1. Don’t buy your own domain name and hosting account. At about ten dollars a year, those services are a complete rip-off! Nothing says professional like presenting your content on a free theme at Blogger.com or WordPress.com.
2. Don’t spend time writing engaging, keyword-rich headlines in your post titles. Google searchers will find your blog based on the power of intention and your inner beauty, not your post titles which show up in the results pages of search engines! It’s not like anyone thinks the words in post titles are the most important element of a blog’s SEO strategy or anything.
3. Write about subjects well-suited for Facebook updates. Everyone loves reading about what you did last weekend and how long the lines were at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Oh, the horror!
4. Don’t do keyword research. Performing keyword research with tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and Wordze is for get-rich-quick schemers and probloggers like Darren Rowse, Aaron Wall, and Brian Clark, not for “little old me.” Why would you want to write about the keyword phrases people are searching for anyway?
5. Don’t spend time researching topics to write high-quality, useful, unique content. People who make money online don’t treat it like a job! It’s better to just write your blog posts quickly between re-runs of the Golden Girls, Little House on the Prairie, and Oprah. Did you hear she has her own network?
6. Don’t post frequently or on a regular basis. The thrill of being one of your blog readers is in the anticipation!
7. Copy and republish your favorite blog posts from other blogs. There’s a reason those other bloggers are so successful, and you might as well copy their work so you can reap the benefits! All that copying is helping you improve your writing skills and besides, Google doesn’t notice duplicate copy.
8. Don’t work on a linkbuilding campaign. Linkbuilding is for people who don’t have time to keep up with the Golden Girls. If people don’t type in the exact urls to your blog posts, they don’t deserve to read them! Except Mom. She’ll always be your number one bookmarker.
9. Never, ever link out to other blogs! Why link to other blogs? It only helps them, not you. And no bloggers would ever notice a link to them and return the favor. The internet isn’t some communist day care center! Linking out is for fools.
10. Never, ever respond to comments readers leave on your blog. Responding to your readers is like looking in the eyes of a homeless person on the street! Whatever you do, don’t lower yourself to their level.
11. Never, ever write posts with numbered lists or rankings. Other people write enough of those types of posts. And besides, bloggers hate linking out to list posts!
12. Writing guest blog posts is for dummies! Busy bloggers would rather write their own content than feature compelling content written by strangers. Nothing good ever came from guest blogging or vegetarianism.
What tips or advice would you offer for creating a blog Google and readers will hate?
Abbie Waters blogs about infertility, IVF (in vitro fertilization), egg donation, and other infertility treatments at FertilityNation.com.