This is a guest post by Dinesh who blogs at DailyBlogMoney . If you would like to write for ShoutMeLoud, check our guest posting guidelines.
If you are a newbie in blogging then you would be so interested in experimenting with your blog every day. Checking earnings, traffic, comments and back links whenever possible in a day will be a excitement. Still, you will not have idea whether you are doing things correctly or your blog is going in correct direction. I’m sharing few simple mistakes most of us do without knowing the impact
These are just my personal thoughts and ‘First impression’ when I visit view blogs and websites. I’m not going to tell how to start or run a blog, but these are the points I notice immediately when I visit a new blog.
1) Big Header and Title
Sometimes it fills the half of the browser, I’m sure it will irritate your visitor who is coming via search engines and looking for particular content. You will not realize this issue in your computer when it’s set to higher resolution, but not all visitors have this higher resolution screen size. Set your screen size to 1024 x 768 and see how your blog appear.
2) Showing Low stats
Really I don’t understand the purpose of this. I can see some blogs showing ‘Feed burner readers – 3’, ‘Twitter followers – 9’, ‘Facebook fans – 12’, ‘Currently online users – 1 (Yeah, it’s me only)’ and some traffic reports with less than 20 visitors daily. Do you think these stats will impress your visitors?
In my personal opinion, these all will impact your blog reputation for new visitors negatively. I don’t ask you to lie, but don’t publish these low stats on your blog.
3) Writing Reviews and Breaking News
I want to ask a question, are you getting search engine traffic to your reviews and breaking news posts?, such as ‘iPad 2 review’, ‘Firefox 4 released’. I don’t think so. There are official sites and famous high PR blogs out there to cover them; it’s very difficult to compete with theme to get in to Google’s first page when your blog is new.
Recently there was a post about Firefox 4 released at Shoutmeloud, I’m not against it. Because this blog is having around 12000 RSS readers, so for them it will be surprise news
4) Too much ads in one area
Internet users are very smart now; they know the difference between ad and your links. They don’t click ads accidently now. If you want them to click your ads, then give them a chance with quality and less ads. By adding too many (2 or 3) ads in same screen will confuse and irritate them.
5) Tag Clouds, Categories, and Archives.
Your rotating Tag Clouds in sidebar looks good, but is it useful? Do you think someone will click on these rotating tags or categories? I doubt. You can monitor the performance in Google Analytics or other traffic monitoring tools.
Very rarely visitors will be visiting your tag, category and even old posts listed under archive pages. Adding them to your new blog may increase the loading time and waste of site space too.
6) Social Network and Book Marking Icons
Ask yourself few question about this, Am I really getting traffic from these social networking sites?, How many of my visitors are using these icons on each page?, Why other famous blogs like Problogger.net, johnchow.com or even techcrunch.com is not having all icons as mine?
Read: Social bookmarking icons: How much is enough?
If you can find the answer, then definitely you will remove most of the icons. Why you want to show ‘0 tweets’, ‘1 facebook shares’ in most of the posts?
The visitors coming via search engines very rarely tweet or share your posts, only direct and regular users use these icons. For tech blogs these icons do not work well, but for blogging, social media, fun videos and pictures blogs will utilize these social bookmarking icons well.
It’s your turn now; if you think above points are reasonable then you can correct few mistakes on your new blog.
Finally, we all want to create a better and reader friendly blog which can generate good traffic and income too. Avoiding these small mistakes at the beginning can start your blogging journey easily.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes I agree with you,I too a tech blogger and get my 95 % traffic from search engine.social bookmarking is waste of time
Rahul, Thanks for the comment and sharing the similar experience for Tech blogs.
Good points, Dinesh. That’s why I do not have tweets and all the other social bookmarking icons on my blog.
It depends on your blog niche and traffic source.
Thanks for your comment.
hey Dinesh – That’s a very nice list of must not do you’ve put down here.. never thought about the header & social bookmarking .. need to really think about these aspects.
Great, something made you to think. Good luck.
Thanks Dinesh for sharing the second point of showing low stats on blog as you said i have also added a low stats feedburner and traffic rank widgets if this really impacts on the visitors impression then i am removing it.
Thank again
WR
Bharath
That could be a good decision.
You add them again once your blog is getting good traffic and stats, may be like more than 500 RRS readers, 50 users online at a time and something like these.
That will surprise your readers and other bloggers too, I hope….
Great Advice ,Thanks for sharing Dinesh
i m not so sure that social marketing is a waste of time…although i get only 7-10 percent of my visitors from facebook etc. (50-60 odd daily) but i feel that it is converting into direct traffic for my blog ….although i maybe wrong
other points nicely covered…..will ponder over removing my tag cloud or not
In your case, Facebook is worth to keep and promote. I don’t say other social networking or bookmarking sites are waste of time.
Just verify the correct and working source for your blog and use them.
Good luck
Hey Dinesh, great topic. I must agree with you that the use of tag clouds are a waste of time even for the high traffic blogs in my opinion, not too sure about the categories and archives however. I’ve also noted that most blogs these days are riddled with ads even on page load anyway. This post for example you get the header and then at least 10 ad links and banners I’ve counted before even scrolling down to find content! If you’re as popular as SML what does it matter, but as a newbie as you rightly mentioned it’s a small mistake with a big price I guess.
Thanks for the great comment Fabrizio.
I suggested these points for new blogs and websites, once you became famous as SML then you can start experimenting and give importance to your advertisers by placing ads above the fold.
Always better to keep your blog clean and reader friendly initially to attract visitors and search engine robots.
Really Straight Six By Dinesh!!!
Nice and practical Post.
So I’m playing IPLT20 Cricket this time with straight Six
Primarily, Header and title is one of the primary key to avoid because it could be irritate when its in large in size
Dear I like your point regarding new tech updates, posting news updates on newly created blogs is just waste of time and space.
your points are really true! , great post dude.
AFTER all what user needs that matter search engine send user to us such that user’s query is solved so no use of social bookmarking.. very well said