3 Mistakes I've Made!
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to write this post so that people can learn from 3 of my mistakes that I have made whilst building my site.
1) Little Content
When I first started to build my site some of my posts weren't as long as they really should have been. I wouldn't call this a mistake really but it certainly did hurt my ranking.
As my site grew I became more confident as a writer and so I would touch up old posts. Rarely will I now write as little as 1500 words, often it will be at least 2000.
2) Too Many Affiliate Links
This goes hand in hand with my first mistake. I was too keen to make a sale that I did stuff too many of these links in my post.
The Google update known as Fred hurt me hard, and so it has taken me a while to gain Google's trust for my ranking to climb again.
3) Oversized Pictures
I learned early on when I started here that you need to have a site that is visually appealing. And the larger the size the better so that you catch the reader's eyes.
You don't want small pictures on your site, you want something that will stretch the length of the page.
When I say oversize pictures I am talking about file size. I use Photoshop and didn't realize until recently that you can save your pictures under the option Save For The Web.
This option can dramatically reduce the picture's file size. I have spent about 6 hours over the last 3 nights optimizing my pictures.
I wish I hadn't known this 18 months and 189 posts earlier, but at least I do know.
The reason why this is important is because by doing this my site will now load quicker for visitors. They will stick around longer on my site and click through other pages.
This will obviously help my bounce rate and thus my ranking. So it all works together.
Thank you for reading and I hope you learn from my mistakes.
Owain
Recent Comments
25
Thanks Owain, I hope you are not among those who jump lessons and do not read other peoples posts.
Reading other peoples article has helped me a lot because these supplement what Kyle and co could not teach in their tutorial. It from Boomer89 that I read article about images and resizing which has been helping me as lon as images are concerned.
But good a thing you called yourself back in time.
Congratulations for your new discovery and thank you for sharing
I followed and completed the course. I didn't everything that it asked me to do. Problem is that once you complete the course you are still learning. And there is opportunity for mistakes to be made.
I just hope that I haven't made anymore mistakes that will be detrimental to my site.
You Right Owain, my own mistakes are even worst than yours sometimes lol. We continue to learn everyday.
Cheers
You're welcome. Even after you complete the course you will find that you are still learning.
Yes, Owain, I have made these same mistakes plus many more! Thanks for the helpful reminder:)
Blessings:)
Suzi
You're welcome Suzi. There is just so much that we can learn as an affiliate marketer. But we will not learn these things if we do not try.
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Great post Owain, we all make those mistakes at some point and learn from them later as we progress with WA.
Little content was my problem at first, but my niche is more visual so it wasn't easy to write. It's a different story now.
I'm glad you are past those 3 mistakes and doing well :)
Yep, just got past that last mistake now about the file sizes of my pictures.
The first problem I just learned as I developed as a writer. But I feel the second and third problems have hit me hard with Google.
Hi Owain,
Thank you for this post. It provides good lessons for me as i work on my first website.
Best wishes
Lewa
You're welcome Lewa. As I've gained a lot of knowledge while building my site I thought that I would share it with you all.
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Yes I have made those mistakes too and spent much time resizing my images. I definitely need to write longer content for some posts. My mistake with the affiliate links is that I added them too early. Getting traffic is key and I think I needed that before starting with affiliate links.
I didn't start with reviews until quite a while after setting up my site. But I went hard with it and I paid the price.