7 SEO Blunders Bloggers Often Commit
The digital marketing landscape has gone through several paradigm shifts, especially in the last few decades. But then, it has never ever undermined the importance of SEO as its core marketing strategy. As you know, SEO and business blogs work hand in glove. Blog posts that use on-page SEO tactics lead to better search engine rankings and traffic to your site. However, there are few SEO blunders that could come in the way of your search engine rankings and traffic.
If you are a newbie blogger, it pays to go through this list of blunders, because, as they say, precaution is better than cure. For veteran bloggers, it doesn’t harm to re-look and reinforce your tactics once again.
#1. Overloading with Keywords
This mistake is commonplace. Besides, destroying your search engine rankings, a blog piece that makes the keywords do all the heavy lifting offers a poor reading experience. The key is to take advantage of one or two long-tail keywords and center your blog on them. Long-tail keywords are known to satisfy the informational needs of your audience; thereby encouraging them to read your entire post.
#2. Omitting Internal and External LinksExternal Links, in a way, vouches for your content’s credibility. So, if you blog covers a topic that has already been covered in another site, you should ideally link back to that particular page. On the other hand, internal linking keeps the reader on your site and helps search engines to effortlessly discover authoritative pages of your site. Internal links, ideally should not only link to the pillar page of your website but also direct the readers to relevant blog content.
#3. Content Duplicity
If you are trying to set up duplicate pages by tweaking similar keywords, be assured, this is not going to benefit your SEO any which ways. For instance “best mobile app Development Company in the U.S,” and top mobile app developers in the U.S. mean one and the same thing. So, creating different pages for both these keywords could, in all probability, lead to a search engine penalty.
So, the best way out is to delve deep into one particular keyword and make all efforts to strengthen the post.
#4. Overloading with Images and Graphics
While bloggers’ job is to generate high-quality posts, there are several who focus on the design aspects of the blog more than anything else. Sure, design attracts readers to your site. But then, the design shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all for your blog. So, avoid loading your blogs with too many images and graphics. If you are thinking twice about doing away with them, then be assured, search engine bots would also think twice before crawling your pages.
#5. Substandard Copy with loads of jargon
This fact gets oft-repeated: write for readers, not for spiders. Not to mention, keep your content jargon-free, even if you are writing a technical document. Simply put, even a 7th grader should be able to read your content.
Generally speaking, blog content is more about informing users and offering actionable tips to the reader.
So, in a way, content marketing is not just a marketing tactic, it’s also a branding exercise at the same time. It lends you a voice as an author and cements your authority in your niche.
So, make sure you come with powerful prose that’s easily scannable and whose purpose is crystal-clear. Wherever possible, break long chunks of paragraphs with GIFs and videos. Also, add visuals after every 400 words, if possible. This will prevent information overload.
What’s more, edit the content. You could leverage tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway App to come up with crisp, clean copies. Seek the help of top content marketing companies to get excellent high-quality posts written in no time.
#6. Writing Short Content
I have seen many blogs publishing short posts. No doubt, churning short posts takes lesser time, but then, it could cost your readers. Readers are looking to learn something from your posts. They are looking for actionable content. They are looking for value. So, if you creating a post that comprises just 300 words just think, what sort of value it delivers. Besides that, your post won’t rank in search engines. So write long-form content as much as possible. Add to your content’s length by digging deeper and researching on same and similar topics.
#7. Using Automated Title tags
The title tag is inordinately crucial from a search engine standpoint. Newbie bloggers are known to come up with long titles – trying to describe the blog in too many words. This is not right from an SEO perspective. The title tags should be short, no more than 60 characters. More importantly, you need to focus on optimizing it.
Use Google Adwords to check the popularity of the keyword used in the title tag before optimizing it. A properly optimized title tag enjoys better placement in search engines and even more visitors. To vet your existing title tags and more, you could consult top digital marketing agencies.
Wrapping Up
There you go! 7 Seven SEO blunders bloggers often make. Though the above mistakes are common, they still need repeating, because these mistakes are still rampant. Optimizing your blog content for SEO may appear tedious and time-consuming, but then it’s important if you want to reach your target audience and wants to stand apart from your competitors.