11 Blogging Mistakes I Made (that you can avoid)

I started blogging in 2019. I stumbled into it after researching ways I could promote myself as a musician and build out my brand (starting a blog was something that resonated).

Long story short, I fell in love with writing online and I never looked back.

But I’ve made plenty of blogging mistakes along the way. Only recently have I found a good flow, where things have really started clicking.

So here I am, sharing my top insights with you. I hope I can help you sidestep some of my biggest blogging slips.

Alright, let’s get to it!

Table of Contents Show

So, Why Do Blogs Fail Anyways?

Failing isn’t bad. And it isn’t final.

Rather, it’s a stepping stone and a lesson to be studied.

So why do some bloggers not make it? Here are some top reasons:

Needing more skills (keyword research, content strategy, SEO, web design, etc.)
Not giving it a enough time or effort
Not having enough content
Poor UX (user experience) and design
Only going after highly competitive terms (new blogs have no authority)
Forgetting to have fun with it (or realizing it’s more work than anticipated)
Not learning from mistakes or reading the data
Giving up too soon

That last point is especially true.

In my view, one of the biggest differentiators between success and failure (in almost anything) is that those who succeed simply don’t quit.

Blogs require maintenance, new content, updating old posts and general activity – otherwise they’ll just gather digital dust and never get any traction (or get dropped from the rankings).

Everyone experiences blog growth difficulty, but successful bloggers don’t let the struggles stop them.

This is good news.

It means that success is in our control – as long as we learn from our mistakes, continue to learn new skills and stay patient.

Recommended: Blogging On Squarespace (my results)

Successful vs. Unsuccessful Bloggers

I mean, what is success even? And failure, what’s that?

Let’s unpack things a bit.

According to Ahrefs, there are over 600 million blogs on the internet, but many of them are either inactive, not very active or don’t get any meaningful traffic (usually for one or more of the reasons listed above).

So, what percentage of bloggers fail?

I couldn’t find any specific numbers for this – so if you have any data, let me know in the comments – but according to Forbes, 8 out of 10 businesses and entrepreneurs will fail.

I think that 80% is a fair number to use for blogs as well (although, it may be even higher).

Blogging is hard and it takes a lot of time and effort. It requires patience, consistency, solid content and some marketing finesse.

Also, success is pretty subjective and means something different for everyone.

For some, hitting 10,000 monthly views means success. For others, it could be making your first affiliate sale.

But for many of us, success means replacing your full-time job with blogging.

Wherever you land on success though, failure can be avoided as long as you don’t give up.

Recommended: 50 Epic Blog Goals to Grow From Zero

My Top 11 Blogging Mistakes (that you can avoid)

If you’re about to start your blogging journey (or you’re looking to improve your strategy), then you’re in the right place.

Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be ahead of the curve.

1. No Clear Content Strategy

The topics you cover should be intentional.

While throwing in random posts can be fine for testing (or creative fun), your content strategy should be more purposeful and planned out.

Your posts should all support and complement each other.

The goal is to build topical authority and create a cohesive experience for readers (where one article organically leads to another related one, like a sales funnel or a map).

Topical authority means you’ve covered a subject in full. This establishes authority and trustworthiness (both for your readers and with Google).

And a cohesive user experience means your topics build upon each other, rather than confusing readers with unrelated or jarring themes.

It can help to visualize your content strategy as a tree, where your trunk is your main niche, the branches are your core pillars and the leaves are topic clusters for each theme.

If you’re just starting out, it’s helpful to focus on just one branch at a time and slowly build out each pillar in a strategic way.

Consider how each new article will support your previous ones while also setting you up for your next batch of posts.

This approach will create a solid internal linking architecture for your blog.

It also makes things way more organized and easier to navigate and grow.

2. Doing Too Much All At Once

Jumping straight to the finish line isn’t a strategy. I knew this, but I still got caught up in the nuances.

I spread myself too thin when I first launched this blog. I wanted to talk about mindset and lifestyle, creativity, creatrepreneurship, music and travel.

These subjects are all core pieces of my brand vision, so I had already set the intention to go against the grain and have a multi-niche blog.

But trying to build them all out at once (from the start) was a mistake.

I should’ve just built out one “tree branch” at a time.

It takes a lot of time and content to build out topical authority for each of these sub niches. And to be honest, each of these themes could be a whole blog on their own.

But I decided to keep everything under one roof, since each pillar is connected to my core brand identity.

So what’s my takeaway (and advice) from my haphazard beginnings?

Don’t try to do everything all at once.

Don’t target too many niches (or at least, not all at once).

And don’t try to create your full brand image right from the get go.

Recommended: How I Grew A Multi-Niche Blog

3. Poor Image Optimization

This is a mistake I still need to fix on many of my older posts.

When I first started this blog, my photos were an afterthought (which is a bit strange, considering creativity and art is a core focus here).

Still, I got lazy and focused on the writing and output part over the holistic quality of each post.

My main image gaffes were:

Using too many boring stock photos (just picking the first ones I saw)
Not using enough photos or graphics within my posts (too much text)
Not adding any alt text to my images (bad for accessibility and SEO)

Nowadays, I either create my images inside Canva or I’ll use original photos (especially for my travel posts). This boosts the quality of my articles.

It takes more time creating these original graphics, but it helps me stand out more.

Luckily though, it’s a pretty creative process for me, so I have fun with it.

Also, it’s easier to build out my brand image this way (while simultaneously fine-tuning some creative skills like design and photography).

4. Too Much Fluff

Learning to say less is an artform.

From long-winded sentences to over-explaining things, my earlier posts were full of fluff.

But learning to trim the fat was difficult. Too often, I felt bad deleting full paragraphs at a time.

So I had to learn if something isn’t adding any real value to your blog post, it’s best to just let it go. This can be painful, but it’s necessary for better UX and more concise writing.

Short-from video content is trending just as much as scannable, easy-to-ready blog posts.

So if you’re taking multiple lines to get to your point, there’s a good chance you could cut away some of that fluff.

The reader (and Google) don’t need the whole backstory.

(unless of course you’re doing it with creative intent, such as using storytelling elements and emotional hooks)

5. Lazy Proofreading

After first starting my blog, I fell into a bad habit of not proofreading.

I was on a publishing marathon and putting out fresh content almost daily. But my proofreading routine was more like skimming (or nothing at all).

Now, proofreading is a core phase in my content creation process.

After topic research and outlining, I write my first drafts, which are more like brain dumping everything onto “paper”.

Then I start cleaning things up with editing.

This is my proofreading stage and I’ll usually do a few rounds of this. After an initial readthrough or two, I’ll step away for a break.

When I come back, I have some clarity (and objectivity) for my final edit.

I also visit my posts after hitting publish from the perspective of my reader. I imagine myself as if I am my audience reading this article for the first time.

I consider a couple questions:

Does it make sense and read well?
Did my post add some unique value not found elsewhere?

This type of perspective-taking boosts the quality of my blogs and helps me see my posts from a new angle.

It’s sort of like external self awareness, but for blogging.

6. My Informational vs. Transactional Content Was Unbalanced

All of my initial articles were informational and I had no plan for how I would monetize things.

I said, “I’ll just figure it out later…”

I suppose this makes sense, since I started this website out of passion and fun.

But adding some entrepreneurial finesse is important for turning your blogging ventures into an actual brand that you can go full-time with.

According to Adam Enfroy, a blog should strive for an 80/20 balance of informational vs. transactional content. That means 80% of your articles should be informational, while 20% are transactional.

Informational articles include “how to” posts and educational content.

Transactional articles include “best of” posts and content that has clear buyer intent.

While transactional posts are bigger money-makers for bloggers, informational articles boost your authority and trustworthiness (both for readers and Google).

So flex your expertise muscles with informational content. Then use that authority to share your favorite products or services with more transactional posts.

7. Ignoring the Data

I have a confession. For the first year(ish) of writing online, I ignored my blog’s data.

I barely glanced at it and if I did, I definitely didn’t use those insights to make better decisions.

While I do regret this, I suppose it was just a part of my learning journey.

Reading the data helps you decide which topics to cover more of, which posts are performing well and why and which articles you should go back to and better optimize.

Leaning into your posts and keywords that perform best is a great way to grow strategically. This makes sense.

Because why wouldn’t you create more posts on topics that perform well and resonate with your readers?

For example, I created a couple of Tokyo travel articles a while back. But then I sort of forgot about them.

I had a small cluster of travel blogs written at the time, but this pillar was far from strong.

Still, while reviewing my website data in the Google Analytics (GA4) dashboard, I saw these Tokyo articles were starting to rank and perform quite well.

I was getting thousands of visits and my average engagement time for these articles was almost double my overall blog average.

This was a bit surprising – but it was also a big hint.

So I doubled down on my travel pillar and I started creating more Japan travel posts.

I learned my lessons and I listened to the data.

8. Not Updating Old Posts

What’s better: writing new content or updating your old stuff?

Both are good, but ignoring your older articles that don’t perform well, need updating or don’t reflect your current brand image or blogging skill level is more important (in my opinion).

Often, a blog won’t start ranking for many months.

So you want to make sure that if and when your older posts do start getting traffic, they’re ready for “the spotlight”.

That’s why I like to periodically review my older articles. I actually have a whole Google Doc to organize my notes on which articles need updating and what changes to make.

Because it’s hard to realize how much you grow after a year of blogging. When I go back and reread some of my older posts (even from six months ago), I’m shocked at how much I need to change.

My writing is better. My tone of voice has evolved and my blog’s direction is more fine-tuned.

So if you have a large collection of articles, there’s a good chance many of them could use some refreshing. I would do this rather than publishing lots of new articles.

I mean, keep publishing new content, but remember, refreshing old posts that don’t perform well can increase your traffic just as well as new articles.

9. Avoiding Highly Competitive Keywords

For the first year with this blog, I focused almost exclusively on longtail or low-competition keywords.

I ignored all competitive topics (even if they were hyper relevant for my blog).

This was a mistake.

Because your content strategy shouldn’t be driven exclusively by whether a topic will rank and bring you traffic or not.

This approach is a half-baked content strategy.

If you ignore the competitive keywords, your website looks less authoritative. For example, one of my pillars is creativity. For a while I ignored general posts like “how to be more creative” because they were too competitive.

But this made my creativity pillar look less authoritative. Even if these posts don’t rank, having them on my website boosts my trustworthiness that I indeed know my stuff and have actually covered this topic in full.

This improves rankings and user trust.

So don’t just focus on keyword search volume and competition data. Consider what’s needed to fully build out your content pillars.

Besides, ranking in Google isn’t the only way to drive traffic to your blog.

10. Not Prioritizing Firsthand Experience

Great content uses firsthand experience.

This is actually a key part of Google internal ranking guidelines, E-E-A-T, where that first “E” stands for experience.

This means blogs that prioritize and use direct experience on a topic will perform better than those that don’t.

This is good news for bloggers who were concerned about AI replacing them.

And while I didn’t ignore firsthand experience altogether, I did fall into a bad habit of just rehashing much of the same information that was already out there.

It’s an easy trap to fall into.

Especially if you find a keyword opportunity that’s related to your niche, but you may not yet have enough experience to talk about it fully.

Still, this doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, saying the same thing is unavoidable – for example, there’s only so many ways to define home gardening.

So firsthand experience simply means you’re able to add a little bit of your take on things.

11. Having Unrealistic Expectations

It’s an on-demand, short-form world out there. And expectations have gone rogue.

So ignore the claims that you can grow an epic website in just a few months. Because building a successful blog takes years.

There are, however, three exceptions I can think of to this rule:

If you have a large preexisting audience
If you have a large amount of money (to pay for writers and marketing)
If you have years of experience in blogging
If you use alternative traffic strategies (like Pinterest)

But this is all good news!

First, if it were easy, everyone would do it. But it takes a lot of work and patience. So, that means there’s going to be less competition (especially beyond the first year).

Second, and as you already know, it’s the journey that matters most.

Blogging is an epic adventure and it’s incredibly rewarding to watch your ideas turn into something meaningful (and income-generating).

So think in years (not months).

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