5 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid

Blogging mistakes, every seasoned blogger has made them at one point in their journey, but the goal is to get past them and avoid making the same mistakes.

Blogging truly brings me so much joy; I enjoy writing and having my own space to do, but there were so many mistakes I made when I first started out. If you are beginning your blogging journey or revamping your website, I wanted to share 5 blogging mistakes to avoid so you can grow, become more confident in your journey and set your blog up for success.

Blogging Mistakes to Avoid

Unformatted + Not Mobile Friendly

The first blogging mistake that most people make is not having a properly formatted or mobile friendly website. You have to assume that most people are reading from their phone or mobile device of some sort. If you only format your site for people reading from a desktop or laptop, you’re going to lose a lot of readership.

At the time I started Daily Dose of Luxury, when I thought WIX was a solid idea, the first thing people told me right away was my site was not mobile friendly. I had too much going on for the capacity of what I was trying to do and for that reason people had no desire to read it. I’m grateful for having honest readers who told me that, but because I was so excited to start, it was something that I needed to fix right away.

The themes we choose MUST be mobile friendly and most of all user friendly in general. Now just because I’ve been in the game for 5 years doesn’t mean my site doesn’t get wonky from time to time. While rare, my Google Analytics will let me know when certain pages aren’t performing properly in the sense of people accessing them. It tells me exactly what is occurring and provides me with an option to approve that fix to be made by way of my Google backend.

Saying all of that to say, you should be the first one to see how your blog feels by way of mobile device. When you view it what do you see? When you’re scrolling, how does it make you feel? You can’t only love it just because it’s yours, what experience are you having while visiting? These things are key to understanding someone else’s experience.

Not Using Images is a Blogging Mistake

Even if it’s a stock photo, another blogging mistake to avoid is not using photos at all. Photos are key for SEO and when it comes to sharing your post on a platform such as Pinterest that embeds a photo and creates a pin with it, how can that process be effective if there is no photo? As someone who writes longer posts, photos definitely help break up that content and the cool thing about a having a lifestyle blog it doesn’t always have to be something super specific to the post, though if you do have photos that are specific to it, you should use them.

Using your own photos allows readers and brands, if that’s your goal, to associate your imagery with your brand and essentially put a face to your name/blog.

Avoiding SEO + Keywords

If writing is just a hobby, then you can decide what you want to do regarding SEO, but if you are wanting to draw real traffic and attract readership via search engines, you’re going to have to spend some time on your SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is literally what it sounds like.

You are optimizing and setting your blog up to be found by way of search engine results. For proper SEO you need to start learning to identify your post keyword. Writing free hand, without a keyword and just flowing is cool to because there is a place for posts like that, but a huge blogging mistake that is commonly made is not clearly knowing what your keyword is. I’m so used to including my keyword these days, it’s not noticeable to the eye of a regular reader.

Additionally, there is no announcement of my keyword at the start of each post, but if you look at my title and then read really closely you may be able to see what my keyword is in each of my posts. If you don’t that’s okay because it shouldn’t be that obvious and should be concealed in a way that it is perfectly formatted into the post, but the amount of times my keyword shows up is really what makes a difference and also an essential part of having your SEO together.

Stale Titles is a Blogging Mistake

Titles are pivotal to your blog and oftentimes one the easiest blogging mistakes to make. Similar to what I mentioned in the previous section, if blogging is a hobby, you don’t have to subscribe tightly to this, there is a place for blogs that aren’t lists, how to’s, sometimes you just need to share your story in a way that feels good to you. However, titles without substance prevent a few issues:

No one outside of where you share your blog will find your blog in their regular search as they are not searching for the title you have chosen.
Your SEO will most likely be off because you either chose your title at the end, didn’t include your keyword or your keyword is completely different than anything your title is referencing.
Writing will feel more like a task because there is no alignment between your content written and your title chosen.

These used to be my downfalls at the beginning, no exaggeration. Once I started paying attention to the type of titles people were using even if we created different content or had super specific blog niches, traffic started to increase and my blog started popping up in more search results. The goal of using certain types of titles is to get to the psyche of what and how people are searching.

When you search for something or want to know how to do something, you usually google “how to do XYZ” or “Ways to do XYZ” right? The rest of us are searching the same way because ultimately we are hoping to get the most specific and best answer possible. Don’t make this blogging mistake, set yourself up for searchable success.

You Don’t Have A Links Page

A custom links page, Linktree, I don’t even know what all the options are since I decided to build out my own, but the point is, not having a designated place for links is a big blogging mistake. People will search around on their own before they directly ask you for something because pride and they don’t want to bother you, so you’re doing yourself a huge disservice by not having some type of links page. Remember as the blogger it is your job to tell people what to do; “Click the link in my bio” or in your bio “Click Below for the Blog”. That is our job and if they can’t find it or can’t get to it, they are already over it, or maybe that’s just me because why make it hard?

Creating a links page on your blog directly isn’t a requirement, but if you use WordPress, there is a plugin called Elementor and that is how I built mine out. I personally didn’t want a third party option when those clicks could come directly to my site and that has significantly increased my views and numbers. I’m minimal, less places to check in is what works best for me, so if you have the option or have a WordPress blog, I 10/10 recommend.

All in all, all of these blogging mistakes can easily be fixed and adjusted rather quickly.