It’s all very exciting when you start to blog; you set up your WordPress site (or get someone else to do it for you) and think that this will be the saviour of your business, bringing in clients from far and wide.
But then you realise that you have hardly any traffic, no-one is commenting and you wonder whether it was the right thing to do. It’s at this point that most people stop blogging and their WordPress website becomes another tomb in the blogging graveyard.
However, it doesn’t have to get to that point. Here are 5 mistakes you can avoid that will help to boost your numbers and keep up your enthusiasm for your WordPress blog:
1) Using WordPress.com
Most new bloggers will start by setting up a free blog with WordPress.com – this is a bad idea for many reasons: you don’t have control of it, you can’t do much with it and it just doesn’t look professional.
The better option is to have self hosted WordPress; you’ll have a choice of themes and plugins, full control and are far more likely to be picked up by the search engines. Can’t do this yourself? Get in a professional
2) Not thinking of the search
It’s nice to think that you will ‘build it and they will come’ but it just doesn’t happen. It’s important to think of the search engines when constructing the pages of your WordPress site and the titles of your blog posts. Think about the things your potential clients will search, and use those keyphrases in your pages and posts.
3) No call to action
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when writing sales pages and blog posts is a good call to action. If you want people to pick up the phone, then tell them. Want comments on a blog post? Ask for them. Would you like people to Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn your information? Give them a way to do it and request that they do.
A good call to action can make the difference between interaction and tumbleweed!
4) No Social Media plugin
Which leads me nicely into this one!
In this day and age there is no excuse for any blog or website not to have links that help people share their information on Social Media.
WordPress has many ‘sharing’ plugins and if you don’t have one installed (and ask people to use it) then your information just won’t be shared.
When you think that the reach of your page or post can be increased exponentially by someone sharing it on Facebook or Twitter, there’s no reason not to install a Social Media plugin.
5) Not securing your site
There’s nothing worse than getting an email from your host telling you that they’re restricting your account because it is infected with malware or a virus. And the chances are you won’t know how to get rid of it; calling in the experts can work out very expensive so it’s well worth installing a security plugin on your site.
There are other mistakes that you need to avoid, and I’ll be covering those in future blog posts. If you have any questions, why not just Ask Jean or post in the comments below??
