7 Wordpress Mistakes Every Blogger must avoid

So Below Are the 7 WordPress Mistakes Every Blogger must avoid in order to get a wide range of good experience with his/her online business.

Mistake # 1: Theme Obsession

This is the biggest one – I see it invariably made by first time bloggers , seasoned marketers and almost everybody. I could call it also the “theme- first-syndrome” and I will explain in a minute why. Some times marketers approach me in private or they post in a forum where I hang out , the following question:

“I want to start a _____________ related WordPress site , can you recommend me a theme?”

And my answer always is – No, I can’ t . I can’ t because the theme should be the very last thing that you think about . Period. OK , I will put it here in bigger letters so that you won’ t forge t:

Forget the themes until you figure out everything else about your WordPress site!

Here is an example , why. Somebody asked me abou t an au tomobile related theme. Someone else wanted an urban theme.

You know what? Let’s take the WP 3.0 default theme , TwentyTen .

Seven WordPress Mistakes Every Blogger Must Avoid

As you can see in the first picture , I didn’t change anything , except the “title” o f the blog. . . and I came up with the very clever name: This is a Blog . Plus , I added a lorem ipsum place holder post .

Every new blog using WordPress version 3 .x .x looks like this

Now, on the same blog I uploaded an image that I took this from the Internet ,Next I cropped the image and changed the background colour – all that with simple clicks inside the WP admin area . Now I have a “truck theme” , don’t I

(I think I really should start a Dodge Dakota Fans site . . .)

For the third snapshot and “theme” I picked a photo I took during our last trip to Mon treal where I took more than hundred pictures . I liked this one because it has some old and new architecture toge ther. . . and again I cropped it in the WP admin and changed the background colour to blue(ish) . And you got your “urban theme” . .

You see how easy it was to create a completely different feel and suggest the topic o f the blog just by uploading (and cropping) an existing image from my computer’s hard disk and changing the background colour? Ofcourse , you can do this as the very first step of your “customization” . . .

The problem is that on both blogs your content would be the Hello , world!

Nonsense post and nothing else . Here is the lesson:

Almost any theme can be used for any topic . By using a nice photo as header image you create the first impression tha t tells your visitors: this blog is about . . . Dakota trucks or urban architecture or any thing you want! You organize your site (i .e . the content) not with the theme – bu t with your head. Everybody should have a clear picture , and I mean literally a “picture” as in an organizational chart of their content’s structure BEFORE looking for a theme . The structure , the hierarchy of your content should determine the criteria you use for finding a theme . Read More for more details! Perhaps , I should elaborate a bit on this theme-

first-syndrome. It can be very costly for you! I have noticed that novice WordPress users (but quite often even seasoned marketers) spend an awful lot of time searching for the “perfect theme” . There is no content yet , there is no idea about the site’s architecture but they are chasing the dream of some magic theme that would make their blog (site) unique , outstanding and ultra-per forming. If you do the same . . . you are left behind by your smart competition. Your smart competition doesn’t care about having a niche-specific theme .

(As you could see , we could create the impression o f a niche-specific theme in minutes!) They, i.e . your smart competition focus on keyword research , they focus on writing or outsourcing their content or they are busy drawing up the structure of their next blog. You and I know that the edge that you gain by using WordPress is the speed with which you can set up new sites with . Especially, if you use the new MultiSite feature introduced in version 3 .0 . I f you don’t use it , you should learn about it

– Trust me: no matter how nice your blog looks – nobody gives a damn about it if there is no real, genuine content on it that interests the visitors and keeps them on your site . Which takes us to the next mistake.

Mistake #2: No idea what kind of site you plan

In the beginning this was easy. If you used WordPress you were planning a blog. However, with all the new features and improvements the script nowadays is closer to a full- fledged CMS (content management system) and as a result you can build any type o f sites with it

As good as it sounds , it also creates major problems in the planning process . Let’s take a step backward and go back to the starting point . You got a domain . ► Great . You got a hosting package . ► Even greater. You decided to use WordPress for your site because everybody and their dog told you how easy it was to use . . . . (will talk about this later)

You want a site . What kind of site?

Will it be a real blog in the classic meaning of the word: regular, daily updates (posts) about a topic? In this case in a year you will have 365 posts and you will need some idea how your content will be organized.

If you wish , you need some taxonomy or in other words , criteria to categorize your content . Or will it be a five pages small site that will never be updated once it is done? Are you going to sell some thing on it or you will provide useful information only (to build authority) and send them to external pages/sites to promote products? Is this your main site or just an “appendix” to your main money making site? I know, it’s a lot o f questions but you really need to have the answers to all of them . Your success depends on the accuracy of your answers!

Please , take a moment and write down your options . Then eliminate one by one what your site is NOT going to be . At the end you should have a clear idea what kind of site you are planning. It may take minutes or a day, depending on how well prepared you are for setting up your WordPress powered site .

It doesn’t matter – just do it! When you get the answers , we can move on to the next mistake.

Mistake #3: Unorganized (uncategorized) content

The easiest way to explain this would be through an example .

Let’s say I am a beer lover and I plan to have a blog about beers and everything related to beer and my idea is to write every other day a post about my beer drinking experiences , breweries , brands etc .

So, how to prepare the organization of this site? OK , I am not a beer lover/drinker but I will pretend to be one for this example. If you were lucky, you have a domain like beer .com (at the moment of writing this , it is even up for sale !) Even if I am not a beer guy I know there are different kind o f beers: lager, pilsner, ale , dark . . . what else? ( fill in the gaps with your knowledge) Now, I know my beer posts will be in some “groups” that in WordPress should be categories. My daily posts would go under different “groups” or categories , i.e . in Categories – that would be the very first classification of my posts . For some of them I might even have sub-categories: I know, for example ,

There are red and brown coloured dark beers . So, under the Dark category I would create two sub-categor ies: brown and red

And the categories and subcategories will contain the posts – the real content! If you take a look at the diagram below it , you will have a visualization of what I just described above: this is the “picture” we should have about our future web site.

I wan t to make it clear, you don’t have to make a fancy chart like I tried to show you above . I did it only for this post . Normally, I just take a sheet of paper and draw a basic schema of the future webs items.

It doesn’t matter whether your blog or site will be about food recipes or flowers or airplanes or baby toys or trucks or love making positions . . .

You should always find the best way to plan ahead how your content will be organized and structured. My point is: if you just throw in post after post in a huge pile of content , the whole thing will become chaotic . You need some kind of organizational principle to build on it . Of course , we will need some additional stuff, called Pages in WordPress – they are not categorized and they are not part of the chronological stream of the posts (although , technically, they are also entries stored in the WP database) .

Pages are best used for About Us , Contact and similar “static” content , as well as for all the legal documents that you can , usually, find in the footer of the websites: Privacy , Terms , Disclaimer etc . Just a quick note regarding Pages .

When you have a complex web site in mind, a clever combination of Categories and Pages will give you a very flexible site architecture: you can tweak Pages to show both static and dynamic content; categories can act as “silos”; also Pages can be used for opt-in or sales pages etc .

Mistake #4: Missing structure

Again , I will go with a live example to make it easier to understand.

Here is what I did when a customer wanted a web site powered by WordPress and (based on their old site) they wanted to have:

pages like Membership, About , President welcome , Contact (later we added Links)

“sections” where we can put

news and events related to the organization:

a) press releases;

b) media coverage

their library, i.e . a bunch of studies written by members

their online magazine organized by issues

a bookstore ( for affiliate links)

the newsletter archive

After listening care fully to what they wanted – I made up some thing as you can see on the photo below. Then we went through the whole thing again and they remembered what you can see as added later in red.

I also put my next questions there in red to be clarified during the following “clarification session” . Your advantage is that you don’t have to listen to anybody’s requirements . Although this could be your disadvantage as well . In my experience when somebody is forced to explain their idea loudly to someone else –

it helps to be more focused and be able to clearly formulate their thoughts .

Hey, why not give it a try? Sit down with your partner or your friend and tell them what your site is going to be about and how its content will be organized.

Luckily, I am fairly familiar with what WP can and cannot do – so I quickly added with a highlighter to my initial plan: C for categories and P for Pages. It is not a perfect plan at this stage but even the most perfect site that you’ll ever create starts with these baby steps .

In my case we had to fine tune the whole setup as I advanced with the preparations but you have an easier job:

you have to work only with yourself, so the process should be even faster because you don’t have to wait for the replies from the other party !

The following picture is just a sample of a first draft I’ve made when starting out a WordPress powered (non-blog) site . You can also use the mindmap I provided in this package to follow a more sysmatic way to plan your own WordPress site . Don’t skip this step – it will save you a lot o f headaches and frustration later. . .

Mistake #5 – Not knowing your Market

But how do I know in which way to organize my content – you may ask . And I am glad you asked. Because there is a simple step you should never skip as well. It is called market research.

In some industries they call it the KYCrule: Know Your Client. Your client is every and any member of the target group your site will be aimed to. Let’s say I will be aiming grandmothers who just started to use the internet.

This is what I should keep in my mind:

• they don’t know as much about the internet as you and I do

• they are not familiar with the usual blog navigation system as we are

• they are not familiar with a lot of “web” convent ions e .g. click header img > home; click title > whole post

The list above might look silly for you . . . because you have already seen many WP blogs and you know what to expect when clicking on a link like “5 comments ” – it will take you to the comments section of that particular post .

So, for my grannies I will have to set up a very, very clear and self explanatory navigation (menu) system. I will have to make sure the navigation is visible on every page of the blog/site . I should also have a Help or a FAQ page (note to myself: Self, they may NOT know what the abbreviation FAQ stands for. . .) With all that in mind I will want to organize my content to follow a very natural flow that even those generations that grew up using different media types could use intuitively.

Just as a side note: When thinking about the final design I will also consider their eye-sight , so I will use bigger font size than usual! OK , so far we know who our target market is , although that’s quite a huge and not well-defined market .

You could narrow it down to some thing like “grandmothers who want a birthday cake with a chocolate statue of their grandchild on it” –

and that would be a narrow niche. Narrow but very well targeted niche ! We have the market – we have narrowed down the niche – we know we want to organize the content for them . . .

But do we really know WHAT we want them to do on the site? And more importantly: WHY are we setting up this site? What is the goal? if you have the answer to this question(s) then it is easy to figure out how to avoid mistake #2 .

You see how all the steps are interrelated?

Next mistake: Plugins . . . Can you tell how many plugins are on the blog shown on the picture?

Mistake #6 – Useless Plugins

We finally figured out all our answers and we installed WordPress on our domain . And we just saw this cute little plugin that will do this and that . . . and another one that will do some thing we don’t really need but everybody seems to have it . . . then we find another plugin . . . and another one . . . . . . and before you know the WordPress installa tion has 36 plugins ! One of the deadliest mistakes you can make while setting up (and using) your WordPress powered site is to fill it up with a truckload of plugins .

There are thousands and thousands of free and paid plugins out there but you don’ t need to use all of them . Learn how to be “plugin minimalist”: use only the plugins that are absolutely necessary to achieve your goals and settings that you came up with during the planning session .

Am I ant i-plug in? Yes and no.

Yes, because not all the plugins are coded equally well . Many of them are huge resource hogs that will slow down your site; some of them will introduce vulnerabilities (read: make your site easy to be hacked); some of them “perform” tasks that could be easily done with a simple copy/paste . Don’t go after every shiny little piece o f garbage – be very selective when it comes to plugins .

No, because there are things for which you absolutely need a plugin . For example , anti- spam protection or some kind of automation to avoid to do the same stuff repeatedly. If you find a plugin that fits exactly your needs , please always check its source , the reputation of its author and the resources required.

Remember: there is no “must have” plugin (except anti-spam) . People are posting those ‘must-have-17-plugins’ lists because they don’t know better. They are ignorant amateurs . Now you hear it from a pro WP user. And you also want to be a professional WordPress user . . . don’ t you?

Mistake #7 – The 5 minutes trap

Did you also fall in the 5 minutes trap? The famous 5 minutes install has almost become the trademark of WordPress . Actually, despite the many failed installations , it is true! If you are not doing anything stupid , WP can be installed in five minutes or less .

The longest “action” is waiting until the files upload using a FTP client . And with this – all the five minutes things are over . Forever . And the user should be warned about it . And this is missing from the sales “pitch”. Unfortunately, this very easy installation process creates very bad, false expectations .

That’s what I call the “5 minutes trap”. It is a trap because the unsuspecting new user thinks that everything would be such an easy five minutes job. Most often she/he wants the customization to be an “easy, simple” one-click thing. Some thing that can be done in “ five minutes”.

Think: instant gratification . . . The reality about a WordPress blog is this:

it is easy to install and it is equally easy to get a free downloadable theme to change the default look of it . And this is where the “easy stuff ” ends . . .

If you are thinking of doing more , like customizing your theme , modifying the layout of a theme , adding custom features etc . here are your options: – find a theme that allows you to modify/customize a lot o f things in it – hire a pro (no, I am not taking clients at this moment)

Listen , WordPress is a tool – just like your car: it takes you from where you are now to where you would like to be . Do you get familiar with all the buttons and gizmos on your dashboard before you start driving for a long trip?

Yes , of course you do. You need to know how to start the windshield wipers , how to turn on the lights , how to change gears , how to release the parking brake and so on . Why would it be different with this tool called WordPress?

My advice is learn the tools provided inside your admin panel (i.e . click all the links and buttons inside your wp-admin to see what they do) . I promise there is a lot to discover.

You are halfway with this

And here is the final and biggest mistake: Not reading this report and not applying what you learned from it . If you are here , you’ve done half of it: you have already read the report .

Great , and congratulations! Start applying what you learned. Now you don’t have excuses anymore . I have told you everything that you should know. Use it , please !

Congratulations to myself, too: I think I just invented the “Bonus Mistake” . . .

These were the 7 WordPress Mistakes Every Blogger must avoid . Hope You learned alot of new things in it , If Any Part was missed or un-related please do Notify in the Comments . Do share in order to get your friends on the right path . Thank You!

7 Wordpress Mistakes Every Blogger must avoid