How do potential customers find your business? Chances are, they search online. The internet is the top way consumers research brands, services and products before buying. That’s why blogging for SEO (search engine optimization) is so important to include as part of your company’s marketing strategy.
Studies show that including a blog as part of your website increases your chances of being ranked highly on search engines! In addition, companies that use blogs as part of their content marketing strategy receive over 67 percent more leads than those that don’t.
Simply having a blog on your site isn’t enough, however. It’s important you’re strategic about the way you use it. Keep reading for common blunders you’ll want to avoid when blogging for SEO.
18 Mistakes To Avoid When Blogging for SEO
- Beginning Without A Plan
Before you start blogging for SEO, you need to create a strategy. Ask yourself questions like:
- What are your blogging goals?
- Whom are you trying to reach?
- What types of information will help them?
- Which keywords will you use?
- How often will you publish new content?
- How will you promote it?
The answers to these questions will help you develop a plan to move forward in a calculated, focused way when blogging for SEO.
- Publishing Inconsistently
While it may not seem like a big deal to skip blogging once in a while, the truth is that inconsistent publishing can greatly affect your SEO results in a couple of ways:
- Search engines are constantly looking for new high-quality content. If you aren’t sharing articles regularly, visitors will visit your website less often and show results from your pages less frequently. You can bet this will affect your position in search engines’ results to your target consumers.
- If articles on your blog are dated, potential customers won’t have new, helpful information to inform them. With half of online shoppers researching online, they must see the latest and greatest from your brand so they know you’re a thriving, up-to-date company.
- Focusing On Quantity Rather Than Quality
Make sure you focus on quality over quantity when blogging for SEO.
While this may seem to counter my point above, there is something very significant here: Well-written, quality content is much more important than publishing just anything to stay on schedule. Search engines want to get the best possible information to users, so they look for quality content. Make sure everything you take live on your blog will help – not hinder – your content marketing efforts.
- Writing With An Inconsistent Brand Voice
What is your company’s voice? Before you write anything for your company, you need to establish key branding elements, including the type of language you will use. Then, make sure anyone blogging for SEO is familiar with this voice and uses it.
What if your blog has multiple authors? If they each have their own byline, it’s perfectly fine for them to include a bit of their own personality in their posts. If all your company’s articles are published under the brand, however, they need to use the same voice, even if there are multiple people writing the posts.
5. Forgetting Your Target Audience
What’s the point of blogging for SEO? Reaching your target audience. Therefore, it’s vital you keep them front of mind. For every article you write, think about what they’ll be interested in. How will your post relate to them?
Spend some time researching your target audience so you have a clear picture of who they are and how you can best connect with them. By understanding them better, you’ll be able to keep them top of mind when writing your business’s blog articles.
- Selecting Boring Or Irrelevant Topics
This relates directly to the point above. Blogging for SEO is not only about producing content. If you choose topics your target audience will find boring or irrelevant, you’re wasting your time and resources. As you select your blog topics, think about ways to provide value.
- Do customers regularly ask you the same questions? Clearly, this is something they’re interested in. Share the answers in a blog post!
- Is there new industry research that may affect customers’ decisions about the products or services they buy? Provide highlights for your readers.
- Is there something in the news related to your field? Share the article and weigh in with your expert opinion.
- How do your services or products make customers’ lives easier? Share them in a blog post! If you can include specific examples, even better.
- Is there a new product or service you’re offering? Write an article about it.
- Making Poor Keyword Choices
Research quality keywords before beginning your blog posts.
Keywords are incredibly important when blogging for SEO. These words and phrases directly relate to how consumers find your articles online. As I explain in this post about creating a content marketing schedule:
What terms will your target users search for when they look for a business like yours? Start by coming up with a list of your company’s most relevant topics, then brainstorm each topic with potential words or phrases users may search for. You can come up with even more ideas by going to Google and typing in the words and phrases you already have. Then, scroll down to the bottom and look at the suggestions of related topics and write down any that are a good fit for your business.
One useful tool to use for keyword research is Wordstream. When you search for a term it tells you the search volume per month, cost per click and competition. It also suggests a list of similar keywords that might be helpful to consider.
Once you’ve identified your keywords, use them strategically. Include them in your headline, sub-headlines, approximately every 100 words or so throughout your content and in all image captions.
- Ignoring SEO Best Practices
SEO needs to be a focus when blogging. Otherwise, you’re just blogging for the sake of blogging, which isn’t strategic and wastes your time and resources.
What exactly are SEO best practices? As this post about blogging for SEO results explains:
- Consider frequency. For strong SEO, it’s important to be consistent – down to your posts going live the same day of the week and time of day. Active blogs engage readers better, which also translates into better search engine rankings. With this in mind, publish new blog posts a minimum of once per week.
- Incorporate keywords in these areas of your post:
- The title.
- Subheads/section headers.
- Photo captions.
- Image file names.
- The URL of the post.
- The meta-description.
- Think about length. Keep the following length guidelines in mind for various parts of your blog post:
- Title: Aim for 6-13 words.
- Body of post: The most recent research is showing that it’s best to aim for at least 2,500 words.
- Meta description (the quick summary that shows up under the title): 156 characters, or about 1-2 sentences.
- Format your blog posts for better SEO:
- Use header tags. The post’s title should be H1, but after that use header tags H2-H6 as often as you’d like. This is a great way to break up the content so it’s easy for the reader to use, in addition to the SEO benefit.
- Include internal links. These can help readers find other interesting articles on your website, plus they’re good for SEO.
- Use quality outbound links. By linking to other decently optimized websites with information relevant to your blog post, Google will recognize your website as one with strong links.
- Using The First Title You Write
The blog headline has an important role: It captures readers’ attention and convinces them to click the article or keep scrolling. After you finish writing your blog post, go back to your title and play around with it. Can you think of a more compelling way to capture your target audience’s attention?
How can you write a strong blog title? First of all, aim for 6-13 words; studies show this length attracts the highest and most consistent amount of traffic. This blog post about writing the best headline in the world shares helpful advice too:
- Draw on emotions.
- Keep it short and to the point.
- Use strong keywords.
- Use data and numbers.
- Including Chunky Paragraphs
If you’re writing 2,500+ words for your articles, you’re sharing a lot of helpful information! Knowing that many potential readers skim posts, it’s important you make your articles skimmable! Break up chunky paragraphs however you can:
- Turn one big paragraph into two or three small ones.
- Use bullet points or numbered lists.
- Add visual elements like charts, graphs, images or videos.
- Forgetting The Visual
Include visual elements when blogging for SEO.
Speaking of visual elements, it’s important you include images and/or videos in your posts!
- Articles with relevant images have around 94 percent more viewers than similar articles without pictures.
- People remember roughly 80 percent of what they see and do; compare that to roughly 10 percent of what they hear and 20 percent of what they read.
How can you add visual elements when blogging for SEO? Add images or videos to your post to break up the text! Just make sure you only use visuals you have the right to use.
- Skipping Editing
Writing a lengthy blog post can take time, but when you’re done writing, you’re not ready to publish yet. Walk away for at least 30 minutes (although overnight is better) and come back with fresh eyes to read over what you wrote. Do all your points make sense? Does the article flow naturally? Are you missing any words or typos? Check out helpful tips from this blog post about editing your content marketing:
- Check for misspelled words.
- Identify any commonly misused words or phrases.
- Make sure you’ve used inclusive language.
- Ask yourself if you’ve used too much jargon.
- Check that your writing conforms to your style guide.
- Forgetting To Promote It
The point of blogging for SEO is to increase your online visibility, but waiting for search engines to find your article isn’t the only way to do this! Share your blog post on all your social media channels and in your email newsletter. If you want to increase the number of eyes on your post, consider running a social media ad or Google ad promoting the article. The more you promote your post, the more people read it and the better it is for your website’s SEO.
- Never Republishing Older Posts
Do you have a blog article you wrote a while ago you wish more people had seen? Republish it! Carefully review it to make sure all the statistics are still current, refresh any details that may be outdated and reshare it on your blog as a new post.
In addition to saving you time and resources, republishing posts can also help your blog!
- Forgetting To Check Analytics
Do you check your website’s analytics regularly? If you don’t, how will you know if your strategy is working? Install Google Analytics on your website and then look at it every four to six weeks. Ask yourself, which blog posts are performing well? Are there trends you’re noticing? Use the answers to these questions to help you develop new topics that are likely to perform well.
- Rushing The Process
Don’t rush the process when blogging for SEO.
How long does it take you to write a blog post? Studies show that nearly half of those investing six or more hours per blog post report strong results. When blogging for SEO, you need to take the time to make sure your blog articles are well written and provide value for your target audience.
In addition to writing the post, you also need to factor in editing time, finding the perfect visuals to use within the post, uploading it to your website and promoting it. Instead of rushing the process, give yourself time to do a good job.
- Expecting Results Too Quickly
Blogging for SEO, like other content marketing tactics, is a long-term strategy. Don’t expect to see a huge return on your investment right away. Anticipate it will take at least 12 to 18 months to start to see positive results from your blog.
- Neglecting Backend SEO
Always be sure to complete all SEO information on the backend of your website for each blog post. This includes a meta description, excerpt, alt tags, using keywords in the file names of each image and creating a canonical URL with keywords.
Do You Want To Know More About Blogging For SEO?
Blogging for SEO is an effective way to increase your company’s online visibility, but it’s important you do it the right way. Are you guilty of making any of the common mistakes I included above? Are there others you’d add to the list?
In the meantime, do you want help managing your blog, social media or other content marketing activities? Contact us today for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation! We’re happy to offer advice specific to your business and give you a helping hand.