You have optimized your blog with some best SEO plugins. You also update your blog regularly, and write guest posts on several blogs. You also comment regularly on other blogs to form relationships.
In short, you are working hard to optimize your blog by implementing popular blogging tips: Still there are some minor looking but important things you might be ignoring. If you take some time and try observing small things on some top successful blogs, you will notice that you are missing things which look common but they play significant role in your blog’s success:
1. Missing Email Subscription
Are you serious, you don’t want me to become your regular reader? Obviously, this is the first reason of disappointment. Often after I finish reading a great article on a blog, I look for an option to sign up for future posts if I am new to that blog, but many of new, promising blogs do not have configured email subscription. It may be laziness and perhaps many bloggers do not know the importance of email updates. Email updates remind your visitors to visit your blog again and prevent them for forgetting you. Email subscriptions help communicate with your audience regularly and keep the connection alive.
Use creative ways to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your email list. Many bloggers offer some free gift or eBook to encourage more visitors to subscribe. ‘Ask and it will be given to you’ – that’s true in this case.
2. No About Page
You can never imagine the word ‘Admin’ being used to describe the owner or author on a successful blog. Visitors may want to drive to your About page to find more about you. Your About page is very important to build trust and engage readers. It shows your first impression to your visitors. Try to make your About page as more personal as you can, being comfortable to tell who and what you are. If you expose your bio/profile/photo publicly, readers connect with you faster.
Also be honest while sharing your details: Web users now-a-days are smart and can catch you lying easily.
3. There’s No Way to Contact You
How many of you got frustrated when you wanted to contact a website’s author and could not find ANY way to contact? Contact Us page is now considered as necessary and one of the most important parts of a blog, so visitors can provide feedback or ask you a question. Same as About page, it also builds trust and it is an effective way to show you as legit. Commonly, a contact page can have a form in which a someone can fill fields like name, email and message. A contact page may also show other ways to contact like address, phone numbers and also social profiles like Google+, Twitter and Facebook. The more information you put on Contact page the more real you will look.
To add a contact form in WordPress, there are popular plugins available like Contact Form 7 or Custom Contact Forms
Popup contact forms provide great ease to your visitors by which they can send you a message without leaving current page. Slick Contact Forms provides that.
4. No Way to Share Your Article
Social media has become an important measure for search engines to determine value of your content. While for visitors, it is fun to share interesting and useful content on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social medias. There are many plugins available to integrate social media for a WordPress site just in a few minutes. Social sharing is the thing that is never going to slow down.
5. Popups
Any kind. Do I need to say more about this?
6. Your Writing Sucks
Are you a fan of A. R. Rahman’s music like me? He is India’s most creative and hugely popular musician. In an interview, he mentioned that he tends to make each of his album or project a musical-hit. He works hard on each single song of a project to make it memorable.
Content is King. If your writing sucks, it is worth spending more time and efforts on improving it. This might be painful and difficult at first: But this is important and if you miss this, all other good things on your blog are useless. Do not tend to write away a 300-500 words posts in half an hour. Do your research and take more time to write a post.
Make your each post a masterpiece, even if it takes several hours or even days. Instead of writing all post at once, often it is helpful approach if you keep spending some time everyday for a post for some days. This will improve quality and you will keep discovering many ideas to improve your post.
7. You Are Not Interesting
Are you writing on your own blog like you are going to submit to an article directory? A visitor will not bother to come again if your writing is boring. I have seen some bloggers use their creativity such a way that even boring technical subjects become interesting by their writing style and you cannot stop yourself reading the post. You can also develop such creativity by practice.
8. You Are Not Talking to Your Readers
Do you talk with your readers in your post? Write like you are personally communicating with your readers. By using the word ‘you’, you build a relation with them and make them feel connected to your post. Italicize words and ask questions to your readers; that way you will keep them hooked to your writing.
Bloggers who talk with their readers get more popular and create more interest in their writing.
Posts with conversational writing mentioning ‘I’ and ‘You’ tend to be interesting to the reader. Also, frank and honest posts sharing author’s personal life experiences and with funny tone seem to be more personalized.
9. You Are Not Quoting Examples
You can make your posts interesting by giving real examples. Do you remember your teacher who used to teach something by giving some interesting example and you had fun learning a hard, boring thing easily?
10. You are Shy
In marketing, it is often said that you need to be shameless and fearless to succeed better, provided that your product is great. The same thing is true for building relations too. If you are proud of your content, never be shy to share it and ask people to share it. Same with contacting and emailing people to promote your blog.
11. You Hesitate to Spend on Your Blog
If you are seriously passionate about blogging, you might need to spend money on your blog for various things: A theme or premium WordPress plugins or any other services like email alerts, designing, SEO or even promotion. You may also consider sponsoring an event and this could give a great boost to your traffic. You should not hesitate to invest on things which may help your blog succeed.
12. It’s Hard to Find Things I am Looking For
Navigation plays an important part for a great user experience. Make it easy for visitors to find posts on your blog easily. Design a good menu containing categories of posts on your blog. Keep the search box on the top, so visitors can easily find whatever they are looking for out of hundreds of posts on your blog.
You may also consider providing a sitemap listing all posts/pages of your blog. It is great to provide a list of your popular posts so that visitors can know what you write about and how valuable content your blog provides. This way, a visitor may become a regular visitor easily.
13. You Are Not Helpful
There are so many bloggers who helped out people and quickly became popular. When you try to help others, you learn lots of things. And you also get back other’s help and appreciation. You can also build an audience by giving away freebies and working for free. Freely helping others gives you the real popularity. Praise from others’ mouth is the free and still more effective advertisement than paid one, because in paid advertisements, you praise yourself.
A blogger who tends to help the readers, beyond traffic and money wins hearts in no time. Along with helpful posts, when authors spend (or invest!) some time to respond to readers in comments or emails, they leave lasting impression on reader’s heart.
14. You are Absent From Social Media
By use of social media, you can generate a lot of attention and popularity. Instead of only sharing your own links, share other’s contents which you find helpful on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. If you appreciate others, then only people will do same back to you.
Join communities related to blogging or your niche and share interesting things. Also comment regularly on other’s post by admiring and helping them. “Be interesting” is the key to success and popularity on social media.
When I am writing on this topic, I can first remember name of energetic and inspiring Ryan Biddulph who everyday keeps sharing a lots of links of useful articles with words of praise. This way, people will notice you quickly.
15. Your Posts are Too Short
A short post means you have nothing much to say. A post less than 500 words shows lack of passion and in-depth knowledge. This also shows that you are not working hard for your blog. If you have seen article directories, they contain such types of posts with very short length and they are there for selfish purpose of back-linking only.
Writing in-depth posts does not mean that you should fill the page with a lots of boring text anyway. Om Malik of GigaOM once said, “If you can say something in 1000 words, you can say it in 500 words as well.” Take a look at this post itself: It is a little longer but I have tried to shorten each topic by trying to say much in as few words as possible.
16. You Post Once a Month
Search engines and visitors will love if you are consistent to update your blog regularly with fresh content. It is true that high frequency of quality content can attract more visitors. The more often you update your blog, the more often search engines will crawl it. There are so many views on how frequently you should blog but most experts advise to post at least once a week. It is ideal if you can write 2-3 posts per week but not compromising with quality of the content. If you do not have enough time for writing, you can also invite guest posts on your blog.
17. You Don’t Care About Spellings and Grammar
Poor language = poor content. Bad grammar and spellings can never make “Quality” content. Posts which are not proof-read means you are careless about your blog. Perhaps you have even seen bloggers writing intentionally in chat language like “i”, “u”, “lol”, “thanx”, “!!!!” etc. That only makes the post look rubbish. I see many Indian bloggers not using proper casing in sentences. Even great bloggers take time to re-read and review their own posts before publishing, and too busy people hire proof-readers.
18. Your Post Titles Are Not Unique
Title of your post is as much important as your entire post itself.
Title is the first important element of a post that actually leads someone to come to read your post. Write a catchy and interesting title that should make the reader curious. Avoid using a common title which has been already used thousands of times.
To make a great title, you should put some efforts. It might be a little painful at first- but it pays when your post is being shared over social media and other websites.
Write about 10-15 different variations for your title. Search yourself for the similar suggestion on search engine. This should help you to choose a best unique title for your article.
19. Too Many Ads
You have right to earn from your hard work, but there is a fine line between monetization and annoying your visitors by putting too many ads. Visitors come for content and not to see ads. The practice of adding too many ads is disrespectful and spammy to your readers. Try moderately using the ads in the way they blend in the content of your blog; that will save your blog from looking ugly. And be sure to avoid using popup ads- they are enough to stop your readers from coming.
20. Design is Not Reader-Friendly
By a good design, we do not mean great graphics and fancy colors. In fact, simple themes are more readable and thus they become more successful! For a blog, a good design is not necessarily ‘beautiful’, but it has:
1. Good contrast between background and text. (Preferably dark text and light background)
2. Fonts are easy to read and has enough size.
3. Background (image) is not screaming to a reader.
4. Layout is focused to article content and not ads.
Thus, a layout which is more reader-friendly, works great for a blog.
21. Your Blog Loads Slow
Neither visitors nor search engines like a slow loading site. Everybody now knows that speed of loading is a very important part of SEO. There might be several reasons for a slow site, but major are:
1. Your hosting provider: Switch to a better, reputed hosting provider.
2. Avoid Shared Hosting: Move to using a dedicated server if you have huge number of visitors.
3. Avoid Too many plugins: Avoid unnecessarily using too many WordPress plugins. Use reputed plugins, because it is the poor code which slows down.
Also, use pictures and media in organized way to avoid slowing down.
22. You Don’t Care to Reply to Comments and Emails
When your visitors take time to write a comment or email you, they deserve your attention and a reply. Replying to comments will also keep your visitors engaged on your post and they will be encouraged to read and comment more on your blog. Your visitors will feel good if you reply to their comments and emails. You stand out of thousands of other bloggers when you reply to emails. Many people might have learned this from Neil Patel. He spends a lot of time reading and replying to almost all comments and emails on his blog. That is the major reason of huge numbers of comments he gets.
23. Your Blog is Not Personalized
Personalized blogs become more successful and connect faster to readers’ hearts, no matter what is the blog’s niche or topic.
A one-man army blog (or only certain number of authors), if it has good content, directly connects reader’s mind– even if updated only once a week. A blog with huge, daily, useful post updates by many, multiple authors can’t do the same magic. Though no offence to guest-blogging, most guest posts seem to be ‘selfish’ with prime purpose of link building instead of truly helping readers! Isn’t it?
Conclusion – Write for Your Readers, Not Search Engines
Successful bloggers never think about stuffing the post with keywords: They write keeping the readers in mind.
Many bloggers make mistakes, but the great thing is that those mistakes teach all things. And even successful people learn about success the hard way.
Have you faced anything your visitors hated on your blog? Anything you fixed and made your blog more awesome? Please comment and share!
Oh! What a post it is? Amazing n exceptional!
Here are my blog details.
1. Having email subscription. 2 & 3. About n contact page is included. 4&5.Social buttons are there to share and no pop-ups. 6. Not very good in writing, but not bad. 7 & 8. Am very much interested and taking to my readers with my posts. 9. MISSING (not doing) 10.Am not feeling shy in asking others to share. 11. Am spending too much of time for my blog. 12. Am highlighting the points to my readers by making bold and adding some colors. 13. Am helping people specifically newbies through my posts. 14. My presence is good in social media. 15. No, never write short posts, almost with 600-700 words. 16 & 17. Post twice in a week almost without grammatical and spelling errors. 18. Never copy anyone, but will refer some great blogs to provide useful data for the bloggers. 19 & 20. Limited ads with good design. 21. Loading not like lightning fast, but it is good n won’t annoy the readers. 22. Taking care of each n every comment 23. One woman army, no one is here to give ideas.
Yeah, am writing for my readers!!!
Still you hate my blog??? Please tell will try to improve more, so that you’ll like my blog in the future.
Thanks Nirmala for taking time and sharing about your blog- lots of things to learn! Thanks for mentioning great additional points too. That is the reason your blog is getting more and more popular everyday. I always love your blog and it’s hard to find any cons there! Still, I will honestly point out if I don’t like anything. 🙂
Jignesh thanks so much dude!!
You nailed it with this post. So many key points.
Follow his tips readers, he is spot on.
Thank you Ryan, glad you liked it. Thanks for reading.
Lengthy but awesome post Jignesh. Every bit of it is worthy enough to implement. Some articles need to be read over and over and this is one of that sort. Its like a checklist of what we need to do in our blog.
Need to bookmark this article!
Vijesh, glad you liked. Thanks for kind words, you made my day!
Jignesh Bhai,
This is an awesome post because I have never seen such a simple down to earth article on the topic you have chosen. Well done!!
I just have a doubt on the fifth point about pop-ups..!
I feel one or two pop-ups after the first 30 seconds may lead your reader to click on the link if it looks useful..Please correct me if I am wrong and also share your valuable thoughts on this.
Cheers
Rafi
Thank you Rafi, happy to have your comment and appreciation.
That’s great point you mentioned. I should have actually specified that as annoying popup ad or something irrelevant to blog! Showing a popup with something useful, relevant to visitors is a great way when you want them to pay attention to something important… I found that on InspiringCitizen.com and it was not annoying, but good for visitors and the blog too! Thanks for pointing out and correcting me.
Thank you for your support!
so inspiring post. i learnt s lot reading this post. Hope to become a good blogger very soon
Thank you for reading. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing brother, I missed some of your tips. I feel like some of my mistake. especially, some time I thinks my tips now helpful for my readers. I plan to review some less comment post and update again.
Thanks for reading, Kimsea. Everybody learns from mistakes, you are on the right path! Wish you all the best.
thanks for responding my comments. You always done right! I will recognize this responding as a big motivation for me.
24. When your blog is not mobile friendly.
Hope you know you’re guilty of that?
LOL thanks for pointing out! I hope to work on that soon. 🙂
Hi Jignesh
Great Share!
this reasons is quite helpful for newbie Bloggers !.. Many Reasons you have cleared in this post for Build Successful blog. In My Blog I have Email Subscription, About us page, Contact us:) and yes about writing so “Your writing must be POURING and not BORING.” 😛 😀 ;).. BTW! thanks for writing Such an Amazing Article! Keep it up the good Work 😉
Keep updating and Rocking 😛
-Mosam
Mosam, I enjoyed reading the points you mentioned. Thanks for your feedback, glad you liked it. 🙂
Hey Jignesh,
I must say an “AWESOME PIECE OF WORK”..!! You know the best part of your article is that each and everything you have mentioned is firstly implied onto your blog. This is the sign of a perfect blogger. I guess I am going to improve my blog to a greater extent. Surely I am going to “BOOKMARK” this article.
Thank you so much for sharing this..!!
Stay updated like this..!! Indeed a great work..!! 🙂 😛
Stay rocking…!!
Regards
Charmie
Welcome Charmie, thanks for your huge appreciation, you made my day! In fact, this is just a small list based on what I knew, and I might be missing so many other things, but everybody learns by experience.
Glad you liked this. Keep up great work on your blog too.
Hello Jignesh Rathod,
Excellent post! This is what i called the complete list which we must avoid and make a successful blog. I guess i have some mistake in the above listed ones. But i will make sure of it from now.
Thanks
Sarvesh, glad you find it helpful. Good luck with your blog, I am sure you will rock! Thanks for reading. 🙂
Hi there! I’m at work surfing around your blog from my new apple iphone! Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the superb work!
Hmm it seems like your website ate my first comment (it was super long) so
I guess I’ll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog.
I too am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any tips and hints for inexperienced blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
thanks for this jignesh, when i first started, i also found it hard. Its hard to focus with all social networks and etc on your work too
Awesome post. I agree with a lot of what you said. I do, however, like popups. They are annoying but their great for list building and growing your subscriber base. I take the good with the bad when it comes to popups. Thanks for sharing your post with us. I’m glad to have found it on Bizsugar.com. I hope to see more of your content here. 🙂
Ti
Ti, thanks for your feedback. Many people have disagreed with me on popups: and I have to agree with them after re-thinking! Popups are great way to draw reader’s attention to something important. Thank you for reading.
Excellent blog post! I do think that your blog should be unique but I think sometimes people don’t visit it if it’s not like everyone else’s. 🙂 I’m not using wordpress so my blog format is different and I do think people shy away because it’s not a wordpress blog. Just my two cents.
Maketta, thanks for reading and sharing your point, I agree with you. People look down on other blog formats than WordPress: WordPress rules still it has its own cons. I visited your blog and looks good.
Great article.
top seo picks
I have been reading this blog to get a superior whilst. Keep up the brilliant job you are doing here.
Hi there, Thank you for this awesome article, i’ve learned many things by reading this post, really you’ve changed my mind !
Appreciated post !! Keep posting !
Bishnu, glad you liked, thank you for reading.
I respect your piece of work, thankyou for all the interesting content .
these 23 things are the best that everyone should follow
the maini hate is some blogs are not intersting even they are not unique anyway great post..
Rahul, thank you for reading and your feedback.
I just hate the website with bad navigation and bad user interface..!!1
Nice tips bro, thanks for sharing
Victor, thank you for reading and feedback.
Great Great Great Post. I have seen posts explaining how you can make you Blog good,blah blah. But this is the first time i read what people might hate about your Blog. Great !!
Abhishek, glad you liked it. Thank you for reading and your feedback!
Wow…great job Jignesh sir, seems u have shared all your experience by writing this unique post, I completely agree to your all 23 mistakes usually done by most of the bloggers, i experienced many mistakes which i was making before reading this post, thanx for sharing these valuable tips.
Akhil, glad to meet you, you are welcome! Thank you for your feedback. We make mistake and correct it: Learning never stops. Keep doing great work on your blog too, I will take time to surely read your interesting posts. Keep in touch!
Hey Jignesh,
I sure would hope that there aren’t too many bloggers out there today that are doing all of this. That would be horrible wouldn’t it!
I can’t fault new bloggers but I admire those that are willing to learn and grow. Take constructive criticism because we all were there once ourselves and needed this advice.
I don’t have just one of these pet peeves that sticks out more then the other but I really do hate it when their social sharing buttons aren’t set up properly. Of course obviously everything else was in place in order for me to read, comment and want to share their content. It’s when I am finished and get ready that I become so very sad that they’re losing out on this because I won’t share it if it’s not set up properly.
Great points you made here Jignesh and I sure hope everyone will take notice. We definitely want success with our blogs and if they’re doing any of these then that’s not going to be possible.
~Adrienne
Adrienne,
I am so glad to have you on my blog. Thanks for coming and commenting!
You are truly inspiring when it comes to helping and encouraging others.
I agree with your point that social sharing has become very important now a days, and all blogs must have it.
Hey Jignesh,
Great post, this is for sure going to help every blogger and content writer to improve their skills. A must read!!!
Payal, glad to see you here, a pleasant surprise for me! Thanks for the praise, though I might have missed so many things here.
Hello my friend! I want to say that this post is amazing, nice written and include almost all important infos. I would like to see more posts like this .
Well according to your hate list, seems like I have to do a lot of optimization of my page. Thanks for helping the Bloggers to manage their blogs.
I like your post.
Rudraksh Pathak
Rudraksh, glad you liked this. In fact I love your blog! Keep doing great things on TekDig. Thank you for commenting.
Wow! after reading this I now have to change a few things on my blog.
Karan, thank you for reading.
Howdy would you mind letting me know which webhost you’re using? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 different browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most.
Can you suggest a good hosting provider at a reasonable price?
Kudos, I appreciate it!
Hi there,
Do you still update the blog of yours?
I’ve discovered 24 spelling errors.
Yours,
Marie
I have fun with, lead to I found just what I was having a look for.
You’ve ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye
I just want to mention I am just all new to blogging and site-building and absolutely liked you’re web page. Very likely I’m going to bookmark your blog post . You absolutely have terrific writings. Kudos for revealing your web-site.
you will have an awesome weblog right here! would you like to make some invite posts on my blog?
I just want to say I am all new to blogging and definitely loved your page. Very likely I’m likely to bookmark your website . You amazingly have good articles and reviews. Thank you for revealing your web page.
I blog quite often and I truly appreciate your information.
Your article has truly peaked my interest. I will book mark your blog and keep checking for
new information about once per week. I subscribed
to your Feed as well.
Sharing Examples in post and good writing skills are the most important part of god blog. Being a blogger I admit my mistake that I also don’t share examples in my post. From today I will also share some examples which can help a reader to understand the post completely.
Amit, I wish you all the best with your blog, keep working on it. Thank you for reading and commenting.
Hi, Jignesh,
I must say very effective, useful, helpful and impressive. All 23 tips are great indeed. And, they have their own importance. It is showing your hard work behind it. Keep doing hard work and keep growing. Thank You for sharing such a great article. 🙂
Kumar Chandan, thank you for reading. Keep doing great with your blog too. Thanks for feedback!
Thank you for appreciating me. 🙂
Nice post. Really helpful
I was just to add the Facebook like pop up for my blog.
Do you think I must add it ?
really confused. 🙁
Pritam, I suggest you to go ahead and add the popup.
Many visitors disagreed with this view, if you read some of previous comments! I should have mentioned that irrelevant and multiple popups should be avoided.
As I said, a popup is a great way to draw reader’s attention to something important. If you believe the popup will anyhow be useful to visitors (and you), go ahead and add it! Thank you for reading and comment.
Let me know finally what you decided, I would love to check it out on your blog!
Hello Sir,
very helpful information. This post is help me a lot for make my site. Superb post. Please share more thought’s of you regarding IT.
Regards
AB Vyas
Amit, thank you for reading and your feedback! Let me know when you start your website. Let me know if you need any help or assistance.
Nice post. I learn something new and challenging on sites I stumbleupon everyday. It will always be interesting to read content from other writers and use a little something from other sites.
I truly love your blog.. Pleasant colors & theme. Did you develop this amazing site yourself? Please reply back as I’m looking to create my own personal website and want to know where you got this from or exactly what the theme is named. Cheers!
Always Content is king no other matters.. Discussing with your audience is a great method because you will get more comments and you need to reply each and every comment because then you will make your blog popular and peoples comes your blog again and again.
Really Good tips.
Nick, thank you for your feedback and thanks for reading! 🙂
Very good post! We will be linking to this particularly great article on our website. Keep up the great writing.
Very good blog post. I certainly appreciate this website. Continue the good work!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I truly appreciate
your efforts and I will be waiting for your further write ups
thanks once again.
Eva, glad you liked it. Thank you for reading and your feedback. 🙂
I could not resist commenting. Well written!
Good post. I definitely love this site. Keep writing!
I enjoy the efforts you have put in this, thanks for all the great posts .
Valuable info. Fortunate me I found your website accidentally, and I’m surprised why this accident didn’t took place earlier! I bookmarked it.