many Random NoFollow Links
Avoid building many random no-follow backlinks. Ameature blogger makes these mistakes by commenting regularly on other blogs. This should be avoided and done with more care.
3: Directory Submissions
When I started my blog but I was doing is to add my blog to more and more directory websites.
So I can get more traffic and big chunks of backlinks. But I was wrong and hurting my blog’s SEO.
Note that too much of anything can be harmful so do anything but with full care, never overdo it.
4: Blog Comments
This was also the best practice for getting links.
Historically, blog commenting was the good technique to get traffic and build backlinks but now you should prevent this.
Stop abusing comment boxes, they don’t work now.
Now most of the comment sections go with the no follow links. Still some spammy blogs still provide follow links, but don’t take this for granted by doing this you are hurting your own blog.
5: Buying Backlinks
It’s a big mistake. Hey Amateur Bloggers avoid this at any cost. This meme enough to describe, why?
5: Posting Random Articles
Coming with new articles every day or week is a really difficult thing.
From my personal experience what we do as a Amateur Bloggers. We start writing about what we personally like.
But that’s not the case in blogging.
If you want to start a blog that generates money for you in the future. You need to decide your niche even before buying a domain name.
Related: 100+ Interesting Blog Niche Ideas To Start A Blog & Make Money In 2023
Because your domain name must reflect the content you write on your blog.
I am not saying that it’s not good to write what you like. But publishing random articles everyday confuses your audience about your niche.
So before even buying a domain name think about your niche and target audience,
- for whom you will write,
- what they’ll get from my blog
- who it is you want to reach and
- how to reach them
A specific niche helps you write relevant articles to your audience. Moreover, make it easy for your audience to understand about your content.
How to decide about your niche?
The first thing is,
1: Know your target audience
2: How much you know about that niche you are going to start. (No one knows everything but make sure you know something).
3: Find a blog that is relevant to your niche to get the idea for more content you can write.
6: Not Doing Social Media Marketing
Every Amaruer blogger focuses on only writing content all day long.
They forget the power of social media that can help them to grow and build a strong fan base.
When we start a blog we don’t have any reader who reads our blog, comments on our blog and shares also.
And ranking high in Google is not a day or weekly game. It can take months or even years to rank an article that you published today.
So that’s where you need the support of social media.
You can share your article in groups and with an audience that is relevant to your niche.
Then transform that audience into a regular visitor by capturing their emails.
It doesn’t matter what kind of blog you run, you always need social media’s support in your blogging journey.
When you are new in blogging and publish an article then who will read your blog when you have no one to read it.
So this is how you can start your growth with social media channels.
Here are some of the more benefits you can get from social media.
1: Create brand awareness
2: You can get more social signals that will help you to rank high in Google.
3: For getting better SEO-oriented results
4: With social media you can run targeted campaigns
5: You Can Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.
6: If someone likes your shared content then he can also share it, which helps you to gain some more exposure.
7: Not Using Long Tail Keyword Strategy
This is a great SEO tactic to target Long Tail Keywords.
But, what every Amateur Bloggers do?
Try to copy the same keyword that is already ranking and start writing 5000 words copy on it.
That’s a wrong approach. You can’t beat already ranking high DA blogs with your baby blog.
That’s where you should need to change your SEO strategy. You should start finding long tail keywords.
I know they get less traffic than the short tail keyword. But they are highly targeted with higher conversion value.
Here’s A Simple Example
Someone searched for ‘Shoes’ in Google. It’s a highly competitive term. And he see lots of results on the first page of Google with very High Domain Authority such as Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart, Walmart or other shopping websites.
But why I searched “Shoes”, no one knows.
With short tail keywords you can find why a user searches for a shoes keyword, whether he wants to buy a shoe or just wants to download an image.
But with long tail keywords, you can easily identify the user intent behind the query.
If a user enters “best running shoes for marathon”, now you can clearly understand why he searched for this, he wants to buy shoes for running a marathon and he’s finding the best ones.
That’s why we call them high conversion keywords.
Now Google will put up blogs in their SERPs that reviews and compares the best shoes for marathon.
In fact It’s much easier to rank with long tail keywords. If they get less traffic they are easy to rank.
So you should only target long tail keywords with your new baby blog. So you can rank easily without any competition.
8: Not Planning A blog Posts Ahead
Once you start a blog you have to publish regular content on your blog. At Least one a week.
But here we make mistakes when we just started our blogging journey. We write content then relax till the next deadline of writing a blog post.
When I was ametaur blogger. I set my schedule to publish one post a week.
But what I really do is write a blog post then stay stress free for the next 5 days. When the 6th day of a week has come, I get stressed out and can’t be able to think about the content I should write today.
So it’s better to keep updating your list with upcoming posts you want to write next after one.
And also start working way ahead of time, not on a deadline, like me on the sixth day.
These are deadly mistakes you should avoid on every cost.
9: Comparison With Other Bloggers
The next advice I can give you is never ever compare yourself with other bloggers who are already in the same field for many years.
When I started my blog I used to think how I can compete with this blog which is already popular and loved by many people.
Which results in lowering my motivation level and puts me in an isolation to think- you are not good enough, Blogging isn’t for you.
And I was on a stage to think about quitting my blog and look for another carrier.
Overthinking and comparison is really a poison for everyone. You should avoid this as a Amateur Bloggers.
Everyone has their own message to put in front of the people. You have your own and I have my own and the third blog has their own.
So don’t compare yourself with others.
You’re new in blogging and you’re comparing yourself with who is already in this from many years.
That’s not a thing good you are doing with yourself.
So avoid Comparison.
10: Not Using Free Tool Properly
If you don’t want to invest your money in buying premium tools. At Least use the free tools to their extent.
There are tons of free tools that can help bloggers to grow more easily.
There are some of the tools that can help you in Blogging.
1: Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
So you sit at your computer and stare at it for hours. But not any perfect ideas are flowing in your mind to write? Means you are out of writing ideas?
Use this: Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to brainstorm topic ideas in your mind.
2: Grammarly
No is good at writing when he has just started to write. But there are some tools that can help you to avoid some silly grammar mistakes that will otherwise make you look foolish.
Use this: Grammarly
3: Hemingway App
Good writing doesn’t mean good grammar only. Your writing should be meaningful and easy to understand by your readers.
That’s where Hemingway App can help you.
It’s a free tool to use, just copy and paste your content here and it will prompt with errors you should avoid.
4: CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
If no one clicks your link from the Google SERPs, no one will read your content. And Google doesn’t want that link to be on the first page that people are not interested to read and even click.
So use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer which really helps you in building an eye catchy title for your blogpost that people will click.
5: Canva
Canva helpful in creating and designing a beautiful image for your blog post.
Here’s a link: Canva
6: Google Docs
I use Google Docs whenever I have to write something, even a simple email. I am currently writing this blog post in Google docs.
You are asking, Why To Use Google Docs?
Because it saves my document after every word I write, so no worry about losing any piece of content you write. This is how safe it is.
I can access my writing from anywhere using my email id. It’s not just on my laptop, it’s synced everywhere on the internet, and only I can access it.
Google Docs easily point out the grammar mistakes and also spelling mistakes. Its AI is designed to help writers to write more elegantly.
7: MailChimp
Free tool to build your email list for free. You can add 2000 subscribers and send upto 12000 miles per month absolutely free.
Link: MailChimp
11: And Last, Amateur Bloggers Scared to invest
“Money Makes Money”.
You should also need to invest some money to grow your business more quickly.
From paying for a Best Hosting to choosing a Better theme, you should invest money.
Not only that, every premium tool provides you with more customizability and flexibility so you should have to look at them also.
If any tool gives you something that can be better for your business, don’t hesitate to pay.
If you are not good at writing but you have a product to sell though your blog, you can hire someone from Fiverr to write a perfect sales copy for your product. Instead of writing on your and ruining your brand.
But for now here are the tools that are worth spending money on for every amateur bloggers.
1: Yoast SEO Plugin
Although free yoast plugins provide all the necessary features for free, premium can give you much more.
Link: Yoast SEO Premium Plugin
2: ConvertKit
Email marketing and automation tools that involve spending money to increase your sales and convert traffic into customers.
Link: Convertkit Premium
3: Premium Themes
To make your blog look stylish and easier to navigate or some kind of customization if you need, you can buy a premium or design online using premium tools.
Link: Neve is best for blogging. It’s blazing fast and highly customizable.
4: Paying For Keyword Research Tools
Semrush OR Ahrefs worth spending money to find a low competition keyword, know more about competitors and how to beat them. Furthermore semrush also provides a tool to write a perfect SEO optimized article.
Link: Semrush
Ahrefs also do the same job, they both are reliable and worth spending money.
Link: Ahrefs
Conclusion
So Here the end of this article. This information is enough to learn from my mistakes that I have made in the past. Now I won’t want you to make the same mistakes I made as a Amateur Blogger.
Recap in minute: So,
1: Start Email List From Day 1 Of Blogging
2: Choose a Good Web Hosting
3: Go With WordPress
4: Build Quality Backlinks
5: Work within niche
6: Do Social Media Marketing
7: Use Long Tail Keyword Strategy
8: Plan your blog Posts Ahead
9: Don’t Compare Yourself With Other Bloggers
10: Use Free Tool Properly
11: And Last, Don’t Scared to invest
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So these are mistakes you should avoid doing at any cost.
See you in a new blog post.
If you like this and learn something new, please don’t forget to share it.