5 content marketing mistakes that could hurt your SEO

The search engine is considered an intelligent tool that can sift across relevant content depending on the user’s search query. Besides, the search engine algorithm is designed to apply specific instructions, which when you fail to follow them, you fail terribly.

It is no secret that at least every marketer has made a mistake in their line of duty. According to a survey done in different parts of the world, approximately 52.4% of marketers have made content marketing mistakes that have affected their SEO strategies.

Establishing an SEO content marketing methodology is something that many marketers haven’t encountered in the past. However, this can be leveraged by learning fundamental SEO rules and guidelines that can help you navigate across the industry. Note that content marketing works hand in hand with SEO to attain a uniform objective.

Below are some of the popular content marketing mistakes that are likely to haunt your SEO.
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1. Delays in page loading

SEO experts recommend that a page should load for a maximum of three seconds on the average side. When your page takes more than three seconds to load and open the content, it is regarded as a slow page. Things that cause a page to load for too long include large files, inefficient code, multiple plugins, and many more.

When your page takes too long to load, it sends away potential customers, and the Google algorithm ranks it poorly on the web. Besides, a slow page is likely to increase the bounce rate affecting your site’s general performance. When Google notes a link with a significant bounce rate, it flags it!

Your website ends up regarded as a low-priority site affecting the general performance of your business. Note that Google always monitors the amount of time visitors spend on your site reading the content and using the stats in ranking.

2. Wrong choice of keywords

Quality and relevant content are indeed essential to transforming your business. However, this is not everything! You should focus on creating content using relevant keywords that your target audience is likely to use when searching on the web. Ignoring the relevancy of keywords in your content can significantly affect your SEO strategy.

The search engine uses keywords as the primary criteria to rank sites and the content you post on the internet. When you don’t use keywords in your content, your site and the content you post are likely to be invisible. You need to use keyword research tools that will help to get some of the most appropriate keywords to use while creating content.

Consider using words with a higher search volume and low competition depending on your field of specialization. After creating a list of keywords to use, incorporate them into your titles, subtitles, and the content itself.

3. Using outdated content and website

It is crucial to ensure that your content and the website have undergone auditing to elevate the performance of your business online. Review your content from time to time to ensure that it remains relevant in the long run. Also, rewrite some of the pages on your website and align them with what your audience searches for online.

You can opt to write content about some of the latest and trending activities on the internet to elevate leads and traffic. Check on the new Keywords that consumers are using to ensure that you are updated and catch up with the latest trends of your consumers. Use keywords tools to update the Keywords in your content to make your work easier.

Also, transform the general appearance of your website to make it appealing and ensure it serves as a one-stop-shop. Make it easy for visitors to navigate with informational content from one page to the next. Optimize your website and make it easy for mobile users to access the content and make orders if possible.

It’s always essential to check your content to boost its performance online. For example, sometimes review your content to ensure it’s still relative. In addition, you may consider rewriting your already published web pages to ensure that they correspond with what people are searching for. Still, on that point, write content about trending issues on your blogs to boost organic leads. Also, the keywords that consumers are now using might have evolved. As a result, streamline your content with current keywords using keyword tools.

In addition, work on your website’s general appearance to increase its appeal and UX. Make your website easy to navigate from one webpage to another. For case, you can link all your runners to the homepage. Eventually, ensure that your website is well optimized to support mobile device use.

4. Neglecting meta descriptions and title tags

Well-structured content needs to have a headline, dub headlines, and a body. However, this is not everything you need when it comes to content marketing. Google needs you to craft a meta description that gives a clear picture of everything in your content. Before visitors dig deep into your content, they need to understand what is in it briefly.

Google begins by scanning your content to ensure that it has all the outlined features before giving it a proper rank on the search engine. You might have written exceptional content, but the lack of these features is likely to result in poor ranking. Also, there is a specific strategy that you need to use when writing headlines and Sub headlines.

Well-structured content will have a title, meta-titles, taglines, and body. In addition, Google demands that you write a Meta description that summarizes what’s in your blog. To bring your content overhead on the hunt results, Google will overlook it to see if you have all these parts in your content. Eventually, there are specific styles in which you should write your titles and mottoes. Therefore, ensure that you’re familiar with all that.

As discussed earlier, the Google algorithm has a specific way of evaluating content before ranking it. Ensure that your content has been written well with a proper meta description and tags. Place every bit of the content where necessary since quality content is critical in this scenario.

5. Duplicate content

Content creation is a unique skill that needs one to learn and master before beginning to work. Creating duplicate content is the greatest enemy of content marketing and affects the performance of your content and the site in general. The search engine is programmed to penalize any cases of plagiarism with immediate effect.

Creating plagiarized content is one of the worst mistakes that you can ever make while creating content. After creating content, ensure that you pass it through a plagiarism checker such as Copyscape to ensure that it is 100% original. Take as much time as possible to ensure that you write original content that will not affect the performance of your business.

Content writing is a skill like a sensible academic document. Exactly as academic document detests plagiarism, search engines punish content duplication. Therefore, take your time to write original content for your website or blogs. When you lift content from another website without writing it in your own words, it hurts your SEO effectiveness.

In addition, avoid having two pages on your website with ditto content, as they’ll battle for the attention of Google’s algorithms and cause unhealthy competition on your website. To avoid having a couple of pages on your site with similar content. This is likely to affect your SEO capabilities. The two pages will go ahead competing for the attention of the Google algorithm bringing about the unhealthy competition on your business website.

Final Word

To improve the performance of your business online, ensure that you follow all the SEO guidelines to be on top of the game. When creating content, avoid machine-generated content since 73% prefer reading content that their peers have written.