This article covers nine of the most silly, dumb and stupid mistakes that so many bloggers make on a frighteningly reoccurring basis. It covers mistakes that are born out of ignorance or misinformation, to mistakes that are the result of belief. Such as believing that generalizing instead of being concise is an acceptable thing to do. Believing it is acceptable is the mistake. Here are nine mistakes that bloggers make, in no particular order.

 

1 – Trying to sell on your blog post

 

This is a common mistake that is made by many corporate sponsored blogs. People are aware of the SEO benefits of blogs, and are aware that people will read them. This makes companies feel that if they advertise and promote themselves on their blog that it is a little like free advertising–it isn’t. Advertising and promoting yourself or your business on your blog is not going to get you any sales. It is going to lose your readers (nothing more).

 

2 – Not making your blog post scannable

 

People need to be able to scan/skim read/speed read your blog post. People do not look at every word on blogs because quite often the information is not concise enough. So people will skim read your blog post in order to find the snippets of information they desire. If you do not make your blog post easy to skim read–then people will miss more of it than if you were to make it easily skimmable/scannable. It may seem wrong to cut your paragraph sizes down and to put headings in your work, but it is all a part of blogging. You are going to have to get used to it if you want people to read your blog posts.

 

3 – Unappealing titles

 

So many people spend hours creating and crafting the most perfect blog post, only to mess it up when it comes to the title part. The title of each blog post is the banner under which your blog resides. It is the biggest advert for your blog post. It needs to be able to sum up and sell the content of your blog post with equal enthusiasm. To make things harder–it also has to be appealing enough to peak a person’s interest or curiosity. You need to be able to capture the attention of people who may not normally read a blog such as yours. Spend a lot of time on your title.

 

4 – Posting too long

 

This is not a bad thing in-and-of itself. Having a long blog post is a fine thing, but it may be an indication that you need to create a series of posts, or a “two-parter” (to quote Star Trek fans). A long blog post is harder to skim read. This is because skim reading tends to get faster as it gets nearer the end. The only paragraph that is really paid attention to at the end of the blog post is the last paragraph. If you find that you have very long post then consider breaking it into two parts. You can even do the old TV trick of, “and next week on…”

 

5 – Generalizing and not giving specifics

 

This is not a mistake in-and-of itself, because it is just a matter of being lazy. The mistake comes in believing that this is an acceptable thing to do.

 

6 – Improper introduction

 

The introduction to a blog post needs to be a very detailed but very concise overview and run down of the blog is all about, because most readers are not going to get past this paragraph. They are going to need to know exactly what is contained within your blog. They will need be told a very condensed version of your blog so that if there is a piece that they want then they will know that they will find it within your blog. It is true that people will scan read the rest of your blog, but they are simply looking for a keyword or two that will indicate that there is something they desire held within. A fluffy or empty introduction is going to push the reader straight into “scan” mode, which is the beginning of their time with your blog.

 

7 – Not using images

 

Why are more people not using images? You do not need to turn your post into some sort of comic book. It will not lessen the effect of your writing if there are pictures, nor will you attract a less educated reader. There are no real downsides to having pictures on your blog; therefore, it is a mistake not to have them.

 

8 – Inserting unnatural links

 

This is a cheap marketing/black hat SEO trick and it is really, really dumb. A person will write a blog post about a subject and then add in link to a site that has nothing to do with the post. Not only is it dumb because it cheapens the blog, it is also dumb the link going from the blog is almost worthless. A link will only gain search engine support if it goes from one related site to another. If the text on one page is related in some way to the text on the landing page then the link will be supported by the search engine. If the link is unrelated and therefore unnatural between the sites then it is useless. It may turn up on a back link-checking tool, but it will elevate nobody up the search engine results pages.

 

9 – Re Writing

 

Copyscape and Ithenticate have given with one hand and have taken with the other. They have made it so that people can check to see if work has been copied. This means that people are able to purchase text online with less of a threat of it being already published. It has however created the biggest wave of re-writes in history. Content is not being recycled and pushed into mediocrity like never before. People seem to think that if they rewrite other peoples work that it counts as original if it passes copyscape/ithenticate. This is not true, and the worst thing is that people can Google one search term and find the same text repeatedly, each time having it re-chewed and re-hashed just so it will pass copyscape.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://jessefogarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Korah.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Korah Morrison is a specialist of context advertising, social marketing and copywriter on EssayWritingServices.com and She writes articles on various topics that deal with internet marketing, web design, branding and business promotion in the internet. [/author_info] [/author]