1- Too many messages
As I mentioned earlier, you should decide on which topic you’re going to talk about on your blog before you even start blogging, because you need to set this issue clear with yourself and your readers from day one. Talking about almost everything is no good for you nor for your readers. Your blog will end-up useless, readers bouncing away and you are mastering nothing. Make it clear to your readers from the first post what you are going to be talking about or at least a generic topic that you are going to blog under.
2- Make it hard to subscribe
Any website on the Internet is measured by the number of its subscribers, not by its pageviews or unique visitors. You have to work hard on converting your readers into subscribers. A lot of people for an unknown reason just throw all the subscription blocks to the very bottom of their blogs and have them very tiny. Why would you do that? Subscription blocks should be on the top, very visible and teasing as well.
You can also add a block after each article asking your readers to subscriber to your blog, this really works, trust me!
3- Inconsistent Posting
One you launch your blog, your readers will start to get used to a certain routine, a routine of when to visit your blog to find a new article. Publishing your posts should be scheduled and it’s not an easy task as you may think. Scheduling your posts couldn’t be defined in couple of minutes, it might take months to know which time of the day blog’s peak time is and so on. But you have to make sure to publish your articles in an organized sequence, for example: every day, every other day, or twice a week. If you publish today three posts, tomorrow one, stop for two days then publish one and so on, that would freak your readers out for sure.
4- No Contact Info
I don’t have much to say about this point, but it is a killing sin that could easily kill your blog! I just can’t imagine a blog without contact information or form! How on earth were you thinking of interacting with your readers or receiving their feedback? What about business opportunities? What if there is a person with a million dollar idea right now reading your blog and wanted to share this idea with you! How could he communicate with you? A contact section that contains a contact form or the contact information is an essential part of any blog.
5- Not Moderating Comments
Having all the comments appear on your blog without being moderated is very bad, what if there was a spam message that could harm the computer of its clickers? You would be harming your readers as well. What if a message contains bad words? You should use Akismet or any other Spam plugins where it moderates comments with URLs along with first time commentators. That is the least you can do to prevent spam comments from appearing on your blog.
6- Excessive Advertising
It is understood that advertising and affiliate links generate the biggest chunk of money for your blog, but that doesn’t mean to have your blog overloaded with affiliate links and those in-line advertising solutions where it shows a word as if it’s clickable and once you hover it, a popup will appear and will take you into an irrelevant page. All of this is aggressive and would really cause most of your readers to bounce away from your blog. Choose a few ad zones in places that are not misleading to the reader, that would not be aggressive nor would it be intrusive.
Personally, I visited a couple of blogs, with a “Flash” block on the sidebar once the page is loaded, this overlay banner appears covering the entire page with the close button under the flash block!! I wasn’t able to view the blog neither to close the popup! I mean aren’t blogs meant to be visited and read?!
7- No navigation menu
How hard was it to get readers to your blog? Trust me it wasn’t an easy job at all. But do you think it’s all about having readers arrive on your blog? No, you have to take care of them while they are there! The more pages they view per visit the better it is for you! It means you get great content and its keeping them on your blog! But if there wasn’t a navigation menu or at least buttons that would take them to other pages than the one they arrived on, don’t you think that would have wasted all of your effort of getting users to your blog in the first place? You really did!
I recommend other than having a navigation menu on the top of your blog, to have various widgets on your sidebars such as; recent posts, recent comments, top rated posts, categories and tags cloud. One really important plugin that would increase pageviews per visit is “Wordpress Related Posts” which lists under each post the number of links that share the same tags with the current post you are reading.
A very important tip to all bloggers out there, new ones and old ones, always put yourself in the shoes of your reader! Don’t look at things from your point of view, instead think what would your readers like and dislike. What would make them come back to your blog and what would make them bounce away and never come back!
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Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
@steitiyeh
October 16, 2009 at 10:19 pmHello Polprav, you are more than welcome to do so. I hope that you are finding my blog beneficial.
Best,
Steit
@sammutimer
October 17, 2009 at 5:15 amAnother fantastic blog post Steit. What you have mentioned above are the basics to blogging and once you nail these, then you can start to build on that foundation. A great blog needs to incorporate all you mentioned above. Thanks for sharing.
sam mutimer´s last blog ..Welcome To Thinktank Media
@ryonaitis
November 7, 2009 at 3:29 pmWhen reading this it is easy to say, of course, common sense and that everyone knows these items. However, there are many that do not. It is good to see you covering basics that many of us have learned and made second nature long ago. I like this post it will help beginners