21 Reasons Why Readers Don’t Like Your Blog
Sadly, it takes just one mistake to undo years of good work. I am sure you have read thousands of posts on the net that have taught you the tricks and tips to get more traffic to your blog. Most of these tricks do work, however, what about those things which are preventing your blog from being a superhit?Are you wondering what is it, that you have done wrong?
Remember the reader and content is the king, not you. In this post I am going to talk about the Don’t Do things on your blog. Keep these in mind so that you avoid them at all costs. I am writing this post in a sarcastic tone, to make it easy to recall and more interesting to read. I have no intention of offending anyone, its just more interesting this way. Sometimes we all overlook the most obvious mistakes, which will only take a few minutes to correct, the idea of the post is to correct those mistakes.
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Here are the Don’ts for your blog
01. Don’t make leaving comments a difficult task
Oh, I am able to get many comments on my blog. Let me make it compulsory to login before people can comment, and while I am at it, let me add a puzzle which needs to be solved before visitors can post a comment. Since this is the first point, let me give you a hint, this is what you should NOT do. The visitors are kind enough to give their ideas and feedback, but they will surely go away if you make leaving a comment a difficult task. But, please keep in mind that all your users are not authentic. So, to protect your website from spam please have a security check image.
02. Don’t ban search engines from your blog
Why do Google and other search engines keep throwing people to my blog? I don’t want any visitors from them, I have had enough with them. So, let me find a way to block them. Easiest thing I can do it is by getting myself blacklisted: I can add too many non relevant keywords on my website, or get backlinks from unrelated sites. Ahh, there is an easier way, let me block Google from indexing my blog. This is how to do that:
- Save posts in a password protected directory
- Block the crawlers using the robot.txt file
- Use a noindex metatag
You must be thinking that you definitely havent done any of the above. But sometimes Blogspot and other sites might have that set as the default, so you need to undo it if that is the case. Find detailed information on how to block Google here.
03. Don’t resize user’s browser windows or have popups on your blog
Yes, I am an expert and I have the power to toy with visitors who come to my blog. I like to resize their browser windows or give them a 100 popups so that they know who is the boss.
04. Don’t have a 1 hour flash intro, don’t hide your real blog content
I want people to see a 1 hour movie about “How I drove away blog traffic” in HD Flash before they can start to read anything. I don’t care about your slow internet, it is compulsory to watch this and I can make no exceptions.
05. Don’t use blinking text or too many colors or anything irritating, hire a designer if necessary
Who says I need to be classy and not tacky? I believe in the little Javascript I know and I will have blinking text, underlined text, bold text, multi color words all over my blog.
06. Don’t write anonymously on your blog
I am an undercover agent. Sorry I want you to read my thoughts, but if you ask for who I am, I can’t tell you and blow my cover.
07. Don’t leave your comments unanswered
As I told you above, I am an undercover agent. Do you expect me to waste my time by answering the comments my readers leave? I do want them to read and leave comments, but I don’t think its worth my time to reply to them.
08. Don’t design your blog for only one web browser
I want my blog to be read in only one browser, and if you want to read it please download that browser and use it for only my blog. If you open it in any other browser, you will see all jumbled up links and text. Also, I couldn’t take out the time and effort to make it compatible with all the browsers.
09. Don’t try to cheat the visitor and have a page full of keywords
I know SEO pretty well, and I have figured out how I can get my page to the top on Google. How does it matter if that text is of no use to the visitor, and its just a collection of keywords nothing more. I am happy that I have no readers, but am on the first page of Google. I don’t want you to visit my blog ever again.
10. Don’t leave your posts undated
Hmm, I forgot to add a date column on my posts. Maybe, you can keep a track of it on your calendar, they are very cheap.
11. Don’t make it hard for users to navigate your blog
I have a Google search on my blog. If you want to find something please use the search, or you can try reading each post and finding what you need. Actually there wasn’t enough space left on the page to have navigating systems like labels, archives, categories, or even drop down boxes.
12. Don’t use to many pictures etc. which increase the loading time of your blog
Everybody loves more designs and features. Who cares if it takes a couple of minutes to load the page? Yes, I know that more than half of the world have a slow internet connection, but I think they can wait it to load and not get irritated and leave.
I would like to mention a point here which is important: Sometimes you would need to use a lot of images in a post, and you cant help it. In that case please make the images as small in size as possible, without sacrificing the quality. These points can help you do that:
- Use the ‘save as web’ feature of photoshop to compress images
- An online website compresses your images for free, without compromising on the quality. Smush.it to compress your website images
13. Don’t force your readers to open a dictionary, they wont
Although my blog isnt about English literature I make it a point to use as many hard words as possible. I know that most readers wont know them already, but they can always open a dictionary in the new tab.
14. Don’t use a very famous wordpress or blogger theme
I searched for a few themes to make my blog look good for the users. I used the best looking ones and somehow they turned out to be the most used too. So, now I have a blog that looks exactly the same like thousands out there, but it does look great J.
15. Don’t use centre aligned text, maybe use it for headers
It looks a little odd that humans read text from left to right, but that my blog has all centred text with a lot of white spaces. But I guess, it looks good to me, so who cares about what humans want.
16. Don’t design your website as a screenshot
Visitors tend to change many things to suit how they like to read. They might change text size on the page, have a lower resolution screen, might have different browser sizes too. Ahh, although I know this, but I am too lazy and busy to make my website adapt to these visitor needs.
17. Don’t forget to design your blog footer
What? Does anyone scroll all the way down to see the footer? Okay, not many but some of your readers will do that. It might be a good idea to use it like a sidebar of your blog, and have links to most read posts, some site navigation, social media integration, or recent comments. But don’t assume everyone will read it and skip the sidebar. Hmm, good advice but sorry I am too busy to put in that effort.
18. Don’t use similar color for text and background, or selected text and background
Ofcourse, I have chosen a different color for my background and text, do you think I am stupid? But Oh, I forgot to check how does the text look when people select it with their mouse.
19. Don’t forget to present email, RSS subscriptions upfront
I have put an email and RSS subscription at the bottom right of my page, where there is little chance that anyone will find it. I know that generally people put it at the top of sidebars, so that its easy to spot for the readers, but I don’t want to convert my readers to subscribers.
20. Don’t forget the power that social media sites have
I know that millions of people use social media sites like Digg, Delicious to browse for what they want to read. Ahh, but its too much effort to integrate them into my blog posts.
21. Don’t forget to have favicons and logos to identify your blog
I found these two links on how to make a logo and a favicon. But I don’t think its important that my blog has an identity and recognition on the web, so I didn’t go through them. Maybe you should go through them if you care for readers to remember you, I don’t, remember I am an undercover agent :P.
So, just to remind you all once again, this was a sarcastic post, and you should keep this in mind at all times: Reader is the king.
Find Something Missing?
While Assembling above tips, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other useful Reasons Why Readers Don’t Like Your Blog. Feel free to share it with us.
Fantastic article and a lot of great information!
Great article. I love the use of repetition and the satirical language.
Wonderful list.
Where did you get the list/check images for the browsers/social icons?
Interesting post. Now I feel the need to head back to my blog site and evaluate how things are looking and set up. Thank you for the ideas.
Rebecca
Thanks for the article, and for the blog, i like it.
Kind regards,
jopicar
Thanks a lot for your encouraging comments everyone.
As Rebecca rightly said, that she needs to go back to her blog and check out a few things that might be listed here. That was precisely the idea of this post, to have a “Dont do Checklist”.
I would also encourage you all to post your own dont do things or thing, which you take care not to do at all costs. This will be a great addition to the post, and a great help to all the readers including us.
MnVn
Nice list, thanks!
@ Elizabeth – it’s really necessary to know the roots of writing. I agree when you saying that we (the writers) have to put ourselves in the reader’s shoes as i personally admit that i also want a meaningful comment back when I’m visiting and commenting on others post.
@ ZuDfunck – Thanks for the feedback…We also thinking of writing about essential Pro tips for blogs and make them useful for you real soon.
Nice tips here
Nice recomendations, may be some day i will apply it to my blog ^^
Elizabeth, I agree with you and I feel same way when I visit some very popular blogs. On most of them I never get a reply for my queries or concerns. I understand developers/authors are busy in this economy crisis but a few mins is more then enough to reply on their own posts. :)
You did raise a valid point. :)
and BTW you are welcome here.
Keli lol :)
We thought simple math would be very easy for visitors. We could have used image captcha to protect us from spam but sometimes these images become too difficult to read.
Funny but writer – me dont have that problem
Nice tips to improve website usability and traffic.
Thanks guys.
Nice post. I agree with everything on here.
I’ve been to too many websites where the author never responded to comments. I found it pretty rude each time; I’m taking some time out of my day to read your blog and to start a conversation with you, so you should at least comment back.
On the other hand, I’ve been to several blogs where the author not only replied to my comment but also emailed me to welcome me to their blog. That made me feel very welcome and I’ve been a regular reader since.
I’ve also been to many websites where I had to register and log in to leave a comment. Now, I can sort of understand this, because we all want to have a good idea of how many readers we have. However, we can check those numbers by looking at our site stats or our feed stats. I don’t want to register to your site unless I’m going to be a heavy user. Most times, I don’t bother registering, so my comment never gets posted.
It’s easy to forget these things, though, but we — especially from a designer’s point of view — have to put ourselves in the reader’s shoes. (:
Here’s something I recommend not doing on any website, be it a blog or a site selling a product: do not design the entire site in Flash. I cannot stress enough how bad this is for your visitors.
Here is a perfect example: A colleague of mine was hired for some freelance work. She was to redesign a site that someone else had already built, but first she had to update the old site for the client. She went to visit the original design firm’s website, which was entirely built in Flash. She was running on Windows XP and wireless internet, which is normally pretty fast on her network. The site took at least twenty minutes to load, and the only reason she waited for it to load was because she wanted to get a feel for the original designers before diving into the project.
I can only imagine how many clients they lost — perhaps people with slower networks — because of their Flash website.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Flash and I think it can be great for a website, but only in small doses. It kills your SEO, too; Google and other search engine robots can’t read ActionScript.
Lot of good things here
Mostly newbie oriented
How ’bout Pro Tips at some point?
ZuD
i should follow those things :)
but i still difficult to give comments here, sometimes i forget the simple calculations you give here :D
I loved the piece. I’m just trying to get people to comment on my blog. Asking questions, encouraging comments. I will look at my blog again to see what mistakes I am making.
Great article…going to work on 17 and 21 right now :) Question though…Are you breaking your first rule by making me do math?
Nice Tips.
I would try to follow all those tips to make my blog better. Till now I didn’t have any footer to my blog. I have to fix it first. Any way I came to know many things that how best a blog can be optimized.
Thank you so much
@Lisa – yes the comments are an essential part of a blog which make it interactive. You will find that when people start to interact on your blog, they are bound to come back more often than not. All the best, let me know if we at IS can help you in any way
@lawrence77- hehe I am sure that more than half the users here cant post comments here due to that maths problem:P Ofcourse I am kidding, and since I dont know maths I surely cant say how much is half :D
@ Sankar- As i have mentioned a footer is an important part of the blog, which many people tend to overlook since its located at the very bottom of the blog; but once you set it up it will help your design, users, readability and in SEO too
Thanks all for commenting
MnVn
Hey man!
Great post! I love to believe that my blog does follow all these guidelines…
But yeah… I often stumble across unreadable blogs, or un-loadable blogs or simply “My Eyes Just Got Killed” blogs…
btw, didn’t you just say to not make commenting too hard?
lol
Alex Sol
Great articles and tips. Yes as a visitor I hate intros – because I want to see directly the real content of the blog. Giving link credits for your commenters makes them happy. That’s why avoiding their links is a no no. Thanks for the nice list.
lol :D Alex. BTW is this your blog? blog.extra-paycheck.com
You have nice blog. Interesting posts. Keep posting man. You are doing a great job there.
Very nice and helpful information! thanks
Seriously, you are kinda blogger that dont just write crap. this is very helpful.
It all comes down to the customer service statistic that 9 out of 10 people whwho don’t like something won’t tell you about it, they just won’t come back. This alone makes it worthwhile going through each of these pointers and analysing my blog against them. Just at first glance it seems like I need to do a bit of work on it. This is a keeper list…Thank you!
I totally agree with Elizabeth.
It’s not wise to ever have your website in All Flash. Search engines can’t read Flash Animation. If they did, they would be stuck in an endless loop of actionscipt and scenes.
It’s always best to use Flash to accent your website. I have built all Flash websites for clients before, but inform them it wouldn’t be Search Engine friendly if we do that, they almost always heed my advice.
The only people I believe an all Flash website would be fine for is Mega Celebrities that have a Built-In fan base of millions of fans, who will find and visit their website regardless. But even at that, search engines wouldn’t be able to recognize when new content has been added.
http://twitter.com/Cheavor
Thanks for this great tips. I`m thinking of a rebuild of my homepage with a blog and shop so this is a great help and guideline.
Belive it or not, i was amazed to see that I had all those things right just before the official launch of my new webiste!
Anyway, good things to check are here.
Keep up the good work!
I applaud your commitment to giving out great information. Easy to read, engaging and spot on! Well done
A great, well-written article. I’ll be sending it to all my pals. Thanks
What can I say? this post made me smile. I am still a fairly new blogger and have to add more items to have my blog at the point I want it, but I really enjoyed these tips. I’ve learned that comments come in time. There are times I don’t catch comments until a few days later. Now that I’ve found the errors of my ways, I have my system in check. One of these days, I’d love to know how you did this comment form. Thanks again for the valuable information.
“Don’t design your blog for only one web browser” Is all well enough to say, but how can you validate all the major browsers for your blog?
Besides of course downloading and installing all the browsers that is.
Very interesting posting, thanks.
Great to read this information.I love learning new things. Especially if is related to making my readers happy.
Thamk you;
Adriana
I like the way you listed all tips for improving blog. I will try to implement some of them on my blog too.
pretty good.. thanks.!
Thanks for the List and Knowledge!
very usful blog tips. i will sure gain more knowledge here. and i like thissite u always respond back to meaingful comments.
now iam under work for ma blog.
nice article and great thanks visit my blog let make cool cash and say no to poverty
be riher
Hey Sherman, what a prolific article, I recommend not handling everything on your own, and I also recommend not planning out your content, just blasting through blog post after post not making a valid interesting point.
What a concept just to blog away about anything and hope you don’t get flamed in the process
thank alot for this loaded article,nice time be richer and have fun
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Just one more ‘thank you’ for the article. It is valuable and useful for me.
I would suggest avoiding an overly complicated design as well. make it simple, clean, and sharp… don’t forget, less is more.
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Excellent tips but I am not sure that making comment difficult by adding spammer protection tool an issue as there are a lot of smart spambots now
You forgot one…don’t put annoying ad banners in the right hand column of the page that encourage people to click them and thus be taken away from your blog without any warning that they will be taken away to some site that wants to sell them something. Oh wait, you seem to be doing that on this site…
Great list! Yep, blogs should have at least a three-column footer! Thumbs up!
That was an excellent article. My favorite part was how you advised “not” to post random things on your blog if you’re using it for business purposes.
If your blog is for fun, like a journal, do what you want. For professionals, your readers will lose interest thinking it has nothing to do with what they want to learn.
Consistent content is very important. People often forget to distribute consistent content.
You’re correct with loading time of people’s blogs. I have a friend’s myspace that makes people’s computers crash, because it takes so long to load.
Keep in mind you can have a video blog, picture blog, text blog, all different, that way loading time isn’t an option. Don’t forget about podcast blog too.
Once again, excellent post, thanks.
William Whitlow
Home Business On Line Marketer
http://www.williamwhitlow.com
Nice points.
Great List. Although regarding point number 1 I would stick with the image captcha the math text question is not that safe
I found a spelling error in #12: in the title, “to” should be “too”. Great Do’s and Don’ts for upkeeping a blog. Thank you!
Adam
很不错啊~~ 学习了~~ 不过自己的博客也没时间去管了~~~
Another reason why people don’t like your blog and commenting on your blog as blog author never return visit somebody else blog who already leave comment on your!
Btw, nice post!
Great POst and very useful site
Thx
I find #10 very interesting… Don’t leave your posts undated. Why? Because I can’t find a date anywhere next to your post. The only dates I see are on these comments.
funny… you dont have the last point on your blog :P
All great points bar one.
Your reference to not using language which necessitates dictionary use. You shouldn’t condone dumbing down language. Unless of course, you are after lowest common denominator content.
I think that it’s not really about design or in using old stuff (90’s design websites). I really believe that your blog will rock and attract many people if you talk about fresh news between talking of your passions. I think that if you mix articles about stuff ou like and the news, what’s happening in the world in making ppl reacting and commenting, you’ll get more and more visitors. That’s just my opinion.
Thanks
Thanks for sharing the tut with me/us. It was beautifully described. Well done. Looking forward for more tuts from you!
I think if you find a niche that your truly passionate about or willing to learn more about then the blog just unfolds on its own.
It’s easy to write about something you love…and believe me there are people out there that share the same interest.
Go with what you know.
thanks for this informations
Very nice tips thank you.
Really usefull. read some other articles. but this is so simple and well explained. cheers
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing
Great article! I’m working on my first blog and still learning the ropes, a lot of this information will def be useful. I’m already thinking of changes that I should make (i.e. my theme, enormous pics etc.).
very informative article.
learnt a lot from it
Well written and all round a very fantastic article and a lots of great pointers and information
Cheers
Don
Great Info.
Thanks so much!!!!!
PS. yeah, what’s up with those puzzle comment things?
Excelent article, worth reading more than once, especially item 18, youll be surprised how difficult it is to read if you get this one wrong.
i like your post.. nice post bro..
Really very nice to know, I will keep in mind :)
Thank you!
sarcastic but very true, nice article! :D made me lol
I am going to Spain for three months to live with a host family and teach english as a second language. Then, I am going backpacking through Morocco, the UK, Europe, and Israel for 7 months. This is my college gap year. I am wanting to start a travel blog though – how do you really make a blog stand out? Anyone have any cool ideas? Or a blog site they recommend? I am thinking about making one with word press.
I think that creating a travel blog site is free,but you can also search through internet for travel blog sites.There’s a lot of interesting ideas will you learn from their blog.
I’m learning to design my web and find this article very useful. I will go back again and again to check the list on the Don’t.
Thank you
You hit the nail right on the head there. Couldn’t have said it any better.
Thank you for these quick guidelines to follow. I think they’re very important. I will keep them in mind.
Hello There. I discovered your weblog the use of msn. This is a very well written article.
I’ll make sure to bookmark it and come back to learn extra of your helpful info.
Thanks for the post. I will definitely return.
What an excellent list point points to avoid for any blog. I have to agree about not choosing a theme everyone else has picked. You need to be as unique as you can for branding purposes so you can stand out amongst the crowd.