Common Blog Marketing Mistakes Solopreneurs Make… Stop It!

I just came out of a great, breakthrough packed private mentoring session with one of the few who get to work exclusively with me… and I was amazed at how many mistakes this very successful online solopreneur was making in their blog marketing efforts… We all make mistakes, but Solopreneurs seem to make a bit more than they should … the culprit? Likely the fact that, all they do is fall gurus and always get “snippets” of an entire picture… So, don’t worry, it’s really not your fault solopreneur. Here are some quick tips that seem to be rampant across the blog marketing scape:

• Protect your blog content people! You’ve got a “copyright” notice on your blog main pages to protect your content, but are you missing the biggest “copyright” hotspot on your blog? It’s your RSS feed! Make sure you have a copyright notice plugin for your RSS feed. Your RSS feed can often be more vulnerable to infringement, protect it.
• Blogs are made for SEO, don’t blow it! Search engine optimization and search engine marketing sound technical right? Well, if you’re a solopreneur, you can still be active in that area, by adding a simple plugin (again, for Wordpress). A good SEO plugin will allow you to create unique Meta Data for each individual post, as you write and go along. A great, great tool for solopreneurs.
• Your title tag is more than just an SEO component! When you install your SEO plugin and you start using it, do NOT, I repeat do NOT use your blog name as the first entry in your title on every, single post. You’re wasting your time. You’re title should be relevant to each individual page content AND it needs to be catchy. Remember, blog titles also show up in the search results and within bookmarks. Use them wisely.
• Not to beat a dead horse, but you don’t even have a 301 redirect set-up on your blog. This means that when people type up www.domain.com and http://domain.com - they go to one place and the search engines don’t see two seperate sets of links. This is set, as part of your .htaccess file (any respectable blog designer, web designer, blog expert should know this).
• Your blog doesn’t house original content. Most of you likely publish your ezine, take that exact article and publish on your ezine archive within your website, then you publish it on your blog… all in the same day and call it good. Guess what? Google is likely not ever going to rank that content or your blog, because your getting dinged for duplicate content.
• Your URLs suck! If you don’t have your permalinks set to include the title of your, hopefully, keyword optimized title, what a waste! Check out the Diva post URLs… if your’s don’t look like that, your not taking advantage of a great SEO and SEM best practice. What a waste.
• You don’t actively respond to and monitor comments. It’s like having a one-sided conversation for your readers, that sucks. You’ll soon lose the interest of everyone in commenting, because savvy blogosphere surfers will notice. Comment, show them you’re active.
• You don’t invite repeat readers by how your content is structured. If you randomly just sit down and post a blog, based on something you found in the blogosphere or wherever you go for inspiration — you’re making this mistake. Do blog posts in “series” and “themes.” For example, do a “30 Days to a Better You” series, every post builds on the other and leads to the next. You reference them in each post. Focus on a theme, so that all posts within a certain time frame deal with the same topic.
• You don’t inter-link your posts or link anywhere for that matter. Not only are you missing a great SEO and SEM strategy, but you’re not encouraging your reader’s to “cop-a-squat” and stay awhile. If you do a post on one topic, and you have another post that is relevant, fit that into your post and link to it. If you’ve found something online, that is of value to your readers, link to it.

The list could go on and on… The point is, the little things add up — quickly. If you miss too many little things, you’re really just treading in water — eventually, your lack of moving forward in your online marketing efforts will exhaust you.

To Your Online Success,

Maria Reyes-McDavis

Blog Marketing Expert

Related Diva Posts:

• Is Your Blog Ready for Your Social Media Marketing Strategies?
• You Don’t “Do Follow” on your blog … That’s just wrong!
• Cross Blog Conversations are a big key to Blog Marketing!
• Blog Layout and Design - Keep It Simple!
• Bloggers, Get Into the Social Media Conversation… Carefully.

---