The 5 Reasons Why Your Content Sucks

So, you’ve set up a blog. You registered a domain that tells the world what your blog is about, and maybe you’ve even hired a professional to design your templates for you. Your blog looks as slick as possible, and yet, you’re still not getting traffic.

There’s one reason that’s very likely to be the problem – your content just plain sucks.

You see, when you start a blog, you have as much chance as anyone to get traffic to your site. However, if that traffic arrives there, and finds nothing even vaguely useful or interesting, then they’re not likely to return. This is why your traffic suffers. People are spending a few seconds on your blog, deciding they’re not interested, and leaving, never to return.

If you want to rectify the problem, and rebuild your traffic, you need to understand why your content sucks. Here are our top five reasons.

1. You Have Nothing New to Say (Or Nothing at All)

Too many bloggers rehash everything they’ve seen on other websites or blogs. What’s worse even than that though are bloggers who really have nothing to say. Find something that YOU would be interested in reading about, before you just write whatever pops into your head. If you’d be interested, other people will be too.

2. You Think Research Is Something Other People Do

Even if you have something great to write about, you still have to research. Giving people the wrong information is a cardinal sin to bloggers, so make sure that you always have all your facts straight. If not, at best, your readers will think you’re a joke. At worst, you could open yourself up for lawsuits. Just avoid it, and do your research before you write and post.

3. Your Writing Style Has All the Sex Appeal of Damp Newspaper

Come on! People want to read blogs that are funny, exciting or interesting. If your posts are dull, gray, and loaded with technical jargon and high brow literary style prose, no one will want to read them! Write as if you were talking to a friend, and you should find people more willing to read your content.

4. You Don’t Believe In Checking Spelling and Grammar

You don’t have to be a potential Pulitzer Prize winning writer to have a great blog. But your content has to make sense. If your posts are garbled, make no sense, and are littered with spelling and grammar mistakes, you make it hard for your readers to finish them. Make sure you check your spelling and grammar and that you preview your post before you upload it.

5. Paragraphs, Lists and Subheadings are Foreign Territory to You

You can be the best writer in the world, and have the most interesting content around. However, if it’s all presented in one solid block of text, I can guarantee you, no one will read it. Break your content up, and make it scannable by using bullets and numbered lists, breaking text into paragraphs, and using subheadings. Make it easy for people to read your content, and they’re more likely to do just that.

Once upon a time, the Internet was a small, elite place. There was even a website that used to list all the new sites on the fledgling World Wide Web. These days, however, it’s less like a small village, and more like a gigantic city, with people from around the world. People have choices about what they follow online, and that means that now, more than ever, your content needs to be great.

Even though the Internet may seem to have an anything goes policy, there are some strict unwritten rules about what makes a good site or blog. The good news is that you, and anybody else, can learn those rules, and apply them to your blog to increase its popularity.

Of course, you still have to have something interesting to say, but understanding the technicalities can help ensure that there are people who will listen. So before you blindly launch your blog or website, take the time to learn the rules. It’ll make building a successful blog a whole lot easier.