The first step growing a blog in a world with 164 million competitors, is to avoid these 2 deadly mistakes.
Mistake #1: Publishing Too Often
Have you ever heard anyone say: “Dude, I just found this new blog. It’s so great… they publish 3 times per week!”
Of course not.
Readers and search engines don’t care about how often you publish.
And if you want potential readers and Google searchers to even find your site, you need to spend more time promoting your content than publishing on it.
And that’s only possible if you don’t have a twice-weekly publishing schedule that eats up all your time.
So commit to a once every 3-4 publishing schedule when first starting out. And spend that “extra” time writing absolutely epic stuff and promoting it like mad.
Mistake #2: Less-Than-Amazing Site Design
When people visit your site they make dozens of subconscious, split second decisions about you, your blog and your brand.
One of the best ways to make sure those first impressions work in your favor is to get an incredible site design.
It doesn’t have to be fancy (in fact, simple works great), but it does have to be clean and polished.
Here are the 4 most important things to pay attention to:
- Simplicity: Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. That should be your guiding principle as you design your blog.
- Complementary Colors: Aim for 2-3 main colors. For example, Backlinko uses green and orange pretty much everywhere. You’d be hard-pressed to find brown, purple or any other color anywhere on the blog.
- Lean Sidebar: Resist the temptation to load your sidebar with badges and links. A cluttered sidebar is the #1 design sin I see bloggers make today.
- Content Comes First: Make sure your blog posts have the content above the fold. Don’t make people have to scroll to read the content.