This is a contributor’s blogpost …

Blogging has really taken off in recent years. The benefits of blogging\ for business have been well established, and many individuals are able to make a full-time career from their site. Even if you just blog for fun, it’s a creative and productive hobby that allows you to learn new skills, meet like minded people and get your voice heard. But did you know there are a few things that you might be doing wrong when it comes to your blog, and that they could be hindering your progress? Here are three of them:

Photo Courtesy of Pixabay via Pexels

Not Promoting Enough

No one likes those bloggers who shamelessly spam their link day in, day out. In fact, you’ve probably unfollowed or muted people like this on Twitter. It’s annoying and of course it isn’t something you should do yourself. What you need to do instead is find the right balance when it comes to self-promotion. You need to get your blog out there to be found by others, but you don’t want to do it in a way that comes across as spammy or annoying. Instead of simply posting the link on social media for example, why not share specific posts from your archives? Be sure to attach a photo from the blog post which helps to entice the reader in? If you use really intriguing and interesting titles, you’ll make it far more appealing to click on than a simple link to the homepage. Join blogger’s networks on social media, join in on Twitter chats and leave thoughtful comments with a link to your blog at the end on other’s blogs. Set some time aside each week to do this, it can be time-consuming but is so worth it.

Not Utilising SEO Techniques

SEO (search engine optimisation) is a technique used to make your blog posts more appealing to search engines. If you use the right words and phrases in your posts, search engines will take note of this and increase your rankings for searches in these areas. However it’s a bit of a tricky one, some bloggers can get so focused on making their posts search engine friendly they forget that it needs to be reader friendly too. In fact, some techniques can actually harm your score so tread the line carefully. You could enlist the help of an SEO agency to get your blog ranking higher in search engines. This will result in more organic traffic and more views and followers for you, as well as more money if you have monetised it.

Not Having a Professional Looking Design

If you blog as a hobby, of course your blog can look the way you want. However, if you want to attract (and keep) readers, this is something to pay attention to. At the end of the day, we blog because we want our content to be read- if it was purely for personal reasons we’d write in a diary rather than online. And because you want others to read your work, it needs to be visually pleasing. You can’t go wrong with dark text on a light background, a size and font that most people can comfortably read. If you’re unsure or you just want to make the best impression, it’s worth enlisting the help of a professional. It doesn’t need to be a full on expensive custom template, you can buy premade ones from places like Etsy or even find full free responsive blog designs online.

Author: Urban Ponder Writing Team