7 Blog Challenges and how to fix them

Blog challenges are common to all bloggers and website owners. While starting blogs is easy, running, maintaining, and adding to your blog requires hard work with plenty of problems and issues that might arise.

But don’t worry! We’ll provide ways to resolve these challenges and help you create a vibrant, successful blog that aligns with your personal or professional goals.

Let’s dive in!

Blog Challenges: Table of Contents

Lack of blog post ideas

Coming up with engaging content on a regular basis can be tough. I’ve shared tips before on how to never run out of blog ideas. Let me summarize my advice below, but please read the article for more details.

Here are some strategies to spark your creativity:

• Keep a list of ideas
• Use keyword research tools
• Write about your passions and interests
• Explore topics related to your previous content
• Try different digital content formats (podcasts, video, etc.)
• Stay current with your industry or niche (follow trends, news and opinions)
• Use AI to generate new blog ideas

I do recommend becoming familiar with AI tools. If you are happy typing prompts to an AI, then start chatting with ChatGPT, it’s free. You can use this free AI to help you with common copywriting tasks. Read this article for more information: ChatGPT prompts for Copywriters.

I’ve also written reviews for two AI websites with more user-friendly interfaces: Copy.AI Review and Article Forge Review.

AI tools are incredibly useful for bloggers and content creators. Take some time to find one you are comfortable using – they can truly help you with your content, blog ideas, and proofreading for spelling and grammar mistakes.

Finding the perfect niche

One of the biggest challenges for a new blogger is finding a niche that they are passionate about. Afterall, you will need to spend a great deal of time writing content for your niche, you should make it something you genuinely care about. Readers can tell whether you care about the content you write or not.

Think about various niches and see which ones resonate with you. For more help on deciding on your perfect niche, read this article: The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Perfect SEO Niches for Your Business or Blog.

Use competition research to find out what keywords you potential competitors are using. Are they paying for ads? What countries, regions, demographics are they targeting?

Find out more about competition research here: Dominate Your Niche with Comprehensive Competitive Content Analysis

Low Traffic

Attracting new visitors and growing your readership can be challenging with the amount of online competition and the constantly changing search algorithms.

Ensure your content is people-first, by that I mean it’s written primarily for your readership and afterwards enhanced to optimize for search engines. Too much content is focused on optimizing for search engines rather than providing helpful, informative and relevant content for readers.

Other ways to increase your traffic:

• promote your content on social media, include a link to your blog article
• consider creating an email newsletter readers can sign up to
• repurpose content into different formats (video, podcasts, etc.)
• add plenty of internal links to make navigation between your content easier
• add relevant high quality images to make your content more visually interesting
• add external links to sources or to provide more information to readers
• engage with your audience on social media or comments on your blog
• collaborate with experts or well known people in your niche

Be patient, it takes a while for a blog to become established and receive significant search traffic.

Blog makes no money

There are different ways to make money from your blog. Explore some of the methods to see what works best for you, your blog and your niche.

Possible ways to make money are:

• Ads, for example Google AdSense
• Sponsored content
• Affiliate marketing (either as an affiliate or a merchant), for example ShareASale
• Sell physical products or digital products on your website
• Offer consulting, coaching, mentoring or freelance services on your website
• Host events on your blog where people can sample your products (wine tasting, food sampling, networking, etc.)
• Tips/Donations – add a tip jar to your blog

There are many different ways to make money from your blog. You can mix and match multiple of these options, or others, to see what gains traction with your readers.

Lack of consistency in posting

You will need to consistently produce plenty of content for you blog to get onto the first page of Google. No matter how well your articles are written, some will do well and others will not get any traction.

Use a process for generating content so you know what the next step is, e.g.

• brainstorm for ideas (use a keyword discovery tool and/or AI tools)
• Write a title and outline the article (add subheadings)
• Write each section
• Add images (ensure they are compressed and properly sized)
• Add internal and external links
• Add bullet points and bolded sections to make the content more visually appealing
• Add a table of contents
• Proofread your content to fix any spelling or grammar mistakes
• Publish and promote on social media

As you can see, there are many steps involved in producing each piece of content. Once you are used to producing content each step becomes easier to do.

Technical problems

Even with great content and well-chosen keywords you can still face ranking problems if your website has unresolved technical issues.

Let’s take a look at some of the technical issues you need to be aware of:

Site-wide Issues:

• Slow Website: Check if your hosting plan is suitable, and consider upgrading or changing your hosting provider if necessary.
• Lack of Mobile Friendliness: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and functions well on mobile devices.
• Slow-loading Images: Compress and properly size all images to improve loading speed.
• Use a fast, lightweight theme
• Moderate Plugin Usage: Be cautious not to overload your website with too many plugins.
• Readability Concerns: Ensure fonts are appropriately sized for all audiences, and use high-contrast colors for easy reading.

Individual Blog Pages Issues:

• Broken Links: Check for broken links on your blog pages and fix them.
• Spelling Mistakes: Review your content for spelling errors and correct them.
• Grammar Mistakes: Take time to proofread and correct any grammar mistakes.
• Crawlability: Ensure your pages are crawlable and not set to “noindex” in meta tags or disallowed in robots.txt. (What is robots.txt?)
• Meta Description Missing: Add a meta description for each article to improve search engine results.

By addressing these technical issues, you can improve your website’s performance and ranking.

To check your website is mobile friendly use Google’s mobile friendly test:

For on-page SEO issues, such as missing meta descriptions or pages not being crawlable, an SEO plugin can come to the rescue. There are several SEO plugins available on the market, ranging from Yoast to RankChecker. However, my personal favorite, and the plugin I use on this site, is All in One SEO.

When it comes to fast and lightweight themes for WordPress websites, GeneratePress is my top choice. I’ve been using it on this website and find it easy to use and customize.

For image compression, formatting and scaling I recommend Imagify. It’s available both as a website and as a WordPress plugin which integrates seamlessly with your editor. It’s free to use for upto 20MB of images a month.

If your image needs exceed the free quota, don’t worry! Imagify offers a convenient paid service for additional usage. With Imagify, you can ensure your website’s images are optimized for blazing fast loading times.

Doubt and self-criticism

It’s natural to have doubts and to self criticise. Especially if you are new to blogging and running a website. Here are some ways a new blogger can overcome doubt and self-criticism:

1. Take a break: Don’t try to finish an article in one sitting. Go for a walk, brew yourself some coffee or just relax. Come back to the task refreshed and ready to go.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others: What others are doing doesn’t matter. Focus on improving your skills daily, it will make an enormous difference over time.
3. Focus on what you can give: Shift your mindset from self-doubt to a more positive and giving attitude. Think of what your can give your audience in terms of skills, experience or opinion.
4. Embrace your fears: Successful people feel fear, but go ahead and do the work anyway. This can help you overcome self-doubt and take action towards your goals.
5. Acknowledge your self-doubts and respond to them: Identify your self-doubts and respond to them with positive affirmations. This can help you manage your doubts and build self-confidence.
6. Remember why you started: Reflect on why you started blogging in the first place. Is it to become financially free or location independent? Is to write about a topic your are passionate about?
7. Forget the numbers: Don’t focus too much on the impressions, clicks and page views. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content and building a community around your blog. Focus on the process and the results will take care of themselves.
8. Challenge negative self-talk: We are all guilty of negative self-talk from time to time. This can help you reframe your mindset and build self-confidence.

By implementing these strategies and focusing on building self-confidence, you can overcome doubt and achieve your goals as a blogger.

Remember self-doubt and self-criticism are common among bloggers, especially if you are new to blogging.

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this article useful. Here is a quick recap of the blog challenges discussed above:

• Lack of blog ideas
• Difficulty finding the perfect niche
• Low traffic
• Blog makes no money
• Lack on consistency in posting content
• Technical problems

All bloggers go through these challenges when starting. As your skills improve you will gradually improve your content, your processes and your money making abilities.

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