5 Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Blog

You want your blog to get results, right? To draw in traffic like a magnet and turn as many visitors as possible into paying customers?

If you want results from your business blog, then avoid the following 5 mistakes like the plague. Any one of them will hurt, but all of them together will absolutely ruin your blog.

1. Irregular Updates Or Not Publishing New Content.

Regular, new content is how you get search engines to index your site and send you a flood of natural search traffic. It’s how you entice subscribers to come back and draw in visitors from social media and other sources.

If you’re not publishing new content on a regular basis – at least once a week – your blog is stagnating. You’re losing visitors and potential leads, your ranking in search engines is dropping like a rock.

HubSpot and Social Media Examiner agree that while there are plenty of other blogging mistakes you could make, not publishing regularly is the easiest way for a blog to die. If you stop caring about your site, so will everybody else.

2. Too Many Ads.

True, advertising on your blog is one way to monetize it. But doing it the wrong way will ruin your blog. After all, who wants to go to a site with lots of flashing banners and annoying pop-ups?

Not only will too many ads send visitors running, it will also hurt your rankings with search engines. Google values user experience as much as relevant, regular content. More ads than content above the fold (without any scrolling down) and lots of bounced traffic tells search engines your site isn’t worth visiting, and your site will disappear from search results pages.

3. Crappy Content.

You could do everything else right – a regular publishing schedule, the right number of ads – and this mistake will still ruin your blog.

Traffic doesn’t come to your site just because you publish three times a week like clockwork. They come because your content is worth reading. It solves their problems, teaches them something new, or entertains with style.

If your content isn’t doing those things, your blog has already failed.

Like not publishing regularly or having too many ads, putting crappy content on your blog will cost you traffic and your place in search engine results. Even worse, you will lose any authority you might have had because your content doesn’t help anyone.

4. Ignoring Others.

A famous writer once said, “No man is an island.” The same is true with blogs. If you operate your blog in a vacuum, it will eventually die.

The most obvious way to ignore others with your blog is to not respond to comments. If your readers take the time to give you feedback, the least you could do is take a few moments to take them, answer their question, or direct them to an appropriate resource. When you ignore their attempts to engage with you, why should they stay?

Another mistake is to ignore other bloggers, businesses, and resources in your field. If you never share other people’s great resources with your readers or talk about (or to) the big names in your industry, your blog is not as helpful and up-to-date as it could be.

Why should your readers stay with you if you never acknowledge anyone but yourself?

5. Poor Design Or Structure.

Finally, you can have all the great content and relationships in the world, but if your website looks like you spent five minutes putting it together, no one is going to take you seriously.

This mistake that can ruin blogs applies to both design and structure. A cheap-looking design or one that doesn’t stand out from competitors might not send visitors running, but it certainly won’t help you get more leads.

And poor structure makes it difficult for users to access your great content or learn more about your business. If visitors can’t easily navigate your site, they’ll just find another website that’s easier to use. You don’t gain any new leads and you lose traffic.

What other mistakes should be on this list? How have you fixed any blogging mistakes you’ve made? Please share in the comments!