7 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting up Your Wordpress Blog

Guest Post by: Jay Medina

There is little argument that Wordpress is one of the most popular bog platforms around. Its popularity is due in large part to the cost (free), and ease in which you can get a blog up and running in mere minutes.

As most web hosting companies will have a one-click install button for Wordpress, installing the platform on your own hosted server isn’t hard at all. However, things can get interesting after it’s installed if you don’t know what to look for. I’ll help you avoid 7 common mistakes made when setting up your self-hosted blog.

1. Not planning your look and feel ahead of time. – There are some things to consider when launching your blog. Plan these ahead of time, so that you can create a pleasant experience for your blog visitor. If your blog is inviting, easy to navigate and easy to read, you stand a better chance of gaining repeat visitors. Plan out your theme, your categories, and layout before you launch. It’s ok to make changes later, but always keep in mind the look and feel of your site is crucial to your success.

2. Not securing the blog from outside attack or intruders. – Just running Wordpress “out of the box” is not a good idea from a security standpoint. There are several plugins that can help secure your website that are available within your Wordpress dashboard. You’ll want to install plugins that protect against comment SPAM as well as other plugins that help lock down your installation.

3. Assuming traffic will just appear on its own. – It’s important to know that putting up a blog, even on a platform like Wordpress which Google seems very favorable to, will not guarantee visitors. For as much time as you spend writing really good, valuable content for your blog, it’s important to note that you may need to spend an equal amount of time evangelizing your blog to all who’ll listen. Then, when the amount of content gets to a healthy level and the visitor rate picks up steam, you can let momentum do its thing, while you ease off the amount of manual marketing you might need to do.

4. Running too many plugins. – Another really cool feature of Wordpress is the use of plugins to provide additional functionality. Some are really useful, and some are just unnecessary. Be very selective when using plugins. Each plugin takes up memory from your web server and increases the amount of code that your site runs when it’s being visited. That increases the time for your page or your entire site to load. In the web site game, the site with the slowest load times loses visitors. Use only what you need, and really think about whether that extra plugin will actually add anything to your site other than eye-candy.

5. Not being prepared for a traffic spike. – As your content starts to make a name for you, and your blog marketing efforts are starting to pay off, getting an article “Dugg” is really a huge validation of your hard work. Trouble is, those types of validations can kill your server, anger your web hosting company, and worse yet, can make you lose visitors. Plan for a traffic spike early by installing a web cache plugin for Wordpress (yes, I know I just said be selective about plugins). This will help with traffic spikes by serving your Wordpress pages faster and helping your web server to keep up with demand even under heavy loads. I encourage you to do this before you get that spike and it’s too late.

6. Monetizing too soon. – This is a very common mistake I see a lot of new bloggers make. It’s ok if your goal to put up a blog is to make money, just don’t put up ads too soon. Reason is, if you put all your time into the monetization, you’re taking time away from putting up really useful and valuable content. Without useful and valuable content, neither the search engines nor the human readers of your blog will see much value in your site and move along. Instead, make your first priority creating valuable and meaningful content. I would suggest monetizing only after you reach a minimum of 100 unique visitors per day.

7. Giving away all your traffic. – Have you seen this? When you go to a blog, is it full of links to other sites? How about the famous “Blogroll” feature built right into Wordpress? Get rid of it! Don’t link out unless you absolutely have to. You’ve worked way too hard to create really good content and told everyone about your blog. Then, when they get there, there are all sorts of reasons, called links and blogrolls, for your visitors to leave. Be greedy. Don’t give away links unless it really helps you to make a point in one of your articles, OR if it’s profitable for you to do so. Profitable meaning referring someone to a product or service that you can make money from. Of course, you won’t do that until you have at least 100 unique visitors, right?

If you’d like more help with your Wordpress blog by way of a listing of free templates, killer plugins that I use, and ways to increase traffic to your site, send an e-mail to WordpressTips@HelpfulAdvisor.com or visit HelpfulAdvisor.com