10 frightening pitfalls that can turn your visitors off

It's only natural that you want your blog to be successful, right? Well, in order to increase the likelihood of success (and prevent turning off your visitors with one faux pas), keep in mind these 10 frightening pitfalls.

Racey messages  - Do you use LOL or OMFG too often anywhere on your blog? Your visitors will quickly get turned off by being bombarded with such informal (sometimes even inappropriate) language. Too much nudity - Is there a photo of a scantily-clad woman on the sidebar of your blog? You might be turning off male readers by projecting yourself as catering to more female readers. Photo overload - You'll be turning off your readers if you overload their computer screens with too many photos. Unless there's a particular reason for so many photos, keep it to a minimum of 3 per post. No privacy policy - If you're going to ask your readers for personal information (such as email addresses or other contact details), you have a responsibility to have in place a privacy policy . Old-fashioned design - Make sure your blog is appealing with the latest CSS designs, styles and graphics. Blogging on free blog services - Using free service such as Blogger or Typepad can leave you vulnerable to hackers who can hijack your blog and change its content with potentially devastating results . Too much advertising - If you're advertising too much - like too much of your content being sponsored by a particular product - you're going to turn off your readers. Too many links - Don't just have a handful of links on the power button menu bar on your blog; keep it to 3 or 4 at most. Skipping topics - Your readers will quickly lose interest if they don't get all of the important information they need from your content. This includes things such as event details, special offers or news announcements. Come-ons and sales pitches - You need to be very careful about using these types of promotional techniques in your blog posts because you'll soon notice that 's it is very easy for people to click away from your website .

Advertising anything sexual, including your blog, is a sure way to turn off your visitors.

And, in case you're wondering why some of the tips are scary for turning off your visitors, let me remind you that bad reputation means a likely loss of readers - and who wants that?

Keep these tips in mind and you'll be well on your way to blogging success!

Happy blogging!

Copyright © 2006-2017 . All rights reserved. [ARTICLE END]   And to think I had been blogging at Blogspot for all those years  and missed out on so much… It was just too easy back then and it didn't bother me much.  I guess that's why I didn't think much of it when I got the email from Google informing me that they will be shutting down Blogger in a few months.  The email, sent to Blogger account owner(s), reads:

Hello , My name is Erica and I'm a Product Manager at Google. Since 2005, Blogger has been offering free blogs to millions of users all over the world. Today, we're announcing that within the next 90 days, we'll no longer allow new accounts to be created and we'll begin retiring existing blogs on Blogger (the exception is accounts associated with school domains). We understand how important your blogs are for your businesses, schools and organizations. Our priority is to help you transition as smoothly as possible to a new service that meets your needs. In the meantime, we'll be continuing to offer free accounts for existing Blogger blogs. To make sure people have time to register their domains and blog, we'll be retiring Blogger blogs starting in January 2, 2011. If you're interested in registering Blogger by the end of January with an account that expires in May 2012, you can sign up here

If there are no objections or issues raised within 90 days from now, your domain will be added to Google's systems. If there is a problem with your domain being listed, you'll be notified via email and given until March 31st to respond. Thanks for your time. We hope you find a new home for your blog soon! Sincerely,

Erica

Blogger Account Owner I can't believe that Google is forcing bloggers out of their blogging services.  An email like this is an official warning to all blogs that they will be closing down their accounts in 90 days.  I wonder what are the terms and conditions if you decide to move your blog from Blogspot to another free blogging service such as WordPress.com . Update: Read more about the closure here .  I always knew Google had unethical practices but I underestimated them. Hope they don't keep their word.  On the bright side, it means that my Blogstalker blog will probably stick around until a new platform emerges and Blogger shuts down on March 31, 2012.  After all, I would have to move Blogspot's domain name to a new hosting service so it'd be best to hold out for now. For those of you who are confused by the terms in Google's email - here are some helpful links: The official Google blog on the subject . Google+ domains. Blogger glossary of terms.

Posted by Elly at 8:01 PM Labels: blogspot , blogger , domain , google , internet

 (Image on the right via Freepik / FreeDigitalPhotos) What happens when you're losing followers fast? If you're blogging, you might not even notice it right away especially if you have so many other things that need your attention. But if you do begin noticing that your traffic is dropping dramatically, it's time to find out what's wrong with your content and your design. To help get you started, here are some suggestions on how to go about identifying the problem and fixing it later on: 1. Update regularly Now, this is my favorite tip that's guaranteed to get you more traffic.  If you're not sure of how often to update your blog, it will be better if you start with a blogging schedule that is close to the number of posts that you have planned for the next month.  You can either use a perfectly laid out scheduling template (including a cover image) or manually create a new weekly posting schedule. 2. Make your blog more interesting Insights are always welcome and they come from different places.  Here's one place where many bloggers fail - creating insightful posts on their blogs or blogs about other areas of interests.  In other words, do not just write about your industry.  There's nothing wrong with writing about something you are passionate about. 3. Clean up your blog clutter This is one of the top reasons why bloggers lose followers and that is because they start to put too much or too little content on their blogs.  If you have something interesting in your blog, but things start to get messy, it's time to go through your posts and make them more pleasing to the eye by deleting some of the old ones and creating new ones based on the same topic. 4 .

Conclusion If you're losing a lot of your readership and you can't seem to figure out what's going on, it's good to know that your blog is not dead even if you are noticing very little traffic.  All you need to do is consider some of these tips before investing in any new strategy or design changes.  If nothing works, try a new blogging platform or host.  There are many free options to choose from and the more popular ones are WordPress.com (WordPress) - a self-hosted blogging service created by WordPress.org Blogger - an official Google service that shut down early this year WordPress.