Common SEO blog content mistakes and how to avoid them

Abby Fraser | 16th March 2022 | Organic

Discover how to maximise the impact of your blog content by avoiding some of these common mistakes:

Keyword stuffing 

Back in the day, keyword stuffing was a trick that content marketers used to increase rankings for a given keyword by overusing it in their content. But things have changed.

The overuse of any given keyword in your website’s content is now likely to be considered as unnatural or ‘spammy’ by Google. As a result, you could miss out on higher rankings for intentionally stuffing your page with keywords. 

Google wants to rank the best and most relevant content, so if you’ve crammed your content with target keywords, it’s highly likely that it won’t provide a good user experience. Users know when content has been purely designed for search engine crawlers, so avoid this at all costs.

To create content that targets your keywords effectively yet still provides a good user experience, you must write with your audience in mind. If you’re writing a piece based on keyword research that is relevant to your business and its audience, you’ll be able to naturally incorporate your key terms into your content. Try to focus on one or two similar keywords per blog and only use them when they’re relevant. 

Not implementing an effective internal linking strategy

When creating new blog content, it’s important to link out from this to your other relevant pages, as well as adding links to your new content. 

Firstly, adding links from your new blog content to your other priority pages improves the user experience and journey through your site. You can link out to other blog content with related information, or link to a product or service that could help solve a problem. 

Secondly, when adding any type of new content to a website, it’s important that Google can find it easily. The quicker you can get your content crawled, the faster you can rank. An effective way of doing this is by linking your new blog content from your high-performing pages. For example, you might have another resource on your website that gets a good amount of organic traffic already, and by linking to your new blog from this page, your users and Google will be able to find it easily. 

When sourcing and implementing internal links, it’s vital to consider the anchor text you’re using. This is the text within the copy that your link is added to. All anchor text pointing to a specific page should be relevant to what the page is about – but not identical. For example: if all links to your new blog content are linked using anchor text such as ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’, this is not making it easy for Google to understand what your blog is about. Similarly, if every single link pointing to your blog content uses identical anchor links, this may look unnatural to Google. So mix it up.

Not promoting other related articles

Producing blog content is a great way to increase your organic visibility, but it’s crucial to be aware that in most cases, you’re targeting people who may not have heard of your business. Naturally, blog content has a high bounce rate: people land on your page, find their answer, and leave quickly. To make your new content work for you and encourage conversions, direct users to different areas on your website. A great way to do this is to offer them related content to the content they’re currently reading. You’ll find that a lot of blogs have a ‘related articles’ or ‘you may also be interested in’ section at the bottom, which benefits both SEO and user experience.

It’s also important to consider what articles you’re featuring alongside your content. Make sure you’re suggesting articles that are the next logical step in your users’ informational journey. For instance, someone on a “what is seo” blog might be recommended “the benefits of SEO” and “common SEO issues”, rather than “how to edit a robots.txt file, for experts”

Not targeting the right search intent 

Search intent is simply the reason behind a user’s search. Optimising for keywords is essential, but equally important is understanding what kind of content the user is looking for and, therefore, what type of content Google will choose to rank well. 

There are, typically, three types of search intent: 

  • Informational 

These tend to make up the majority of searches, with users looking for informational content that answers a question or to learn about a certain topic. For example: ‘’Top tips for gardening’’

  • Navigational 

These searches are when a user is looking for a specific brand or website. They already know what company they’re looking for and they use the brand name in their search. For example: ‘’Amazon’’

  • Transactional 

Transactional searches have the most commercial intent. These are people looking for products or services, but without knowing where they’re going to buy from. The search results for terms like these will typically be commercial pages where a user can purchase a product or service. For example: ‘’Plant pots for sale’’

Matching your content to the search intent is crucial; there’s no point creating a blog post targeting a transactional term as you’re unlikely to rank, and even if you do, you won’t engage users as you’re not providing them with the results they want. 

Not considering appropriate conversion points

Most people who read your blog won’t convert, and that’s just the truth. However, there are things that can be done to grab your reader’s attention, or get them to come back when they are ready to convert. These conversion points can vary depending on the type of content you’re writing; blog content can be positioned on the purchasing funnel as seen below: 

Different blog posts can be positioned at different points of the marketing funnel, using their own conversion points to achieve your goals.

  • An example of ‘top of the funnel content’ might be: How do I keep squirrels away from my bird feeder?
  • An example of ‘middle of the funnel content’ might be: What is a squirrel baffle and how do I use it? 
  • An example of ‘bottom of the funnel content’ might be: What is the best type of squirrel baffle to buy? 

Each of these blog titles represents a different point in the user journey, starting with a problem, before researching options and then comparing specific products. 

Within each of these blogs there are conversion / engagement points that match their station in the user journey…

Top of the funnel:

  • Newsletter subscription 
  • Links to other blogs 

Middle of the funnel:

  • Videos 
  • Whitepapers 
  • Downloadable resources

Bottom of the funnel:

  • Sales
  • Trials 
  • Enquiries / contact forms 

Summary

Blog content is a highly effective way of increasing your organic traffic and getting new users to your site, but it’s important to do it right. High-quality content is consistently rewarded by Google, so ensure you write with the user in mind and avoid these common mistakes.

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