Top SEO Mistakes That Content Marketers Need To Avoid

Content marketing is aimed at generating a positive response from the audience, to attract them as loyal followers of the website or impress them enough to try out a company’s product or service. And an important factor that plays a huge role in determining whether the content you create becomes a hit or miss on the web is its Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

No matter how great the content is, poor SEO will often result in the content never being discovered by a large number of people. And even though most content marketers are aware of the importance of optimizing content, there are a few simple SEO mistakes many tend to commit.

Content Is Too Short

More often than not, content marketers tend to write articles that generally do not meet Google’s ‘preferred’ content length. Although the search engine company has never explicitly stated the ideal content length, many research and studies have shown that Google tends to like content that is around 2400 words on average. It is thought that such long-form content might indicate to Google that it is well-researched and detailed.

Top SEO Mistakes That Content Marketers Need To Avoid

And since Google wants its users to get the exact information they are looking for, the detailed long-form content will definitely be looked at more favorably by the search engine. So, make sure that you do create articles that are around 2400 words in length rather than solely focusing on 300 or 500-word articles.

No Images

Never using images in your article is a big mistake. People generally tend to be attracted to imagery. If the image is extremely attractive, the focus will be on it. In fact, if you place a beautiful image and a block of text side by side, most of the readers will initially look at the image before glancing over the text. In some cases, they may not even look at the text. This is how powerful images are. And this is exactly why it is necessary you use a sufficient number of images in your article. But keep in mind that the image must be relevant to the content of the article. This is also the reason why infographics have done quite well.

Also read: Tested Strategies Which Can Help Improve Your SEO

No Breaks

Another mistake that content marketers often make is that some of them rarely use appropriate breaks in the articles. You should understand that people have a pretty short attention span. They are unable to read a long block of text continuously. As such, you need to give some breathing space to the text. This can be done in many ways. The most obvious one is to split the text into smaller paragraphs. You can also arrange the article into a list form. This will also appeal to the readers in a big way. Another option is to insert relevant images in between the text.

Poor Meta Optimization

Marketers tend to use the default Meta title and description of the article. This is also a big mistake. The default Meta content is just computer generated information. As such, it usually tends not to be perfect. This is why you must research properly and create custom Meta titles and descriptions. Doing so will ensure that your content has the highest chance of being ranked high in search engine results.

Also read: Avoid the most common blogging mistakes – Infographic

No Outbound Links

Some articles never have any outbound links in them. Simply stop the practice of publishing articles this way. Add in a few relevant outbound links to your articles. When you add useful information to other websites that can help a reader gain more in-depth information about a particular topic, your article will come across as more useful. And in some way, Google also recognizes this aspect of content usefulness. In fact, a few studies found that articles with outbound links end up ranking better in Google search engine results than articles that never bother with links. So, make sure you always add a couple of links to your articles and you are almost guaranteed to see some kind of positive result.

Solely Focusing On Google

A common mistake content marketer’s make is their sole focus on Google to generate search engine traffic. This usually makes them prepare content in a way that it impresses Google. While this is not wrong in itself, focusing on Google alone and neglecting other search engines is limiting your article’s ability to generate potential traffic. A large number of searches are coming in through voice inquiries. And search engines like Bing and others are contributing close to 25% of the share of voice searches. As such, you are neglecting almost one-fourth of the search engine traffic by not optimizing for them. So, make sure that your content is not just prepared to get the best ranking in Google, but also in search engines like Bing, Alexa, and so on.

Also read: Free SEO services that are worth trying for better results

Not Using Local Keywords

If you are publishing content aimed at the local audience, it is important to ensure that you include a few local keywords in the articles. Unfortunately, some content marketers solely focus on global keyword and ignore the local keywords. For example, if you are publishing an article about cocktails aimed at generating interest among residents of Chicago, then you should use keywords like ‘Chicago cocktail’, ‘best cocktails in Chicago’, and so on. Solely focusing on keywords like ‘amazing cocktails’, ‘best cocktails’, etc. is not at all ideal. So content marketers should focus on perfect content with best possible keywords.

Not Updating Regularly

When you start publishing content on your website, it is important that you do so on a consistent basis. It is not recommended to publish content at random intervals. This is not a good way to build a traffic-attracting website. If viewers see that the website is not updated on a consistent basis, they may not visit the site again. Plus, search engines also do not view such websites in a favorable way. So, bump up your publishing frequency, and you will start seeing increased traffic to your website.

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Andrew Thompson

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