Is Your Content Ruining Your SEO?

Content and SEO are inseparably connected. You can put tons of amazing content out there, but is there a point if nobody is able to see it. And if you want your target audience to be able to find it and see it, you need search optimization.

But it’s not just that your content depends on SEO, it’s also the other way around. Although you might not think about it a lot, your content affects how your pages rank in search. This effect can be positive or negative.

You have a lot of experience, you might be well aware of this connection. However even in this case, there are still small things that may seem unimportant, but actually are important.

Let’s discuss some of the most common mistakes marketers do while working with content that can ruin their SEO. Or maybe they are not really mistakes but rather oversights because once you know where to look and what to think about you can easily avoid them. It can be true both for when you are working alone or with the help of the agency providing, let’s say, monthly SEO services.

Here are some of these mistakes that you might want to keep in mind.

Stuffing keywords

We all know that quality content is what can help you rank higher. But robotic pieces of text with keywords being every second word are not it. Stuffing could’ve worked a few years later, but now that’s not the case. Google can easily identify these manipulations and distrust your pages based on this.

The best thing to do here is to try to create content on topics that your experts know something about and have experience with. Posts of considerable size that contain a lot of valuable insights and info are the way to go. Posts that have more than 3 thousand words are seeing the most reshares. By writing long pieces of content you will almost inevitably put some relevant keywords in it.

Ignoring on-site content

Earned content can be effective for boosting your rankings. It can be good for your SEO because it provides you with backlinks, and their value in this respect is widely known. However, ignoring the content of your website can cost you a lot.

If you want to be on the top of SERPs, you need to pay attention to both content that gives you backlinks and onsite content. When approaching content-making one should focus on educating readers and engaging them in conversation. It is, of course, essential to place keywords that would help you pop up in searches for the right audience.

Whether you are using the help of the experts within your team or outsourcing your marketing using SEO content services, putting out engaging and informational content optimized for search using your channels, especially the website should be one of your main priorities.

Forgetting the importance of subheaders

Good headings and formatting can do a lot of good towards making your content easier to read. Subheaders help to divide the space within the articles and let your readers feel more relaxed about the content. Let’s all agree on the fact that long passages of text can look pretty scary unless you are like REALLY eager to read them.

Content that is easier to digest generates more engagement. And that’s pretty obvious: people want to read it and if they like they will share it through their socials. Higher engagement tells Google that your content has more value.

Putting keywords in your subheaders is a great way to attract and hold visitors’ attention. However, try to avoid placing irrelevant keywords just for the case of it. It may not look pretty.

Ignoring the internal linking

Links are important for search engines when estimating the level of trust towards a site. That is why having a good link ecosystem is the way to success.

Here you should not only think of links within your site but also about links that lead to your pages.

Forgetting about longer keywords

There is one thing you should remember while approaching SEO in 2020, search engines’ capabilities allow them to see beyond the veil of how words and phrases are spelled. It’s not just literal matches that make it to SERPs, also do semantic matches. That means that search engines are able to understand the query semantically, see the context of the search.

So basically Google knows the intent of the person searching.

The takeaway message here is that you should also add long tail keywords to your posts. Your optimization shouldn’t be limited to only short keywords. And keyword and phrases variations are not to be ignored as well.

Not optimizing titles

Title tags are the first thing a person sees before they follow the link to your page. So obviously we would want to make them compelling; we want them to click on our website and hopefully convert.

Search engines also look at title tags. So one has to place keywords that would be right for their audience and niche in title tags if they are to see improved traffic.  

Ignoring alt text

Forgetting to work on alt text is another mistake that can be bad for SEO your company website. Alt text is not just something that makes your site more accessible for larger groups of the population, it also helps search engines to index your picture as one and sort of figure out what it is about.

So by adding alt text you can boost your rankings as well, and ignoring it can lead to lower traffic.

To sum up

Now when we have discussed the common oversights in content management that can potentially ruin your SEO advertising. So if you are seeing low traffic and nothing seems to work, maybe it’s time to review your content and add the necessary changes?