10 Business Blogging Mistakes to Avoid Making


business blogging

Business blogging is not the same as personal blogging. In a business blog, all your actions must be precise; they should have a goal in mind.

Whether you have a product or service to sell, or if you are an affiliate marketer, there are important things that you have to consider for every release, and for how you operate your blog in general.

Today, I will show you 10 business blogging mistakes to avoid making. These are things I have learned from my own experience—the hard way. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to create a standard format for your articles, and correct mistakes you have done in the past.

Here is the outline of the mistakes:

  • Not understanding your audience
  • Not understanding your audience
  • Not placing keywords correctly
  • Not building backlinks
  • Not doing internal linking
  • Not publishing high-quality content
  • Not publishing user-friendly posts
  • Not tracking Google metrics
  • Not giving value to the user
  • Not publishing consistently

Let’s dive in…

1. Not understanding your audience

The very first mistake that you could commit in business blogging is publishing posts that have no target audience. It is not uncommon for bloggers to just publish articles which they think are interesting, not knowing that it has nothing to do with their audience.

You have to know who your target market is, and what their interests are. If you are selling drones, then you have to publish only things that are important to drone enthusiasts. Do not publish things about how to sell drones because your target market is comprised of hobbyists, not sellers.  

2. Not using the right keywords

Your blog is your gateway to traffic. You can get free traffic from it provided that you use the right keywords.

Keywords are the search phrases that people type in search engines. Whenever you publish a blog post, you have to write articles around a keyword that has a high search volume.

To find out what keywords to write, you can use tools like:

  • Google Trends
  • Semrush
  • AHREFS

If you write about keywords that have no volume, there will still be people who may be interested, but this number is so small. Write about topics in your industry that people are looking for.

3. Not placing keywords correctly

The third in my list of business blogging mistakes to avoid not placing keywords correctly. Once you have selected your keywords, you must use them in the right spots.

This is going to help Google index your blog properly and show it to users at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The right keyword placements are:

  • Headline
  • Start of body text
  • Middle of body text
  • One sub-heading

These places make search engines understand the content of your blog post. This method is also great for users who just skim through content. If they see the keyword in the headline and sub-heading, they are likely to stay.

4. Not building backlinks

A backlink is a link from another website that points to yours. In Google’s eyes, it is a vote of confidence. you must build backlinks if you want your site to have a good reputation.

Here are the ways you can build backlinks:

  • Publish a guest post
  • Swap links with other bloggers in your industry
  • Get someone to review your product
  • Offer affiliate sales to marketers
  • Get published in press releases
  • Release posts on social media and forums

Whatever you do, do not buy backlinks. Google has an algorithm that can calculate if your backlinks are natural or not. If Google finds out that your backlinks are suspicious, your website will be penalized.



5. Not doing internal linking

Internal linking matters as much as backlinks do. An internal link is a link that comes from one of your pages that leads to another of your web pages.

Internal linking helps Google understand the relationship between your web pages. From a user standpoint, it allows a user to explore your site without difficulties.

In every blog you post, there have to be internal links in the body of the text. At the end of your post, you can also have a “Suggested Reading” section.

Internal linking makes a user stay on your site. The longer they stay, the better it is for your SEO and credibility.

6. Not publishing high-quality content

High-quality content means that your article is useful. It must be free from glaring errors. Simple grammatical mistakes and misspellings are forgivable.

High-quality content also means that your article is better than what is already out there. You have to use the skyscraper technique to do this.

Here is how it works:

  • Decide on a keyword
  • Search Google for that keyword
  • Read the first three to five articles found in the SERPs
  • Write better content than them

Sometimes, longer is better. What matters, really, is that your article must have better information than the ones that are already on top. This takes a lot of time to write, so I suggest that you hire an affordable freelance writer you can depend on.

7. Not publishing user-friendly posts

What is a user-friendly post?

It is a kind of post that is easy to the eyes. For one, do not write in huge chunks of texts. It is difficult to read. Keep your sentence short, and also keep your paragraphs short.

Also, use sub-headings—lots of them. You must also use bullet points where possible. This technique makes the article easy to skim and read through, as compared with long, drawn-out paragraphs.

I also strongly suggest that you use images or videos where you could. Images help in retention. Use your brand in these images so people will remember you.

8. Not tracking Google metrics

If you have a blog, you must set up Google Search Console (GSC) and integrate it with your website. It is a free tool from Google that tracks your traffic. But it does more than that.

Here are some more examples of the metrics you can measure:

  • Site errors
  • Total clicks
  • Total impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position

As a blogger, these metrics are important, so you know how your website is performing. GSC will also tell you the metrics per page. If you know how your pages are performing, you will know how to update them and which ones to prioritize for editing.

9. Not giving value to the user

What is value?

Many bloggers just rant on their websites. That is fine, provided that the blog is a personal one. In business blogging, there are two possible mistakes here.

These are:

  • Forcing a sale
  • Not helping out

If you publish a business blog, the last thing you must do is to do hard-core selling. What you have to focus on is providing information that will help users. For example, let us say that you are selling coffee mugs. In this case, you must write about business relationships.

These articles help people, and then they will decide if they want to buy from you.

10. Not publishing consistently 

The last one on my list is consistency. Your subscribers will trust you more if you publish on schedule. The same thing happens with Google. If you have a regular publication strategy, Google and the other search engines will crawl your content more.

Why?

Because they know that you have more content than what you did previously, and the robots will certainly want to index what you have.  

Summary: business blogging mistakes to avoid

Your blog is your gateway to traffic and credibility. These are the two most important things that you have to think about whenever you publish a post.

For traffic, you have to focus on SEO and the uniqueness of your articles. For sales, it is your credibility that matters. You have to publish blog posts that are relevant and valuable to your target users.

What this means is that you have to spend some time working on your blog, and ensure that the quality of it serves both of these goals.   



John Kilmerstone

I'm an Aussie living in Japan who enjoys traveling, photography, and blogging. Please visit this website and explore the wonderful world of blogging. Discover how to turn your passions and pastimes into an online business.

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