Falling into any one of these bad blogging mistakes will ‘put off’ your visitors and they may never return!

1. Not Knowing What Your Blog Is About

When I view your blog, I want to know immediately (that means within seconds) how your blog is going to help ME.

How is it going to help me solve my problems?

The easiest way is to tell me about your blog in your header banner. Add some text in there.

Here are some great examples:

Ana Hoffman, owner of trafficgenerationcafe.com tells you exactly what you are going to get from her site:

“Easy Strategies to Increase Your Website Traffic Today”

It could not be any clearer.

Andy Sernovitz’s site, www.damniwish.com.

Andy says in his header banner…”Unusually Useful Ideas for Smart Marketers”

And it’s true.

Andy’s site is one of my favourite sites. No fluff…he gets straight to the point and 9 times out of ten, the advice is so simple…you wish you’d  thought of it!

Yaro Starak’s site, www.entrepreneurs-journey.com.

Short, succinct text…”Down-to-earth tips and advice for internet entrepreneurs”

You know exactly what you are going to get, when you visit Yaro’s site…right?

So over to you…do your visitors know exactly what your website / blog offers?

Action: Check you have some text in your header banner that tells your visitors exactly what they are going to get now they have arrived!

2. Bad Headlines

We all know how important a good enticing headline is or do we?

First let’s clear up the definition of ‘enticing’.

It means… “Attract or tempt by offering pleasure or advantage.”

So your headline has to tempt me in, by offering pleasure or an advantage.

Now look at these headlines I came across recently:

Love YOU Daily

Sleep or No Sleep?

Seize the day!

Do they entice you to click on them and read more?

No, of course not.

Well they didn’t me!

Your headline is the first thing that a prospective visitor will see and if it doesn’t entice them in…you’ve lost them…perhaps to never to return.

If you want to see some excellent headlines in action, check out the Copyblogger blog.

You could easily ‘steal’ some of theirs and change to accommodate your blog post.

For instance, here’s a headline of one of their most popular posts:

“The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Marketing Efforts”

You want to know what that dangerous threat is, don’t you? Hence you click on the title and read more.

Now let’s use that title and change to accommodate your blog post…

If your blog post is about ‘growing plants’ instead of saying ‘Slugs are eating your plants’ you could say:

“The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Plant Growing Efforts”

Prospective visitors would be curious, right?

Action: Start using enticing headlines…grab your visitors!

3. Making Visitors Login To Comment

This is one I hate. Why do blog owners make me have to login before I can add a comment?

If you want me to comment…make it easy for me.

Action: If your visitors have to login to comment… remove that ‘hurdle’ now!

4. No Social Bookmarking

These days, one way to get your blog posts noticed on the web is via social bookmarking and your visitors love to share great content…so let them. Add social icons above/below and to the side of your content.

There are plenty of plugins available including:

Socialize

Digg Digg

Sharebar

Sociable

Action: Install one of the social bookmkaring plugins mentioned above

5. Using  Spun Content

“Spun Content” = content where a few words, paragraphs have been replaced and trying to make the article unique.

Published “Spun” content used to be fine.

No more.

Google wants high quality, original content.

Action: If you have published ‘spun’ content on your site, don’t worry. Just stop doing it from now on.

6. Just Text / No Paragraphs / No White Space

If you are like me, you find big blocks of text unreadable. But so many bloggers still just display loads of text in one big paragraph and a small font.

(I have ‘blurred’ this image)

Action:  Break up your content into small paragraphs with loads of white space. Plus use sub-headings. Using sub-headings not only makes your post look better…it helps with SEO.

Get my free (no opt-in) SEO Report here: 12 Steps To Boost The SEO Of Your Blog Posts

So there are my 6 action takeaways for you to improve the experience of visiting your blog.

What’s your view?

What entices you to return again and again to a blog?

Please share your views in the comments below.