6 Reasons Why your Articles Do Not Reach the Top

Suddenly, an idea struck your mind, and you think it is so good that it might be able to help in the growth of your blog. You decided to write about it. You came up with 5 or 7 points after a few minutes of brainstorming. After completion of a few hours, you drafted an article, which you considered worth catching everybody’s attention.

You hit the publish button and you are expecting something wonderful to happen. The situtation is similar to an actor or actress waiting for the public response after their film’s first screening. You are nervous, but your expectations are high.

You are waiting and waiting, but you don’t see the spike in traffic. You are wondering what went wrong.

As bloggers, we consider ourselves as experts, but in reality, we may be far from being experts. Personally, we like our style of writing, but this style of writing may not be the most appropriate for the audience.

An audience wants crisp and informative pieces. They have little time to spend, so there is a high probability that they will scan through the article. If they like what they read, they will continue, or else, they will move to the next website.

The ability to grab attention is a challenge and is learnt only by experience. An educated audience would prefer articles which use a higher level of english. On the other hand, if they are not well versed with english language, a simple english article would be the best option.

A number of reasons can become a major factor turn off for your readers such as:

1. Using chat style writing

I have seen many amateur bloggers having the habit of writing in the form of chat. They tend to over use dots such as “she was coming………….. although…………” or use a lot of smiles ” I <3 it  .”  which might be ok when used in a chat but would be highly inappropriate when used in articles. I consider blogging as a semi formal way of writing. Use of chat style writing will make it very informal. Readers will not take the advice seriously which will defeat the purpose of writing such an article.

2. Inadequate Research

Nobody expects you to know everything, but when you are advising others as an expert, you have to be fully guarded. No one should be able to points fingers at you or cross question on the points you have mentioned in the article. This is possible, only if you research about the topic, read almost everything related to it.

Usually bloggers write before researching. It does not pose a problem, when you have a small reader base. But, as the reader base starts growing, a single comment which questions your authority, can be really detrimental for your reputation.

3. Placement of all the pieces

An article is like a jigsaw puzzle. All the parts of the article like paragraphs, titles, subtitles, images and videos are pieces which have to be put together in a logical fashion so that the jigsaw puzzle is complete.

The end result or the shape of the puzzle is upto you. If you screw it up, you will lose on the traffic it could have received. If you are able to construct a pleasing shape, you will ensure better engagement with the article, which would mean even better chances of spreading like a wildfire.

4. Gross Typographical and Grammatical Mistakes

You don’t have to be an expert writer to become a good blogger. On the contrary, an average writer might be a really good blogger. Writing is not a prerequisite, but having good writing skills is a definite advantage.

As an average writer, you cannot make the mistake of overlooking major typographical and grammatical mistakes. If a reader is not able to understand what you are trying to convey, then, the whole point of post is nullified. As a regular blog reader, I would ignore small mistakes. But, if i notice any major mistakes, I will not think highly of the blogger. So, your job is to remove all the errors from the article and publish only after proofreading multiple times.

5. Discontinuity in flow

When you write, you write in a flow. A good writer will be able to write an article in one single cycle. But, an amateur will take multiple cycles to complete an article. The resultant article will lack with the flow that an article should have. An engaged reader will remain engaged only if she is reading continuously. Any small break in the flow of reading will affect reader’s engagement which will further affect your blog’s overall traffic.

As a writer, your prime responsibility is to get a consistent flow in your article, or else you will rapidly lose reader’s interest. Most of the readers will leave the blog after reading only a small portion of the article which will be a real dampener for you.

6. Articles without any Opinion

Most people want to stay away from controversy, because they don’t want to get caught up in a mess. This is the major reason why bloggers skip stating their viewpoint in their blog posts. Writing articles without any particular opinion is a safe move. But, adding opinion is a must if you have to become an authority. Your thinking makes you what you are. If you don’t like something, or you feel strongly for something, then you should include your opinions in your articles. There will be disagreements. But, in the end, you will be respected because you are passionate and you stand for your beliefs.