14 Simple Blog Tips For Beginners – Why No One Is Reading Your Blog
I’ve gathered 14 Simple Blog Tips for Beginners that will help you increase your traffic and keep your readers around.
Before we get into it, I want to congratulate you!
You did it!
You finally started a blog.
That’s great!
You even have a few posts written.
You’ve been working hard for a couple of months. However, it seems the only ones seeing your hard work are your family and friends.
The sound of crickets is deafening!
For a lot of new bloggers, this is when you seriously considering throwing in the towel. You tell yourself, “I’ll never be a successful blogger.”
After all, most of the big bloggers seem to have found success overnight.
Why can’t I Get more traffic to my blog?
It is NOT the time to quit! It is the time to dig in with your heels, learn these simple blog tips for beginners, and stick with it!
You don’t have to stop blogging. You just have to make a few tweaks with your blog and your mindset.
These 14 blog tips for beginners will help you find out how…
Find out how to get blog traffic and why no one is reading your blog
**This post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. This means if you purchase something through one of my links, I may receive a small commission with no extra cost to you. For more information, see my disclosures here.
The most important of the blog tips for beginners – You Haven’t Given It Enough Time
If your blog is brand new, you have to give it time to grow and be found by the Google gods.
You have probably heard people say that they built their blog to 10,000 views overnight or even in a month.
More than likely, they had previous blogging experience and maybe even a mailing list that they could use to share their new content. They found success quickly because they already had a tribe of followers to help them.
When you’re just starting a blog, you won’t get traffic right away.
There are no newsflashes sent across the interwebs, proclaiming from the rooftops that Sally (or John) finally started a blog!
Years ago, it was possible to get decent traffic quickly. However, these days there is just so much information out there. A new blog doesn’t even make a ripple in the vast pond that is the blogosphere.
The good news is that not showing up in search results right away gives you time to sort out the look of your blog site, work on your writing skills and build up your content so that when the people do come, they will find plenty of information that will keep them on your site happily absorbing all your hard work.
what to post on a blog – is your topic too competitive?
Often in various Facebook groups, there is always someone asking what topics they should blog about. And people always say things like health, fitness, wellness, or blogging.
The problem with these topics is that they are so competitive.
It’s much harder to rank well with these topics.
Yes, I know, Tech Girl Help Desk is a blog about blogging. However, this is not my first adventure with blogging.
I’ve been blogging on and off for years. I love the technical aspects of blogging and enjoy helping others figure it out.
When you’re a new blogger, you have no idea how to run a successful blog! (Heck, even when you are not so new at blogging, there are still things you don’t know how to do!)
Often, new bloggers who start with a blog about blogging; they are just looking to make a quick buck cause they have heard that blogging about blogging is a much easier niche to make money.
If you’re serious about wanting to help other people start a blog, but you are new to blogging yourself, find another topic you love and are passionate about.
Spend a couple of years blogging and learning how to create a successful blog in a niche that you love and have some knowledge about. Be an inspiration for others who are just starting their blogging journey.
Why SEO is important – is yours non-existent?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is when major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo use various criteria to decide which websites and other content such as images, videos or local listings are shown in search results and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.
I’m going to tell you why SEO is important for your blog and why you need to spend more time on getting found by google.
If the goal is to create a blog that has a great tribe, you will want to work on sharing your content on social media and getting links back to your blog.
However, if the goal for your blog is more about creating a passive income and having content that people can use for years to come, you will want to concentrate on researching the best relevant keywords and writing amazing content and applying the best SEO techniques to get your posts showing up on page one of Google.
Some great SEO plugins that can help you with your SEO are Yoast SEO, All-in-One SEO or Rank Math. If you would like a comparison of these SEO plugins (plus a few more) this article does a good job of breaking them down.
Your blog headlines are boring
Blog headlines can make or break you when it comes to blogging!
If you can’t draw your reader in with a catchy blog post title, it won’t matter what your post is about because they will never read it. The headline or title needs to grab the attention of your reader within the first few seconds, or you have lost your opportunity.
Writing great blog headlines is hard!
However, it is a skill that you can hone and refine with practice. There is a ton of info on the internet that will help you learn how to write great blog headlines. This post has some tips on creating catchy headlines.
Your Site Speed is SLOW
Site speed is a huge factor in whether or not people will stick around and read your post. If your website takes forever to load, no one will ever read your content.
Today’s world is spinning way too fast. Nobody has time for slow loading websites! Some studies say if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load your reader is going to click away and find something else to read.
Your posts are not formatted for skim readers
Writing for the internet is a lot different than writing a book or other written content. Often we have to throw out a bunch of the things we learned in English class and discover a whole new way of writing.
CAUTION: Don’t get carried away now! Not everything you learned in English class needs throwing away–grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling are still relevant.
We are on our screens all day long. Life is happening at the speed of light, and we are rushing from one thing to another.
When we finally sit down to read something we don’t want to waste our valuable time wading through a massive wall of text on our phones only to find out it’s not what we want to read.
Often readers who encounter a huge block of text will click away immediately and find something else that is easier to read.
Today’s online reader wants to be able to quickly skim through a blog post or article and get a glimpse of what the post is about before they commit to spending their valuable time to read it.
Actionable Tips for Formatting Blog posts
Include lots of white space to make your writing much easier to skim. We call this formatting for skim readers.
Break your copy up with some of these things:
- shorter sentences
- smaller paragraphs with 2-3 sentences
- lists
- quotes
- images or graphics
These formatting techniques for skim readers take a little time to master, but with time it gets easier to remember to include these things in your writing.
one of the most valuable blog tips for beginners: Write more consistently!
What does consistent blogging look like?
Consistency with blogging can take many forms. Many bloggers will tell you that you have to write a post every day to see success. Others may say to you a few times a week is perfectly fine. While still, other bloggers may say writing a post once or twice a month works for them.
Consistency is what works for you and your blog. Figure out a schedule that works for you and your life.
If you work full-time or maybe you are a full-time mom of little ones, then consistency for you perhaps is once a week or once every other week.
When you develop a pattern of when you post on your blog, your readers will come to expect that from you and know when to look for new posts.
As Ruth Sukoup, of Elite Blog Academy, says, “don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”
Do what works for you and don’t worry about what others are doing. Some successful bloggers may post daily on their blogs because they can hire a team of people to help with writing content. I don’t have that luxury, and if you are a new blogger, I’m sure you do not either.
Your website is not mobile-friendly
This is one of the most misunderstood blog tips for beginners.
Mobile-friendliness is a big reason that people may not be reading your blog. Surprisingly, there are still many websites and blogs out there that are not mobile-friendly.
It’s so easy to find out if yours is or not. Get on your phone and look it up. If it looks all wonky, takes forever to load or doesn’t load at all, then you know you have a problem. You can also use this site to let you know if your blog is mobile-friendly or not.
WordPress has a ton of mobile responsive themes, and many of them are even free. You may love your theme, but if people can’t read your blog on mobile devices, your theme is not helping you.
Spending a little bit of money on a mobile-friendly premium theme is a great way to invest in your blog if you want to take blogging seriously. Or you can use the WordPress Plugin AMP that can also help you create a mobile-friendly site.
Your posts are too short
My posts tend to be at least 1,000 words and often way more than that. That means they are full of interesting and useful information (hopefully).
If your posts are only a couple of hundred words and a bit on the fluffy side, that could be a reason why no one reads your blog.
For example, if you write a 300-word post on the ‘best way to care for pet rabbits,’ then your reader is probably going to think you may not be the best choice for information on caring for rabbits.
However, if you write a 2,500-word or more post with links to other useful information from credible sources, then people may stick around.
That said, don’t write on and on without adding value to your post only to increase your word count. Be concise yet thorough and informative providing value to your reader with every paragraph.
NOTE: This blog tips for beginners post is quite long, coming in at just over 2,900 words.
You are just trying to make a quick buck
How would you feel if you opened your door to someone who tried to sell you ten different things before you even learned their name? That is what can happen if you worry more about making money with your blog than helping your readers and creating trust.
This topic is a very important and often ignored topic on my blog tips for beginners list.
As a new blogger, it’s easy to get drawn into all the hype of blogging for money. However, most blogs don’t make money right out of the gate. As I mentioned earlier, it takes time.
Many bloggers will quit blogging in the first six months (the minimum time frame it takes to start seeing search result traffic) because they aren’t making heaps of money and seeing instant success. A big reason for their perceived failure is they are only concerned about becoming rich quick.
If you start a blog with the genuine intention to help people and share your experience or expertise, then you will have a much better chance at growing a successful money-making blog.
You’re not creating a community
Depending on the type of blog you have, you may find that having a community around the blog will help you get more traffic and readers.
Lifestyle blogs, for example, often do much better when they have a community because they usually don’t concentrate on one topic, but may have many.
Google doesn’t typically rank these blogs as high as others in search results because they may not be considered authority sites.
Niche blogs can also benefit from a community. Your tribe will share your posts, comment, follow you on social media, and encourage you to create content for them.
One of the best ways to start building a community for your blog is by joining Facebook groups in your niche or in blogging Facebook groups where you can create new relationships with other bloggers.
You don’t have a newsletter/sign up
Most people don’t bookmark a blog to come back to it on their own. That is why it’s essential to use a newsletter to grow your mailing list. That way, your readers can keep up to date on what is going on with your blog.
I use ConvertKit for my blogs, and I love them because they are easy to use and are serious about helping bloggers succeed.
If you are new to my blog, you may have noticed there are a few places where you can sign up for my email list. If you sign up, you can get my free checklist for starting a blog.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. I use that to get people to sign up for my mailing list so that they can get an update when I publish something new. It’s a great way to get people back to your site and hopefully give them more information they will want as well as building a relationship with them.
When coming up with my blog tips for beginners list, I realized this tip is one that most people skip when they first get started. They think it’s too soon and the tech is too frustrating. Setting a foundation for your blog is very important.
Be patient with yourself and keep at it.
Your topic is too broad
I stated earlier that lifestyle blogs might have many topics that they cover. However, even niche blogs can be too broad and cover too many things, which makes it hard for Google to know what your blog is really about and where to put your blog.
Do your research before starting your blog to make sure your blog topics are specific as possible without getting too specific. That sounds easy enough, right?
For example, if you are a mommy blogger, you may not want to pigeon hole yourself into blogging about moms with 2-year-olds, cause the chances are good that your 2-year-old is eventually going to become a 3-year-old and then a teenager (cause according to my friends that is generally how that works!).
If however, you are a vegan mom who homeschools your kids, and you want to blog about vegan recipes and homeschooling curriculum that may work better for you.
Your content isn’t useful or entertaining
Just because you write something doesn’t mean people will find it helpful or entertaining.
Often when someone starts a blog, they start with the intention of writing about their life–a personal diary or journal type blog.
They talk about themselves and what is going on in their lives. Which their mom may find interesting or their friends but most people don’t really care (sorry!) about someone else’s life.
You need to provide some usefulness to your content. You want to
- solve a problem
- answer a question
- entertain your reader
These are the types of posts that people want to read.
It’s not just personal journal type blogs that people may not find helpful.
Maybe you have a niche blog, but it is very apparent that you have no idea what you are talking about! People can see that, and it turns them off very quickly. That is why it is essential to choose blog topics that you know a bit about or can contribute new ideas or views on.
NOTE: You can write a ‘journey’ type of blog. Where you write about your experiences learning or trying something new, that is different because you are upfront with your reader and let them know that this is the content that you will be sharing and inviting them on the journey with you.
Final Note
Getting readers to your blog and keeping them coming back can be a bit complicated. Hopefully, with these blog tips for beginners, you can create content that is helpful to your reader, entertains them, and keeps them engaged so that they want to come back to your blog over and over because you bring them value to their lives.
I hope you have found this post of 14 blog tips for beginners helpful. I would love to hear if you have implemented any of these tips and seen more success since using it. Please share in the comments below.
