I’m getting next week’s blog challenge out of the way, because next week I know I need (for my own mental health) to write a reflection on 10 years without my brother.

The prompt is “Share some blogging mistakes you have made”. Well, I didn’t know blogging had mistakes, so I went to Google to find a comprehensive list of mistakes. I struck gold with the article “103 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid (To Get Results in 2025)” by Ankit Singla. So we’ll go through his list and see what strikes my fancy.

Blogging Mistakes

1. Publishing duplicate content
2. Using a generic writing style
3. Writing intros that are too long — firm believer is succinct.
4. Not creating headlines with a target keyword in mind — I like to be creative in my titles when I can, so hopefully not a mistake I make.
5. Using fluff to increase word count — I don’t give myself a word count on my blogs; when I’m done, I shut up and hit “publish”.
6. Writing hard-to-read content — egads, I hope not.
7. Referring to outdated stats
8. Alienating certain readers — OK, might do that; but if I do, they probably didn’t belong in my audience anyway.
9. Encouraging your audience to take sides –my opinion is my own; y’all do you.
10. Focusing on products rather than your audience’s problems
11. Relying only on stock photos
12. Guessing what your readers like
13. Publishing thin content — maybe? I don’t know, man, I just blabber about what is on my mind and sometimes it’s a pretty shallow pool.
14. Not using subheadings
15. Taking readers to unrelated pages
16. Leaving readers with unanswered questions –my apologies if I do, but in my defense, I, too, don’t have the answers at that point.
17. Redundancy
18. Being too lazy to proofread and edit –I’d have to turn in my English teacher card.
19. Publishing incomplete or unfinished posts — OK, yesterday I forgot to add a title before I hit “publish”, but that is fixed now!
20. Not using CTAs — considering I just had to Google what a CTA is, yeah, I don’t use them.
21. Not creating evergreen content — not really my purpose
22. Attacking your competitors’ reputation
23. Creating only text-based content — OK, sorry–sometimes I forget to go find a picture from my past.
24. Rushing blog posts just to meet a schedule
25. You don’t fact-check
26. Lacking confidence in your own value propositions
27. Inconsistency with content quality and post frequency — doubt that’s going to change; chronic conditions are unpredictable.
28. Not promoting content on social media — not really trying to reach the masses here.
29. Not promoting content at all –see above
30. Not building an email list — above, see it
31. Sending spam
32. Being over promotional
33. You don’t care about analytics — you got me there.
34. Ignoring your audience (not building a community) — Welcome, followers; hope you enjoy your time here.
35. Turning down invitations
36. Using hard-to-read fonts
37. Sticking with a shared hosting plan
38. Not backing up
39. Not backing up before an update
40. Not fixing broken page elements
41. Going for looks over performance
42. Making complicated menus
43. Editing your website’s parent theme
44. Building for desktop users only
45. Using a hard-to-remember domain
46. Adding clickable elements too close together
47. Not updating your blogging platform — Don’t even know what this means, so sure.
48. Keeping demo content
49. Picking a theme that doesn’t match your niche
50. Picking themes overloaded with unnecessary features
51. Implementing total web redesigns without a plan
52. Sticking with “admin” as your username
53. Using too many plugins
54. Downloading WordPress resources from untrusted sites
55. Enabling your site to be indexed while under construction
56. Forgetting to enable site indexing after site changes are finished
57. Not adding internal links
58. Relying purely on SEO
59. Not fixing broken links
60. Not compressing images –I just slap them in there.
61. Spamming links
62. Leaving outbound links to open in the same tab
63. Optimizing different pages for the same keywords
64. Not attracting natural backlinks
65. Not planning your keywords
66. Not having an SSL certificate — I don’t even what that means
67. Using long page URL slugs
68. Using auto-generated meta descriptions
69. Forcing affiliate links into content
70. Targeting a broad niche
71. Choosing a niche just because it’s popular
72. Using unsafe passwords
73. Writing 24/7
74. Hiding your face (unless you’re blogging anonymously) — to be fair, I am technically in the profile picture; I just heavily edited cat features into it cuz I go by Mamacat online.
75. Ignoring your competitors — yep, you got me here; not trying to win any prizes
76. You go stagnant for months
77. Pushing a sale too early
78. Not having content categories — maybe I should work on that
79. Displaying too many ads
80. Chasing a “get-rich-quick” strategy
81. You don’t set clear goals — I’m not competitive, so of course there are no goals
82. You’re not learning — I am learning 24/7, thank you very much
83. Ignoring customers go after their first purchase
84. Letting leads go after they abandon product pages or their cart — WAIT–I could be selling merch?!
85. Being a copycat blogger
86. Multitasking
87. Making unrealistic promises
88. Jumping into blogging without a monetization plan — never really thought about making money off of my little corner of the web
89. Staying in your comfort zone — this IS my comfort zone
90. Selling irrelevant affiliate products
91. Mishandling your blog income
92. Hotlinking images
93. “Stealing” content assets from other sites
94. Not protecting your content from being copied
95. Being vulnerable to distractions
96. Not getting help when you need it
97. Giving up (after a few months of no results)
98. Not caring about your privacy
99. Not creating a style guide
100. Buying tools without research
101. Trying to be perfect (being afraid of mistakes)
102. Automatically approving all comments
103. Overpaying for tools

Alright, final tally is 21 mistakes–I’ll take it. Considering I don’t know what half of these mean, that’s fair.

See ya next week!