Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content marketing are a powerful combination that can build website’s authority and drive valuable search engine traffic. Blogging, in particular, is a popular way to drive website traffic and build authority in your niche.
However, many people struggle to get great SEO results from blogging. There are 5 common mistakes that content marketers repeatedly make when creating and promoting blogs and articles.
1. Obsessing Over Content-Length
A lot of articles have been written about how long-form content outperforms short content in SEO and gains more social media share. And because long-form content has become so popular, some blog editors are requiring minimum word counts for their articles.
However, long-form content does have downsides.
Most people prefer shorter content, and many won’t read longer articles. In fact, readers on average only spend 37 seconds on an article, reading only 20% of a pages total content.
Long content can also take a lot longer to write, which can make it harder to maintain a consistent publishing schedule.
Content marketers should be flexible and remember that long-form content isn’t always the solutions – quality always needs to come over quantity, never settle on this. If you are not 100% happy with a piece of work, do not publish it as it generally will not perform well – something I was told when I began writing content was “Don’t publish content for content’s sake”, this is something that I will always stick to.
2. Optimizing Everything for Keyword
Trying to optimize any and all content for search engine rankings is one of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make, often you read online content that may have keywords placed where they don’t exactly fit.
Promoting content aimed at potential customer’s, that will genuinely help them and benefit them in some way is a great strategy to add to your content marketing. After all, consumers will surely read an article promoted on your site that benefit’s them.
3. Ignoring Older Posts
Often within content marketing, older posts are overlooked and left on the backburner. Most content marketers will write a post and then forget about it.
There are many ways to promote old content, consider updating and relaunching old posts with a simple share on social media or updating an old post that performed well to include more relevant information. These techniques can be very effective and drive traffic to your site.
4. Lacking Consistency in Your Publishing Schedule
As the saying goes, ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get’, and the same goes for publishing content.
Consistency is the key to success, and this is certainly the case when it comes to your content marketing. Create a realistic schedule that you will be able to stick to.
Content is nothing without consistency. Consistent content, on a consistent schedule, builds brand awareness. It helps your audience see and interact with your business. One great piece of content might help a consumer there and then, but it won’t help them build the relationship with your brand that consistent, helpful, strategic content will.
5. Internal Links
Another overlooked aspect of content marketing, many marketers and bloggers are so heavily focused on getting external links that they completely neglect internal links. Once you gain enough authority for your website, you can start ranking for keywords from internal links alone!!
Add links to related articles in your post, this will not only help your SEO but will also drive traffic to the best articles that you’ve already written.
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. If you have any questions or feedback on the blog please get in touch.
Saoirse
