15 Blogging Mistakes Newbie Bloggers Make | How Each Can Ruin Blogs

When you search for this keyword on Google - "blogging mistakes", many blogs will come up in the search result, but only few will tell you how the mistakes can ruin your blogs.

When I started my blog a few years ago, I knew certain things were not right, as per how I was running the blog. I surely knew I was making mistakes, but I did not really know how most of the blogging mistakes can ruin my blog.

Common mistakes newbie bloggers make

Do you want to know which mistake you're making? Do you want to know what you ain't doing right? To understand these errors should not be your real concern, but to make immediate and necessary amendments. If you don't want to make your biggest blogging mistake, you must act today towards your mistakes.

Here are 15 common mistakes newbie bloggers make:

#1.Wrong motive and intention to start a blog

When I asked a couple of newbie bloggers - why do you want to own a blog? The replies I got from most of them was - I want to make money from the blog. Where is the passion?

Yes, it's right to make money from your blog. But I'm telling you the butter truth; to make money from your blog should not be your number 1 motive. I will tell you the reason why.

You've seen many successful bloggers earning thousands of dollars from their blog; have you asked one of them how they started it? Was their number 1 intention was to make money? Of course NOT! Most of them, their intention was to solve people’s problems. And they believe that when they solve people's problems, their problems get solved too.

I heard from a famous tech blogger, and a mentor in Nigeria said it took him years before he made his first $100.

Blogging is not a quick rich scheme unless you want to scam your audience (and that is bad for you). You need to be ready to solve people's problems, that is when your own financial problems would be solved.

How your bad motive can ruin your blog

Many people who had this motive are nowhere to be found today. Why? Because their blogs are not giving then the quick money that they wanted, and hence they had to quit. Putting "I want to make money from my blog" as your first intention of having a blog would make you not focus on both the blog's content quality and your audience. And when there is a lack of focus on these two sides, the blog dies spontaneously.

#2. Not being specific about your content

Not being specific or covering too many topics (niche) is also a common mistake that newbie bloggers make. I have seen many blogs talking about entertainment, tech, relationship, and more on a single blog. This is not right enough for a newbie blogger.

I'm not saying that there are no successful bloggers that are covering multiple topics, but I want you to understand that it's not good for a newbie blogger. Those who are succeeding in covering multiple topics are experts at it. They know how it works for them because they are professionals in their fields.

In a case of a newbie blogger, covering too many topics would be tough. It could surely give the blogger headaches on how to operate and categorize the different topics needed to be covered (at least, he won't want his audience to lack on a particular niche).

Instead of covering too many topics, look inward and find what you are good at; find what you enjoy doing, and pick this as your topic (niche). Don't worry yet about what would be posted (to obey the rule of consistency). If actually, you enjoy doing it, title ideas will always flow to your mind.

How not being specific can ruin your blog

I have tried to cover multiple topics, and I understand how it was about to destroy my blog before I stopped it. Seriously, you would lack focus. You can't be 100% balance on all the topics you're covering - one topic must have much more posts than the other. In this case, why not focusing on the topic that has much more post and leave the other topics for other blogs?

Recommended reading:

• Top 7 Reasons Why People Don't Comment On Your Blog Posts And How To Fix Them
• How To Auto Use Hash Tag For Your Blog Feeds On Facebook And Twitter

How right is it to chase two rats at the same time if you don't want to lose the two? It is very rare to succeed, as a newbie blogger when you divert your focus in too many topics.

#3. Choosing a very common niche

Hmm... Everyone wants to be an entertainment blogger. Everyone intends to be a tech blogger. Do you have the ability and what it takes to become one? Why do you want to choose the niche you have in mind? Is it because your friend is succeeding at it?

Choosing a very popular niche that every dick and Harry is into is more or less like going for a competition.

Thousands of niche are out there that has not been tapped but are scorching. The fact that you have not seen much people on that niche should even give you much assurance that the competition would be little.

Make an intensive research on niches that has not been tapped into too much, and find the one that suits your interest.

How choosing a very common niche can ruin your blog

When you join a common niche market, it becomes more competitive (especially for a newbie). It could also be difficult for you to get post ideas because most of the ideas you've gotten are already on other blogs. Now when you lack post ideas, you suck at writing and therefore, disobeying the law of consistency. In other words, inconsistency can significantly ruin your blog.

#4. Inconsistency

A very common mistake too, for a blogger who rushes into blogging. Since he lacks the passion to blogging (all he wanted was money), how could he be consistent? I've seen many blogs abandoned because of inconsistency. Read point #9 for more.

Blogs are meant to be updated at every reasonable interval. I'm not emphasizing that you should update your blog daily, no, but at every reasonable interval. Just make sure you're consistent in feeding your audience with relevant topics at regular intervals.

How inconsistency can ruin your blog

A visitor who visits your site for the first time and enjoys your blog posts would want to see fresh updates from you soon. When he doesn't see new updates at regular intervals, he loses interest in following your blog, and this way, you begin to have reduced page views.

#5. Bad writing|

Oh! I'm ashamed I've read many blog posts that are not well structured at all. The writing was awful that I had to think if it was primary school students that owned the blogs. As in, the grammatical errors were too much.

I'm not saying that anyone is perfect. I'm directing this fact to myself now. I've been corrected several times about my grammar mistakes. It is not a new thing. But the question should be: how fast do you learn to adapt to corrections given? How well are you working on your Grammar?

Your readers could enjoy your post with that bad grammar, but if this persists can bore off some readers.

I took my grammar far-reaching the day a reader left a comment about my grammar on one of my posts. He said:

But now, I believe I'm better than I was. If learning is a gradual process, definitely I must surely be 100% error free soon as long as I continue to work towards my grammar.

You too can improve your grammar. Read articles from top blogs, master the way they write, study more, and install a grammar Correction software on your system or blog.

How grammar was about ruining my blog

You wonder why I'm directing this point to myself? Yeah... I need to. I want you to learn from my past mistake too. One of my audience sent me a message that looks like this:

Imagine how worse it would be if I had continued to get this kind of message. Imagine how much more visitors I would lose if had continued to use bad grammars and have many errors in my writing. I believe you understand this point.

#6. Copying and pasting of content

Many newbie bloggers (especially in the entertainment niche) are fond of copying news and stories from other people's blogs to their own. This is 100% plagiarism.

The worst part of this is when these contents are copied and are pasted directly without editing anything. Do you still call this blogging? I want to ask those that are fond of this: how do you use to do this?

What you should do if you don't want to copy-paste content on your blog

Instead of copy paste content that you love to have on your blog, why not search for the keywords used in the post and read two or more related post, then combine the two and modify it to be somewhat unique.

Here's an illustration: supposing you want to write a trending news about "Mark Zuckerberg in Nigeria." Just search for this keyword on Google

Then open the first 3-4 relevant results. Extract your news from these relevant results and make it unique using your own language.

This is work, isn't it? That's why you're a blogger.

How copy paste contents can ruin your blog

Search engine bots are capable enough to detect the same content that is the same. And if you are caught, your blog will be dealt with severely for duplicate content resulting in loss of page ranking

#7. Writing for only search engines

So you've heard that when you write content that search engine loves can increase you ranking in search engines. Yes, it's true. But writing for only search engines while you forget your readers is the mistake about this point.

You have got a perfect keyword(s) for a particular post, fine, but you shouldn't stuff these keywords just because you want to appear on the first page of search engines. Understand what your readers want and write for them. While you write for your readers and putting these keywords in the right places, you will automatically rank high in search engines too.

How writing for only search engines can ruin your blog

Seriously, it makes you look like a robot when you write for only search engines because you've shifted your focus away from your audience. Search engines understand when you're fooling your audience (stuffing keywords), so they make your blog hard to find for readers who needs your content.

#8. Focusing on quantity instead of quality

It is not how far you've gone, but how well you've done. Seen many blogs with uncountable posts, but only a few are reasonable. The authors were only focusing on the quantity of their blog posts, instead of the quality.

One of the reasons that lure many newbie bloggers into this mistake is that they think Google Adsense care about the numbers of blog posts more than quality. This is not true.

If it is only 10 original post you have on your blog, it is far better than having 50 posts that don't make sense.

How focusing on quantity instead of quality can ruin your blog

When you concentrate on the number of posts you publish a day (more on this later), and you don't care about the quality, you are going to have a high "bounce back" rate which is not good for blogs. You can further your research on why having high "bounce back" rate is not good

#9. Not using Cathy blog post Headlines (Titles)

A newbie blogger who wants to start a new blog is full of blog post ideas. "I want to post this... I want to publish that" is all that’s gonna be on his head... Till he creates the blog.

You should know people who are new to blogging by their post titles. They don't know how catchy titles work yet. It is headlines that readers see that make them click on the "read more" button. They are just like bait that attracts fish.

Recommended Reading: 5 Incredible Ways to Start Writing Blog Post Headlines For Maximum Optimization

Damage you do your blog when you don’t use catchy blog headlines

You could just find out that you don't have up to 100 visitors a day because your blog post headlines are ain't catchy enough. You win the souls of your readers through your blog title. Although your post content might worth reading, but you won't find readers when you don't use catchy post titles.

#10. Attempting to publish as many posts as possible in a day

Like I said earlier; it is not how far you've gone, but how well you've done. What is your aim of publishing several posts in a day? Because of traffic? You want Adsense to approve your blog quickly? Or for the sake of show off?

All these are not supposed to be the reason why you need to publish as many posts as possible in a day. You could be getting your maximum traffic when you publish a single, but original (with little SEO) in a week. More to this? Adsense does not look at the number of posts you publish in a day. So, why stressing yourself to get many posts posted in a day?

Instead of getting as many posts as possible published in a day, try posting a reasonable amount of post at regular intervals. It might not even be every day, just be consistent on your blog.

How publishing as many posts as possible can ruin your blog

I have said this; publishing too many posts might not make you focus on the quality you give to these posts. Hence you start to lose followers when your blog posts are no more interesting. This can also give you troubles of what next you should publish, thereby giving yourself the idea to copy-paste other people's blog contents.

#11. Not proofreading before publishing

I was so much guilty of this silly mistake when I started my first blog in 2014. Once I typed my post content, I clicked on the "publish" button immediately without proofreading my content. Ouch! I realize my mistake now.

I know many of you reading this are also guilty of this error till now. It is a mistake bound to happen to many newbie bloggers, and you have to correct yourself now.

After you finish with the typing of the content, take few minutes to read what you typed. I'm 98% sure you would find at least one thing to correct. That is what proofreading can do for you.

How "not proofreading your content before publishing" can ruin your blog?

Without proofreading, you could make as many mistakes as possible. There could be grammatical errors, punctuation errors, auto - correct errors, sentence structure errors, and many other possible errors. People hate to read posts with errors every time. And you would not expect someone who finds many errors in your article for more than 3 times to still enjoys reading your posts.

#12. Not using images for your blog posts

An image which people say it worths thousand words is not just a cliché but a  truth fact. Readers are always attracted to posts with pictures.

Without reader a line of your blog post, a reader could have the idea of what the post is all about. And if it's interesting enough, it can forcefully motivate the reader to read your blog post, and hence you get more page views.

I clarified in one of my posts that images are also capable of reducing your blog's bounce rate. You can read it here >> 4 Ways Blog Post Images Reduce My Bounce Rate by 50%

How can your blog be ruined when you don't use images

When you don't use images for your blog posts, your readers could feel bored to scroll through the line of text without images. Seeing images within documents brings a pause and a chance to relax while the whole content is being read. So readers don't always feel bored when they read text with images.

On the other hand, when your readers can't find images in two or more pages they open, some might decide not to return to your blog anymore because they get bored when they land on your blog posts.

#13. Promoting blog in the wrong way (spamming)

It's cool to promote blogs, yeah, but it should be in the right way. Some newbie bloggers are fond of promoting their blogs in places that they are not supposed to. This is called spamming.

Sending spams to people will not help you grow your blog. Instead, it creates bitter awareness of yourself and your blog in the minds of individuals you are spamming.

There are many right and accepted ways to promote your blog among which are:

• Commenting on other blogs
• Joining forums and communities like Quora
• Sharing your blog post on social medias (in the right way)
• Email marketing
• Guest blogging, and lots more.

Nathan Elerring explained the 105 ways to promote your blog in one of his blog posts. Read the 105 ways here >> 105 Ways To Promote Your Blog

Adopt these methods, and quit spamming people.

How wrong blog promotion can ruin your blog

Like I mentioned earlier, spamming does no good to your blog. It will only create a bad impression and hatred for yourself and your blog, by your potential readers who you are spamming.

#14. Being worried about fewer page views

A newbie blogger would be concerned about fewer page views, but this is a mistake. I realized it as a mistake when I started to do things right. So if you're a newbie blogger and you get fewer page views, don't be much worried about that. Just find out things you're doing wrong and find ways to fix them.

Sure that you have great contents and still have little page views? Check other things you ain't doing right. You have great contents, and you've done all the necessary things? Then keep calm. You don't need to worry too much about traffic.

I can't forget when I started my blog new that I used to have less than 50 page views. I was also in that shoe; I became much worried and wanted to give up on blogging.

But I didn't stop. I, instead, looked at things I wasn't doing right and got them fixed.

How your worrisome about page views can ruin your blog

You will always think otherwise when you keep being worried about your page views. And this can lead to frustration to give up on blogging.

#15. Not jotting down your ideas

When a newbie blogger intends to start a new blog, as I mentioned earlier, he will be full of ideas. But the mistake most newbie bloggers make is that they don’t jot their ideas somewhere. The mistake is not limited to only bloggers; some pro bloggers make this error too.

Be it post ideas, title ideas, image ideas, any form of the idea; you need to jot them down in a notepad or your diary. You can forget these ideas when the time you need them comes.

Conclusion:

If you are a newbie blogger or you are about to start your new blog, here is a chance for you to avoid this mistakes. Even, if you call yourself a pro blogger but you still make some of these mistakes, it is time for you to turn a new leave. Blogging is a fascinating profession for who does it right.

Happy blogging!

Which of these mistakes are you making right now, as a newbie? And if you're now a pro blogger, which other mistakes did you make when you were a newbie?