I first set up WordPress on my website 4 years ago. Since then it has been a long journey trying to post once a week whilst learning all I can about web publishing.
Things haven’t always gone smoothly. So, for the record, here are some of my greatest gaffes:
1. Not creating the whole site in WordPress
When I first started robcubbon.com I had my portfolio site, created in Dreamweaver, with a WordPress blog tacked onto it as an afterthought.
It’s very difficult to create a consistent look when the site is produced in two different ways. It is much more simple to have a whole site governed by the same CMS (Content Management System).
2. Writing blog posts badly
At first, I treated my blog like a collection of self-contained essays; once I’d written on a subject I’d never return to it.
Don’t think a blog is like a book, a newspaper or a newsletter. It is none of these things – it’s a blog. And there isn’t another writing discipline quite like it.
It’s time-based with your latest post given pride of place when visitors arrive. New visitors may not know about posts written a year ago and if more information becomes available it is reasonable to re-cover old ground.
3. Poorly thought out newsletter sign up page
I recently offered an ebook for download as an incentive to join a mailing list. Many successful bloggers speak in glowing terms of the benefits of newsletters and usually wish that they had started one sooner.
In order to do this I chose MailChimp, an online service that sets up and maintain an email list, provide easily customisable email templates, sends mail and provides subscribe forms, etc.
I waited a few months before my list grew to about 500 people and emailed my first newsletter called “How can I help you?” which thanked my subscribers, contained a few links to recent posts and asked for any specific subject people wanted covered in the blog.
Feedback and click throughs were encouraging but a few days later I was abruptly informed by MailChimp that my account had been suspended. It was difficult to find out why but it seems that 2% of recipients unsubscribed following the mailing and 3 people had complained that the message was unsolicited.
According to MailChimp, this put me in the category of a dirty, rotten spammer!
It seems that although 500 people had entered their email address in order to download the ebook, indeed, subscribers had then responded to a confirmation e-mail (a “double opt-in”), 3 of these 500 had seemingly forgotten they had done this.
Lesson learned: make it clear to subscribers that they will receive a newsletter (which they can unsubscribe from at anytime) on the sign up page. I now use VerticalResponse – they are cheaper, simpler to use and easier to work with than MailChimp.
4. Deleting rude messages
Just as in life you will always meet unpleasant people; if you blog you will receive some unpleasant comments. Believe me, you can spend hours researching and writing about a subject you know a lot about and someone (always someone who doesn’t leave an email address or website of their own!) will latch onto one heavy-handed phrase and use it to prove to the world their mastery on the subject.
If this happens you are well in your rights to delete the comment and even straighten out the ill-conceived prose, just in case it confuses any other eager idiots out there. But, I’m afraid, everyone loves controversy and you can use these keyboard terrorists to your advantage. Simply edit out the swear words and politely explain the blindingly obvious. Nothing upsets rude people more than honesty and decency, and this may lead to an entertaining discussion.
5. Not using keyword research
While it’s always a good idea to use keyword research for the main keywords on your site, it’s also advisable to research the titles of your blog posts. For example, I wrote nine articles in the same series entitled How to Market Yourself. I thought this was a great title and would drive hordes of people wanting to know how to publicise themselves and their companies on the web.
If only I had used Google’s Keyword Research Tool to see that only a few people were searching for “marketing yourself” or even “marketing myself”, I would have seen exactly what a stupid title this was. “Small business marketing” would have attracted 10 times more traffic.
A closer look at your blog post titles is always a good idea, after all the title is usually what entices someone to visit your site. I recently wrote My idiot’s guide to keyword research, thinking it would attract attention in the same way as the successful “Dummies” guides. However, disappointing traffic from social media caused me to conclude that people aren’t interested in what “idiots” or “dummies” say – they’re more interested in “expert” advice!
Conclusion
So there are my 5 best boo-boos. I hope this may have helped some of you. Can you think of any mistakes you’ve made whilst blogging?
Good advice Rob. When I eventually get around to blogging, I’ll definitely try not to make these or similar errors.
Rob,
You touched on every challenge I have as a blogger, but #3 and #5 are the most troublesome.
One of my newsletters has been around for 7 years, and it seems that in recent years a few of the newer subscribers completely forget that they’ve opted in, and therefore report an issue as spam. Even though I’m careful to start the title with the name of the newsletter rather than just specific tip for that issue, a few hit that spam button rather than just unsubscribe.
Fortunately, maybe because I use Aweber, I haven’t been banned. I urge my readers at the start of the newsletter to unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive it. Apparently some of the subscribers don’t even understand the difference between unsubscribing and marking me as spam. Grr-r-r-r!
My other challenge is creating blog titles that will draw readers based on keyword research. Do you create your titles based on Google Keyword Tool or revise them later based on GKT before you publish them?
Thanks for sharing these mistakes. I see them as lessons, and assure you that you are not alone.
Well said Rob! You honestly named the mistakes we all make when starting out. One I’d add to the mix is not even posting on a regular basis. Writing is work and time has to be allotted in the schedule or it never gets done. One tip I give people is to take advantage of the scheduling feature in WordPress and write your posts when you think of them.
Hi Mark, thanks, looking forward to you taking the plunge!
Hi again Flora, it’s good to know that others have the same challenges as me. I agree, if people see an easy way to complain about spam they vent their pent up anger against all the rubbish they’ve been sent in the past and you get to carry the can! If you’re getting that after 7 years, it seems fair that I get it now that I’m just starting out.
Yes, I revise titles based on GKT before I publish them. It also helps just to give you ideas for blog posts. Just put a few of your niche keywords in there, see what comes up and see if you can think of a new posts containing the words with the most searches!
Winnie, you’re right about writing regularly. I have made the mistake of leaving the blog for a few weeks when very busy with work. I would love to have 3 or 4 posts saved as drafts up my sleeve but I never get round to doing them. What I do is have a few half finished ones and post ideas in text files on my hard drive!
6. Using the wrong word
Your ‘hoards’ should be ‘hordes’.
Cheers 🙂
I definitely ave been through the same journey you have been on (minus the mail subscriber list issue). All of your tips are very helpful including the one I haven’t tried yet, key word searching the titles. Since my blog is a multi-author blog I really have to put extra effort into optimizing the SEO but I think its a little easier being that I have a deep creative pool to pull from attracting a very diverse audience from every corner of the web with every new post that goes up. Thanks for sharing this post. Very useful information.
6. Thinking someone cares
Rob – Great post. I think all of us who have been using WordPress for blogging and/or “traditional” sites can list a lot of these same mistakes and then some.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but without making mistakes you just can not move forward.
Email services have made the SPAM button most easily accessible than the Unsubscribe link that we provide in Newsletter. We don’t wish to loose readers, this might be the reason, I find many newsletter that provide unsubscribe option at the end somewhere in dim color with very small font size.
As Flora rightly pointed out, people do not really understand the difference between Unsubscribe and Spam.
As a solution, how about placing a button or emphasized link calling ‘Cancel Receiving Newsletter’ at the top of newsletter? Hope this will reduce the risk of getting Spammed!
good post
thanks for such information.
Hi Rob,
Great advice. I’ve made most of these mistakes too.
I think it’s all part of being a blogger. You make mistakes, learn from them and become a better blogger.
At least I hope that’s how it works. 🙂
Thank you, andy, I have corrected that.
Hello Jermaine, multi-authoring is something I haven’t tried yet. But, you’re right, a wide range of articles pulls in a diverse crowd and that’s a very good thing.
steven you definitely belong to number 4.
Hello Char, nice to have you comment here again. Yes, I wonder if I do this article again in two year’s time what mistakes I’ll be writing about!
Suresh very good point about making an unsubscribe button very big. People should really know that if someone is giving you an option to say it’s spam that it’s been done the right way and therefore probably isn’t spam! Thank you.
Hello Jazz, yes, lets hope we all keep improving!
I liked this and bookmarked it.
Thanks for posting this article. I learnt a lot from it and realise I need to do a lot more to get my blog noticed. I hadn’t realised how important the blog titles can be. I hadn’t realised how important keywords were when blogging.
Mina
Hi Rob,
Thanks for this really awesome post. I’m about five months into my blog and still learning new things everyday. I’ve also been reading about the importance of subscriber lists and might take your lead and offer an ebook or something. If you have the time stop on over to mine I would greatly appreciate any feedback to improve.
Sincerely,
Rich (aka DisplacedGuy)
Good stuff, though I think number 1 can be augmented to allowing a phpbb setup if you like, so long as you restyle stuff there to match the format of your wordpress site.
Hello Rosanne, glad you liked it.
Hello Mina, there’s 101 things to think about while blogging but content is the most important thing.
Hello Rich, thanks a lot. I had a quick look over at your website and you may find it useful to add proper words to your URLs/permalinks (sometimes called prettifying) – instead of www dot yoursite dot com/p?20 having them as www dot yoursite dot com/post-title, if you see what I mean. http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks – This might give you a little traffic boost.
Hello Chris, no plans to add a forum on here at the moment – maybe one day!
I think another mistake, which I hope I never make, is not being authentic. Write what you believe and not about the topic du jour because you think you’ll get rewarded by Google. Bring passion to your writing.
Hello Rob and Everyone else,
I have a few questions for you.
1. Which of these two sites is more efficient to use for a blog: WordPress and Google?
2. How do you use the Google Keyword Tool?
3. How can someone have his/her blog on top of the search engines?
4. How can someone find his/her blog using a search engine? I can’t find mine using any search engine.
5. Why can’t I see my blog when I type its URL. I am using Google. I have to send the link to people
6. Do you have knowledge in Google Adwords. Can you share some ideas?
7. Do you have knowledge in e-mail marketing?How do you use it without having people thought you are spamming ? Sending out newsletter is a form of e-mail marketing. If you are an affiliate for example you can send offers directly to your friends, etc. How do you do that effectively?
8.. Do you have knowledge in affiliate marketing?
What do you think of the affiliate marketing program of Clickbank for example?
9.. Have you heard about Speedlings, a website that can create websites for you and market it using blogs, videos, GKT, etc?
Hello Jeannette, I completely agree. Write about your passion, write what you believe in but write what other people want to read and there’s no harm in tweaking the title in order for people to find it.
Hello Yves, you will find it more beneficial to ask these questions separately in places (forums, for example) relavent to them. This way your questions will have a more targeted audience and, therefore, better answers. You’re obviously doing something really basically wrong with your site if you’re not coming up in Google searches for the site’s name. Follow my SEO for WordPress article to sort this out – maybe a sitemap is something you need. And you didn’t even put a link to it here so you’re obviously not in the habit of leaving links to it! More on keyword research here.
Rob,
These are good lessons to be learned by novice bloggers like myself. Thanks for sharing your experiences so others can learn from them.
Best,
Chris
As a web designer / seo I agree with all of your statements but number 1. It’s actually reletively easy to connect a static page layout with a wordpress cms.
It does take a certain amount of knowledge to be able to do it though Static pages can be equally useful to seo as a cms can be.
I found that it was a mistake not to use pictures. There are sites available where you can use them free. Often you just have to put a keyword and many fill your screen.
Makes the site looks much more professional and people comment on them.
Hello Christian, thank you, I hope you found this post to be useful.
Hello Adrian, sorry I have changed your name because I don’t allow keywords. Do you mean include a static page as a new page template in your WordPress theme and assign it to a page? That indeed is a very easy way of doing it but, for me, that would be doing everything in WordPress. What I mean was creating pages outside of WordPress and then trying to keep them consistent with the blog and create and sitemap of everything. It’s possible, though. 🙂 Thanks for your comment.
Hello Kathy, that’s a very good point. I have always put images in almost every one of my posts. Very important to name them and give them alt text so that you get traffic from Google image searches.
Great synopsis Rob! So helpful to learn from others mistakes and so great that you are sharing these tips.
I have just bought Market Samurai which is a great help for a newbie like me to work on keywords.
Kind regards
Eva
Thank you, Eva, we all keep learning.
When I launched my blog, I didn’t have any real expectation. My lessons
(1) It takes awhile to find out what readers want to read. You just have to keep trying different things and get their feedback.
(2) How amazingly time consuming blogging and social networking can be – and it’s all interconnected. While there is alot about writing a post in 20 minutes, it always takes me a few hours.
(3) How hard it is to get tangible, actionable advice on how to write a blog and build an audience. Plus, how much conflicting advice is out there. I have bloggers tell me that going to 5 posts per week is what exploded their traffic and I’ve bloggers tell me that going from 5 short posts per week to one lengthy post tripled their traffic. Some bloggers swear that only guest blogging helped build traffic. Some say short posts worked for them, some say overly long posts work.
Hello Cynthia, it’s amazing how we have similar experiences with blogging. I really think I’ve got a better idea of what to write about now. I used to write long tutorials about design which I thought were really good … but nobody else did!
Time-wise, I’m the same as you, it takes me a long while to write a good post. The social media bit I try to do really quickly but it can be very distracting.
How often to blog? I always try to do one post a week and publish it in the beginning of the week. Consistency and regularity is key. 5 posts per week? That’s for professional bloggers. If you come into the game doing that you’ll have dried up after a few years, I think!
Thanks for your comment.
Hi Rob,
Launching your own blog or website can be very challenging. Its a trial and error thing and it needs effort and patience. No. 2 – Writing blog posts badly. For me, that’s my biggest problem. I am not comfortable writing articles so what i do is i outsource my writing needs. Its not too costly. Well if you want to do the same thing, just outsource it to the one who is capable of doing it. Outsourcing works for me though.
Hello Timothy, interesting that you outsource the writing. I wonder what companies/freelancers you use to do that? I agree that it’s difficult and time-consuming but it does come with practice. All the best and thanks for the comment.
Hi Rob, with outsourcing, you can reduce your overhead expenses. You can find freelancer on a places like Writerlance.com, RentACoder.com. and Scriptlance.com.Simply post your requirements to a job board on any of the sites stated above and wait for the freelancers to reply or to bid on the project. That simple. Just imagine how much money your company will save by hiring a freelancer.
Thanks for sharing those resources, Timothy, at the moment I’m not outsourcing so much but plan to in the future. All the best!
Yes I can think of one major one, the same one you’ve listed in not creating my whole site in wordpress, I created my portfolio website in dreamweaver, the same way you did.. I then came across wordpress and decided, wow, this is nice.. Then proceeded to install wordpress, only to find out that wordpress does not support *.co.za domains, which my website is. The only way around this of course would be to cancel my hosting and find a new host or alternatively just let wordpress host my domain? Or do you have any other suggestions perhaps?
Sam, I’m fairly sure WordPress would work on .co.za or any third level domain. If WordPress doesn’t work it’s definitely down to your host here are a list of good hosts for WordPress.
WordPress only supports .com .net & .org Which to me really seems pretty silly.
Sam, what makes you say that WordPress only supports .com, .net and .org? I can guarantee they support .co.uk – pretty sure that you can use any TLD and your problems here are with your host and not WordPress. If you could give me more details I may be able to help.
As for bad/negative comments…hows the old saying go?
‘no press is bad press’. And at least a negative comment is proof you got under some ones skin and or that they have read your words.
Absolutely, Peter, it’s better to get a reaction than no reaction at all!