10 Blogging Shortcuts You Should Avoid This Year

Running a successful blog takes more than just dedication. It takes a lot of patience as well. Many bloggers want to be successful overnight and try all kinds of shortcuts to get there. Building a fan following and establishing traffic takes time. You can enjoy dedicated traffic by taking it slow and building relationships, not by trying fly-by-night shortcuts. 

Blogging Shortcuts: SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

SEO, as we know, is a fairly labor-intensive task. It takes anywhere from a few months to many years to get that much-desired search engine ranking. Some bloggers look for shortcuts to get the job done at lesser cost, both in terms of time and money.

1. Paying For Bulk Directory Submissions

If you pay for bulk directory submission, your site can be banned. Let’s say you get lucky and your site isn’t banned; it’ll still be listed in low-authority directories that won’t bring you any goodies. Any link won’t do – source quality links manually if you want to score, and stay away from too many links too soon.

2. Stealing Content From Other Sites

Honestly, this is old hat. So many bloggers have been penalized for just copying content from other blogs, without having the decency to at least rewrite the content. For one thing, copied content will damage your credibility as a blog owner and purported subject matter expert. As far as SEO is concerned, it’s original content that rules.

Also Read: Why Bloggers Should Avoid Automated Blogging Tools

Automated tools promise the earth these days. Unique content, generated in minutes and all you have to do is provide your keywords. Honestly, if it were all that simple, we would all be buying these tools.

3. Tools Don’t Deliver Unique And Useful Content

Readers come to blogs to stay informed, to be entertained, and to feel a sense of belonging and understanding. These are human elements and the last time we checked, tools are not human. Plus, automated tools import content from other niches. Your blog will lose its focus, value-add and credibility in the process. A blogger’s success depends on the quality, uniqueness and usefulness of the content he or she generates. A blog that is not unique does not have a personal voice, and therefore has no appeal to readers

4. Google Hates Spammy Content

Google hates spam, and automated blogs are considered spam in Google’s all-seeing eyes. Any content that appears in more than one place on the web is considered duplicate content. If you did enjoy a good page ranking before, start using an automated tool and watch that ranking drop.

5. Your Host May Shut You Down

Blog hosts don’t give you use of their domains for you to abuse their trust. Your host is well within their rights to shut your blog down if you host duplicate content. Plus, the original content owner can also complain to your host and get you shut down.

Also Read: Why Bloggers Shouldn’t Obsess Over Revenue Alone

Granted, you want to earn money and that’s the reason you blog. It’s a good reason to blog. But to make money your core focus?

6. Your Blog Could Be Shut Down due to too much ads

When you obsess over revenue, you will fill your pages with lots of adverts. You may make some money initially but if you are obsessed over AdSense you could be banned or shut down.

Also Read: Google May Penalize Ad Heavy Pages

7. You Could Lose Your Credibility

Don’t overstuff your blog with advertising. Don’t use your blog just to promote products. Focus on providing good quality content and bond with your readers. Show your personality. Even if you internally obsess over revenue, don’t let it show obviously.

Are you planning to perform some crazy trick on the search engines? Better not. Here’s why.

8. Search Engines Are Smarter Than People

You may make it to the top ranking for a day or two but remember search engines will bust you sooner or later. You could get penalized or shut down. Take your pick. If your site or domain is banned, you’ll have to start all over again. Don’t try outsmarting search engines.

9. Your Competitors Are Not Asleep

You’re not living on an island; people are watching, especially your competitors. If you are up to unethical measures and trying to cheat search engines, it’s Christmas come early for your competitors out there. They don’t have to look for to get you penalized.

10. Your Readers Will Feel The Negative Impact

You cannot focus on providing quality content and building great relationships while trying out hocus-pocus on search engines. Your readers are not stupid and they will notice. Tricks such as keyword stuffing will not just get you penalized but will lose you visitors. See, the thing is, visitors know when they see good content. They can easily tell the difference between good content and trash.

More About Me

Olawale Daniel

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Olawale Daniel is a seasoned blockchain technology consultant and digital media entrepreneur with years of experience in digital marketing, real estate, and tech publishing. He has had the chance of working with multinational firms in the field of marketing, branding, publishing and leadership. He loves tech support services!

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