New bloggers have to be extra careful not to portray themselves as a newbie. It can be easy to do if you’re not aware of some of the dead giveaways that you are new to the game. Being new may decrease readership, prevent your blog from growing and may kill a great concept you are trying to put out there before you’ve even had a shot.
This can happen because you didn’t invest in a domain name and hosting space, you aren’t writing good headlines or other little things that can make a big impact. Here is a look at how to avoid looking like the new blogger on the web.
Purchase a domain name and hosting space
When you’ve decided to be serious about creating a professional looking blog, you need to make sure you are self-hosting your blog on a paid domain. A free platform that you’ve chosen will give you an address like “Learnblogging.wordpress.com” while a paid domain or self-hosted platform may look more like “learnblogging.today” which is much more appealing to click on for a reader. It looks more professionals, it’s shorter and thus it’s easier for your reader to remember.
Your readers will think you’re a newbie if you have an ugly URL that obviously didn’t have any financial investment in it. If you’ve already hosted on WordPress or a similar site, you can still forward your blog to your own domain, known as domain mapping. For those that haven’t started their blog, they can get a free domain and hosting package from a provider, such as ITX Design.
Customizing favicons
You may appear as an advanced blogger if you’ve taken the time to customize your favicons. Many bloggers are too lazy to update their favicon or they are too new to realize you can do so. Update it since many web hosts will install their own on your account.
When your users have a bunch of tabs open at once, they can easily see which one is yours because of the favicon on the tabs will stand out. It makes you appear more professional, customized and you can even use your business logo. Get one for free at Favicon.cc.
Good headlines
If your posts don’t have catchy headlines, you’ll appear to be a newbie. Headlines are so important because if they aren’t appealing, your readers won’t even click. Draw more visitors by making your headlines attention-grabbing since only 2 of 10 readers will read your full content. Treat your headline as important as the content.
Your permalink structure
Did you know the permalink structure can be another giveaway of an advanced blogger to a new one? Update the permalink structure so that you don’t have one that non-descriptive, unattractive and useless for your SEO needs. Change the permalinks before publishing anymore posts.
Lastly, consider optimizing your title tags to make sure you look like a blogging pro. This is great for your SEO efforts and can be done with plugins like All in One SEO where you can remove common words like “the” and make it shorter. Use these tips to make sure you don’t look like an amateur blogger to the world.
