What I really mean is 5 blogging mistakes that will piss Google off and maybe even your clients.
Previously when I launched my blog and website, I was just happy to be alive. You know the joy of pressing that submit button and being oh-so-LEGIT. Like running screaming and telling everyone, MY BUSINESS IS ALIVE! Because after all, if you don’t have some type of online presence, it’s as if your business doesn’t exist. When you tell someone you have a business, the first thing they ask you for is your website or blog. And when my domain was finally live, I felt like a grown-up business person. I now had a place to show my photography portfolio, showcase my client work, and have a home on the big WEB! Little did I know, I would later become a WordPress theme whore, lose a huge blog because I did not back it up, get spammed, and get my domain purchased by some company who sold it to a limousine company. Yup, that happened, and they even used my name. I will spare giving you a link. You see, I made a gazillion mistakes, and I don’t want you to make them either.
If you feel clueless about blogging decisions and blogging, you are not alone. So let me help you avoid some blogging mistakes. Grab your favorite drink and have a read.
Because pissing Google off, is NEVER a good thing.Grab your favorite drink and have a read.
[bctt tweet=”5 SEO BLOGGING MISTAKES THAT WILL MAKE YOU LOOSE POINTS WITH GOOGLE” username=”feuza”]
#1. Poor website structure. This mistake took me a couple of years to realize. You see, I thought I had everything in place. I had the pages which I felt were important, like: About, Portfolio, Contact, and I had a blog. Once I began studying SEO and content marketing, I saw how SEO was no longer just focused on the technical SEO back-end aspects. And with the rise of mobile, Google, and other search engines want to know if your website is user-friendly and easy to navigate. So does your website/blogsite flow well? Does the text on the header make sense? Are your most important pages listed in the nav bar? Is the most important stuff on the top left? You see, we as humans read from left to right, so you want to change the order of your nav bar if you have not done so. You also want to consider your blogging categories, as some of you have WAY too many. I used to do this too. I would sit down and start blogging, and some cute name, idea or theme would come up and I would just slap on a new category. I was treating my categories like tags. This cluttered my website big time. So do a category clean up if you need to, and ask folks to visit your site and watch them navigate through it. I call this the mother-in-law test: see if they can figure out where to go and what the purpose of your blog or website is.
#2. Not telling people about your blog. This is a funny mistake because you may think you are telling people about your blog since you list your blog URL on all your social media profiles. Since many more users have taken on the web to showcase their awesomeness and talents, we are no longer living in an era of “if you blog, they will come.” Blogging is only half the work, and you still need to actually promote your blog posts on your social media platforms. My friends, I do not mean post it on your Facebook Business page twice and call it a day. You need a strategy, and you need to use social media wisely. One great tool I love for social media scheduling is CoSchedule. I wrote a post about why you should be using it, and you can learn more about Coschedule here. You need to be repurposing those blog posts into smaller posts on social media. So for example, if I wanted to post this on IG, I would take one of these tips, list it and post it tomorrow, and then in two days maybe share another tip, giving them a bite-size piece of the post and leaving them salivating for more. And I also add a call-to-action stating “check out this post for more tips,” and direct them to a link in my profile.
#3. Blogging the wrong type of content. This, in my opinion, is the number 1 mistake to avoid. You can blog five times a week, but if you’re not writing about the right kind of content, then what is the point? Blogging is about quality, not quantity. You need to be a resource for your audience and blog content they actually care about. My biggest blog post ever is over 3,000 words and it is about webinars. You know what I discovered after I did that humongous post? My audience really is not for the most part using webinars to grown their business. Is it a useful post yes but not so much for my ideal audience. I need to create a blog post of content that is doing well already which shows you want, my lovely reader wants more of it. I How do I do that? Well, check analytics for my post popular pieces of content and brainstorm other post ideas related to that content. If you are a photographer, or local business offering a service, then think of the top 3-5 F.A.Q question you get regarding your products and services then do a blog post about each question. If they are asking you they are researching it online and if they are researching it online, don’t you want to be found providing that answer? Be found before your clients even know they need you.
In my current FREE video training, this is covered in video #3. We will go over how to prepare your 2017 blog content so sign up to watch lessons 1, 2 and 3 all about blogging but make sure you catch video #3 about content.
#4. Not doing Image SEO. Images are not seen by search engines, so you need to be doing Image Optimization on your photo files. There are three areas to apply Image SEO, and the most important area is alt text. Make sure you are at least putting some words or sentence in the alt text. If you have multiple images, then the first main image can be what the blog post is about, and others can be what the photos are about. This is also the text that Pinterest grabs when someone pins your images, so this can also help you get found on Pinterest. You can sign up for my 5-day Image SEO course on my freebies page.
#5. Not using the words your clients are using. If you sell services to consumers, you need to speak like the consumer. Most likely you are hanging around peeps in your industry a whole lot, and you automatically start making the industry jargon part of your daily language. The problem is that a potential client is searching in a whole different way online, so in order to be found by them, you need to talk like they talk. For this, you will need to survey your audience, do keyword research, and also police yourself. If you need some help, this post I did goes over an SEO tactic how you can get some keywords for your blog post and see how your audience is searching.
This takes self-discipline. I go through many photographers’ blog posts, and some don’t have the words photo, pictures or photographer in any posts! Then they scratch their heads as to why their photography business is not being found online. So use the clients’ vocabulary in your text and in your Image SEO. And ideally have at least 300 words in your blog post, which I know can be hard but please don’t have just a few lines if you can. Interview your clients and have them do the writing for you.
So which of the 5 blogging mistakes have you been making? If you want to see me speak on these mistakes and show more ways how you can avoid these mistakes, catch my free video training. Click the image below.
Also, there are many factors Google takes into consideration when ranking and if you want to learn some more tips, join my FREE Fuse Lounge where I teach weekly actionable DIY SEO tips.