Top 5 Mistakes That Keep Blogs From Building Traffic

This blog tends to focus on the positive, on tips to enhance your blogging effectiveness. But there are also useful tips that are negative, common mistakes that detract from the effectiveness of your blog. Sometimes you have to get rid of the bad to create the good. How do I know what stops a blog from gaining and keeping readers? Simple: I put myself in the shoes of readers and think about what turns me away from certain blogs. Here is my list of the top 5 things that keep blogs from growing consistent traffic.

Terrible grammar and spelling: One of the characteristics of phishing emails tends to be horrible grammar. I mean, would the officials of the UK Lottery really send you an email that abuses the Queen’s English that badly? Everyone can let a typo slip by their proofing once in a while, but consistently writing you when you mean your just takes away from the professionalism and skill you want to convey.
Information overload: Blogs that have the density of a neutron star tend to be overwhelming and send me scurrying for a breath of air. There’s just too much there, and rather than sort it all out I’ll just go elsewhere. One caveat: If the information is sorted and categorized extremely well, that’s a different matter.
Enormous headers: When your header takes up my entire screen and forces me to scroll in order to see a bit of content, I find that too much to ask. I want you to give me a good reason to scroll down, and a header doesn’t do that.
Link Pop-Ups: SnapShots and Kontera hot spots are arguably the most annoying things on the web. I find myself carefully navigating my pointer just to avoid them. On some sites they are everywhere, sprinkled throughout the text like little digital mines waiting for you to trip them so they can go off in your face. I’d rather go somewhere else where it’s safe.
Positive reviews of bad products: I will forever distrust someone who tries to sell me a bad product. They may sell me once, but never twice. When I review a product on my blog, or just recommend it, I need to know that it’s a good product. There are many products I find that I cannot recommend in good conscience, so I don’t. It pays to examine what you are recommending before recommending it, and if you write about a product with some negative aspects, be sure to include that information in your post.

Lord knows there are lots more, but these are the ones that I find detract the most from effective blogging. Enjoy!

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