9 Blogging Mistakes (And What You Should Do Instead)

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I’ve been blogging now for almost five years and have accumulated my fair share of blogging mistakes. 

I’ve mentioned this before but my journey towards building a successful six-figure blog was not easy (nor straightforward).

Because we had no idea what we were doing, my partner and I made a ton of mistakes on our travel blog, AdventureinYou.com (some of which have cost us tons of $$!).

Sadly, these were mistakes we could have easily avoided if only we took the time to learn from others.

Given that blogging is an industry that is always changing, in this article, I will share with you a few tried and tested ways of avoiding these common blogging mistakes and what you should do instead.

Regardless if you’re a seasoned blogger struggling to see results or a beginner blogger who wants to start things off on the right foot, sit back, grab a coffee and get reading.

Blogging Mistakes Video

Blogging Mistake #1: Using a Free Blogging Platform

Let’s start with the most important blogging mistake out there. If you ever want to monetize your blog and earn from it (which you definitely should), you need to get off those free blogging platforms!

Platforms like Blogger, Blogspot, or WordPress.com (don’t confuse it with WordPress.ORG) simply do not provide the same level of authority that professional .com websites do.

Dear-diary-style blogs are no longer gaining traction and authority blogs are on the rise.

If you want your readers to trust the advice you give in your articles, you have to look professional.

Trust me, no one wants health advice from www.healthyyou.blogspot.com.

This means that if you want to actually earn from your blog, you have to be willing to spend the $2.95 per month to host your blog. 

That’s right; for the price of 1 cup of coffee, you can get hosting for your blog and look like a pro! 

Considering your blog has the potential to bring in thousands of dollars each month, I would say the $2.95 a month is pretty much a bargain.

We personally recommend Bluehost as they have the most affordable hosting packages online.

We’ve even negotiated a special rate just for our readers, giving you almost 63% off the usual price.

Choosing to start a blog on a self-hosted platform that gives you the flexibility to monetize will save you tons of time and money down the line! 

Aside from making your blog look professional, WordPress blogs have a ton of customizability, making it one of the best blogging platforms out there. 

In fact, W3Techs reported that 35.7% of websites out there are WordPress.org sites, making it the most popular content management system.

For non-tech savvy people like me, one of the big reasons I will always choose WordPress is because of the infinite number of plug-ins and themes that are available.

This allows me to be able to customize everything I want – without needing any coding knowledge!

However, the best part about WordPress blogs and why it is so popular in the blogging world is because it is very SEO-friendly.

The platform itself is written using standard compliance high-quality code with semantic markup which, in simple terms, makes your content very search-engine-result-friendly.

Ultimately, this means that the platform itself makes it easier for you to get your content ranking because of how it displays information.

What You Should Do Instead

If you are just starting a blog, make sure you have 2 things: 

1. Hosting plan

2. WordPress.org

Although other sites like SquareSpace or Wix can also work, we recommend WordPress.org (which is free) as it simply provides you with the most freedom and flexibility to monetize.

Starting off using the right blogging platform can help save you loads of time (and money) later on instead of having to make the switch once you realize the limitations of your existing blogging platform.

If you need help with the blog set-up process, we have a free 4-day blogging bootcamp to help you through the process of choosing a niche, name, and blog set up!

Blogging Mistake #2: Starting a Blog Without a Clear Niche

Another common mistake a lot of bloggers make is starting a blog without a clear and well-defined niche.

There are SO many blogs out there and casting your net wide just makes it 100x harder to build and grow a successful blog.

Having a clear niche means that every article you put out there is interesting and valuable to your tribe.

If you want to stand out from everyone else, taking the time to find your Blue Ocean is crucial. 

This is a strategy we share with our students in our Blogging Fast Lane course. 

The Blue Ocean Strategy, a concept coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, is essentially when you stay away from oversaturated markets which they refer to as “Red Oceans.”

These Red Oceans are overcrowded and often have a lot of competitors, making it hard to stand out. 

If you want to succeed in blogging, you need to stay away from Red Oceans and instead strive to find and create a unique sub-niche for yourself which is called a “Blue Ocean.”

Think about it.

Which blog is more likely to grow faster and succeed? 

A general food blog or a budget-friendly focused food blog that only features one-pot/pan meals for students?

By going super niche and specific, you are making it easier for yourself to build an online tribe.

Going very niche also means that every piece of content you put out is something your audience is interested in.

If you want help on how to find your Blue Ocean, I recommend you jump on our free training where we share our formula to help you discover your own Blue Ocean.

What You Should Do Instead

If you haven’t started a blog, make sure you dive deeper into your chosen niche. Saying you want to start a travel, fitness, or health blog isn’t clear or specific enough.

Ask yourself: Do I have any specific skills or life experiences that I can intersect with my blog niche to help make it a bit more unique? 

Our secret sauce for finding your Blue Ocean can be summed up by the image below. Essentially, it’s all about intersecting the things that you are passionate about with a skill and an ideal audience demographic that you want to speak to.

A good example of a general niche vs. a Blue Ocean would be:

“I would like to start a travel blog” vs. “I want to start a Singapore-specific budget travel blog for large families”. 

The general travel blog niche is too broad and you’ll have a difficult time getting your stuff ranking as there are literally a million other travel blogs out there. 

As far as Blue Oceans go, the Singapore-specific travel blog is pretty spot on!

1. Passion – Traveling Singapore
2. Skill – Budgeting
3. Audience – Large Families

Because the niche is SO specific, the blog is more likely to gain a loyal set of followers.

If you already have a blog, ask yourself: Can I focus on a particular aspect of my blog to make it even more niche?

In our case, when we first started our blog, we made the mistake of thinking our niche was Adventure Travel. 

It was only really when we decided to focus on writing adventure reviews did we start to see traction.

Feel free to check out our article on finding your blogging niche for more examples and guidance on how to find your Blue Ocean.

Blogging Mistake #3: Not Having a Content Strategy (Quantity Over Quality)

When we first started our blog, I read an article that said I should keep publishing articles consistently.

So in 2 years, I wrote a whopping 583 articles. 

Although I felt like I was “growing my blog”, in reality, I wasn’t. All I did was waste my time writing articles no one would ever read.

Because we did not have a solid content strategy and I just wrote about whatever came to mind, I ended up with a hodgepodge of articles. 

The year after that, I got smart and started to write based on an actual strategy and it was only then did we actually see our blog grow.

When it comes to writing articles, it is always quality over quantity!

Based on the graph above, you can clearly see that despite spending all our time creating content, our traffic hardly grew.

In fact, most of those articles that I wrote in that 2-year writing frenzy are NOT ranking at all.

But once we had a content strategy in place, we were able to get more readers with fewer articles!

Given that time is your most precious commodity, make sure you have a foolproof content strategy to help you grow your blog. 

In our FAST Framework, we teach our students to build Authority Pillars.

This means creating your content vertically, starting with a pillar article, then supporting it with a series of related sub-articles.

This way, when Google crawls your blog, it sees your pillar article and your sub-articles… and sees you as a person of authority on that subject, making it infinitely easier for you to rank.

What You Should Do Instead

Don’t just blog for the sake of blogging. Instead, create strategic content and build your Authority Pillars.

Do your keyword research (more on this in my next point), and create a content plan around your Blue Ocean. 

If you want a deeper understanding of what Authority Pillars are and how to properly execute this strategy, check out our free training where we explain this strategy that allowed us to 30x our traffic in less than a year!

Blogging Mistake #4: Not Using a Keyword Research Tool

Along the same lines as not having a content strategy, another huge blogging mistake we made in the beginning was not investing in a keyword research tool.

Have you seen the movie “Bird Box”? Blogging without doing your keyword research is pretty much the same thing.

You are essentially walking in the dark with a blindfold on, praying that the Google Gods rank your article.

Friends, keyword research is your direct lifeline to the exact phrases and keywords that people search for.

Without this, trying to get your articles ranking is a stab in the dark. 

What You Should Do Instead

When you’re deciding what to write about, it’s important to invest in a keyword research tool.

If you don’t have the budget to get it all-year-round, I recommend just getting a one-month subscription to help you create your content plan for the year.

A good keyword research tool will give you access to a ton of data that can help you determine if you can rank for an article or not.

See the screenshot above?

That is an example of the type of information you get access to with a keyword research tool. It provides information on how many people are searching for that keyword, which other websites are ranking, how many links they have pointing to their article, as well as how authoritative their websites are.

Knowing all this information will give you a better idea of how to structure the article that you’ll write and which keywords you should give priority to!

Read our full Keysearch review and tutorial to learn how a keyword research tool can help your blog grow.

Keysearch is a super affordable tool that has both yearly AND monthly plans. If you would like to try the tool, use the coupon code “FASTLANE” for a discount!

Blogging Mistake #5: Falling Into the Social Media Trap

Social media plays a huge role when it comes to blogging. It allows you to easily connect with your tribe, making it an invaluable tool.

However, when used incorrectly, social media can also be a huge distraction.

This is what we call the “social media trap”.

The social media trap is when you end up focusing too much time on social media without a clear purpose. 

In short, this is when you try to be on every social platform out there and become obsessed with likes, followers, and other vanity metrics.

When we first started, although we had thousands of people following us on social media, not many people were jumping on to our blog.

We would spend hours on Instagram and also grew a huge following on Facebook. We even tried to take a stab at Twitter!

Sure, we were “social media famous”… but what good was that if it wasn’t translating into clicks to our blog?

By spreading yourself too thinly across multiple social media channels, you are preventing yourself from truly focusing on growing your blog and connecting with your tribe through one platform.

The social media trap happens all the time and yet so many bloggers wonder what they are doing wrong.

What You Should Do Instead 

Rather than focusing your efforts on social media, you should spend your time focusing on creating great content.

After you’ve done this, rather than focusing on promoting your content across multiple channels, choose one… and own it!

In our Blogging Fast Lane course, we have an exercise where we guide our students on how to identify where their ideal audience avatar hangs out.

Once you have identified this, build your presence and connect with your tribe there!

Let’s face it. 

If you are a food blog, you don’t need to be on Twitter, Reddit, Tik Tok, or whatever new platform that pops up. 

Figure out where your audience hangs out… and make it your go-to spot to shout about your articles. 

As soon as you do this, you will have so much more time to build your blogging Affiliate Machine.

One of the reasons why we LOVE blogging is because it continuously allows us to get organic traffic, regardless of we are posting on social media or not.

Tom and I LOVE traveling for two or three weeks at a time where we go offline and unplug.

Despite being offline, our blog still consistently brings in revenue for us.

One of the best turning points in our business was when we went hiking to Everest Basecamp back in 2018. 

During that time, despite not working for 3 weeks, as soon as we got down and logged in our computers, we saw that our blog still brought in $12,000 passively.

Blogging Mistake #6: Neglecting SEO

A lot of people think, ”As long as I write good content, people will come to my website!”.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

When I first started blogging, I made the mistake of neglecting SEO.

I kept rationalizing to myself that it is just too difficult to learn and that I didn’t really need it.

This was the most costly mistake we ever made!

Why? 

Because I ended up wasting SO MUCH time writing articles that people would never read… because no one could find it!

If you want your blog to truly thrive, you need to take the time to learn SEO.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization simply means taking the time to learn how to optimize your writing in a way that sends context clues straight to Google.

What exactly do I mean?

As much as I would like to imagine that Google is a cat sitting behind a computer screen deciding who gets on the first page… it isn’t.

Google decides WHO to rank on the first page of its search engine based on a series of algorithms.

By taking the time to learn SEO, you are essentially equipping yourself with the skills to help the algorithm figure out what your article is about. 

For us bloggers, SEO is everything. 

SEO is the reason our travel blog gets over 500,000 visitors each month.

It’s the secret sauce to getting more views and increasing your traffic, even if you don’t have a dedicated, loyal audience just yet.

Now think about this statistic for a second.

Every day, there are approximately 40,000 Google searches every second. That equates to about 3.5 billion searches a day and 1.2 trillion searches a year. 

Now, I know that that number just seems arbitrary, but to put it in simpler terms, that is an insanely large amount of people who are looking for answers.

Your goal is to write articles that will be ranked on the first page, giving you a slice of that pie.

Moz defines SEO as the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.

If you want to simplify it even more:

SEO can be defined as how you optimize your content so that it appears in the top pages of Google when people search for that topic.

What You Should Do Instead

The good news: this mistake can easily be avoided if you just take the time to learn the basics of SEO. 

Although SEO can sound pretty technical for bloggers, like every skill, it is something that gets easier with time.

Just learning the basics of on-site and off-site SEO can make a HUGE difference in your rankings.

In our Blogging Fast Lane course, we have an entire module dedicated to just SEO. It is complete with detailed instructional videos, demos, and even SEO cheatsheets.

Before they start writing articles, we make sure our students go through this module first.

Why?

Because we don’t want them to waste their time writing articles which they will have to re-do later on. 

Taking the time to learn and master this skillset will mean your blog can get consistent organic traffic!

Head over to our guide to SEO for bloggers to learn more about how to use SEO on your blog.

Blogging Mistake #7: Writing Articles Without Compelling Headlines

Without even really thinking about it, if you come across these two articles, which one are you most likely to click?

The “Secret” Apple Pie Recipe that Has Won Awards  

Or

Apple Pie Recipe

Let’s face it… you would have probably clicked the first title as soon as you read the word “secret”.

Headlines play a HUGE role in blogging and not taking the time to understand correct headline usage means you’re missing out on increasing your CTR (click-through rate). 

This article even goes as far as saying that on average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest which is why having a GREAT headline is even more important than ever.

Coming up with SEO-optimized headlines that are both witty and clickable is an art form. Neglecting their article headlines is a common mistake that a lot of bloggers make.

What You Should Do Instead

Here are my top two tips when it comes to crafting compelling headlines.

First, take a look at who is ranking on the first page of Google and observe their headline structure. Is there anything you can learn from it?

Do they straightaway use the main keywords you are trying to rank for? Are there loads of stop words? Are there loads of descriptive words?

Next, check out this headline tool which scores your headline and gives suggestions on how to tweak things to make it better.

Do note that although the headline tool is awesome, it is just a tool. Use your gut when coming up with headlines and don’t forget to include your keywords!

For more tips on how to craft a killer headline, check out our article that gives you everything you need to know.

Remember: keep your headlines witty and your URLs clean! This means that even though you have an awesome headline, your post URL should be exact keyword matches rather than long-winded sentences.

Blogging Mistake #8: Not Growing Your Email List

When we first started blogging, so many people told us to “build a list”.

Naively, we didn’t listen.

We had one of those generic “sign up for our list and get updates” forms but never really actively sought to get subscribers.

Unfortunately, because we did not realize exactly HOW important building your email list is, we were running our blog for almost 2 years before we actually got smart about it.

Now, our email list (which has over 80,000 subscribers!) is one of our most prized possessions and our lifeline to our audience.

Whenever I am brainstorming on how to better serve our community, all I have to do is send one email and I instantly get feedback from my tribe.

Aside from getting direct feedback, our email list is the core of our Trust Marketing system.

In fact, I can safely say that our email list continuously doubles or even triples our affiliate income!

Ignoring and not making it a priority was a huge mistake on our end; what’s more, we wasted our time on things like social media and creating content without a content strategy. 

Want to know how important email marketing is when done correctly?

Take a look at this study which states that emails are 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined!

What You Should Do Instead

Rather than just a generic “subscribe now” form, make sure you take the time to create value gifts. 

Value gifts are what we use to incentivize our readers to get on our list, and it’s something we teach in our Blogging Fast Lane course. 

After they become a subscriber, we nurture and build relationships through a series of automated emails.

We take this a step further by showing our students how to build segmented lists around one particular topic. 

This way, your list is highly engaged and interested!

Take a look at one of our segmented lists.

We grew this list by offering a fantastic value gift and added a dedicated email automation to help distribute our content.

Because our list is so engaged and interested in the very specific topic that we have, we have a 76% open rate for one of our email automation series.

For a complete guide on how to grow your email list, check out this article.

Blogging Mistake #9: Not Surrounding Yourself with a Community 

Last but not the least, the most common mistake we see bloggers make is not surrounding themselves with a supportive community.

Oftentimes, when you have a goal you want to achieve, the best way to make this goal happen is to surround yourself with like-minded people.

Why?

Studies show that people who hold themselves accountable to others are more likely to achieve this goal, increasing your chances of success by up to 95%!

Think about it. 

If I wanted to lose weight, would it help if I surrounded myself with friends who often ordered in food and lazed around at night? 

Or would I benefit more if I started hanging out with people who ate healthily and exercised together?

The same thing goes for blogging. 

If you want to build a successful blog, you should surround yourself with others who are doing the exact same thing.

When you’re constantly working in your pajamas from the comforts of your own home, it’s easy to just keep to yourself. 

However, what you don’t realize is that you’re missing out on a massive chance to interact, learn, and grow with other people who are in the same boat as you.

We say this time and time again but it was only when we took the time to network and learn from others, did we see our blog grow and succeed. 

Oftentimes, a lot of people see other bloggers in similar niches and immediately think of them as competition. 

This way of thinking is not the way forward.

What You Should Do Instead

To avoid this mistake, the answer is simple. 

Adopt a collaborative mindset. 

Community over competition… always!

Fun Fact: The motto above is why we started sharing blogging tips in the first place!

Actively seek out online communities for blogging and take the time to engage and learn from others.

If you find other bloggers who have similar blogging goals, you might want to even arrange a tight-knit mastermind group amongst yourselves.

We know how important community is and the impact it can have in helping people succeed. This is why we spend a lot of time and effort into growing our Blogging Fast Lane community specifically for our students. 

In this community, we have celebration, feedback, and even goal-setting threads as a way to motivate and keep each other accountable.

When we have a lot of our students in one place, we even throw pizza nights or virtual coffee mornings as a way to bring the community together!

Check out the photo below of our Fast Lane family get together in Thailand!

Surrounding yourself with people who are working towards the same goal and are rooting for your success is priceless.

The bottom line: find yourself a community, form blogging friends, and hold yourself accountable to each other.

It will do wonders for the goals you are trying to achieve and help you grow and progress as a blogger.

Hopefully, this article has given you some insight into the common blogging mistakes and provided you with ideas on how to avoid them.

The journey towards building a successful blogging business is never easy but with the right mindset, tools, and community, it can be done. 

What about you? What are some blogging mistakes that you have experienced? Click reply and let us know!

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