Content Development Strategy: 10 SEO Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

Web technology changes rapidly, yes?. I mean, let’s face it: the Internet is much different today than it was just a few, years ago. So when it comes to website optimization, this leaves many people confused as to which SEO strategies are still relevant. And this confusion can kill your content development strategy.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

We don’t have an information shortage; we have an attention shortage.

– Seth Godin

 

Seth certainly gets it … probably had it down before anyone else. What may you be asking? The concept of what it takes for content marketing success, of course. Secrets? Probably not. But certainly essential for success.

Related post: Content Development Strategy … SEO Mistakes that Will Kill You

Content marketing tactics such as blog posts, feature articles, optimized website copy, white papers, social media content, and press releases move consumers along a specific path. Content marketing generates awareness of your brand, product, or service; inspires consumers to engage and consider you; converts them into leads and sales, and creates advocates. Lots to gain, yes?

Below I’ll define and discuss  SEO mistakes you need to cut out right away.  Thankfully, they’re easy to avoid once you’re aware. Let’s get to it.

Content development … employing keyword stuffing 

You might think using your target keywords in every sentence of your content would boost your ratings. That strategy couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, going overboard with using keywords is registered as spammy by search engines, which means it hurts your SEO performance.

That’s why keyword ‘stuffing,’ or overusing your intended keywords, is not crucial to your SEO success. Such an approach would make your content unnatural and useless for its intended audience.

In fact, Google is employing a special semantic search called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This program can recognize your content’s topic without the need for stuffing your content with repetitions of your target keywords.

 content development strategy
Content development strategy.

Ignoring other search engines

Google has the most comprehensive set of resources for SEO. Anyone interested in SEO should get a Google Search Console account, and follow the Google webmaster guidelines for the best practices.

But that does not mean you should ignore other search engines like Bing, and Yahoo. These search engines are still a major source of organic traffic. Additionally, tools such as Bing’s Webmaster Tools can supplement your SEO efforts – giving you more data to work with.

 Content development marketing … missing quality links 

To get the best from SEO, content marketers today should grasp that the quality of external links included in content is more important than their quantity. That’s why it’s better to make sure you link to relevant, well-ranking websites with solid reputations – not just any site.

It’s also useful to link back to sites that have linked to you, as this brings back traffic in the future.

Another counterproductive practice when it comes to links is using ineffective anchor text. This wastes precious SEO opportunities, as the anchor texts signify to the reader and to search bots what the link is about and how it can be beneficial to users.

Thus, avoid using ‘click here’ as an anchor text and make sure you opt for a variety of anchor texts, as employing the same text over and over again can be seen as spammy.

 

measuring content performance
Measuring content performance.

Ignoring mobile optimization

On January 10, 2017, Google announced that … pages, where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results, may not rank as high.

Most web designers have noticed the mobile-first trend that took over web design a few years ago. Despite this, a large majority of sites are still not mobile-friendly. Even if the majority of your audience views your content from a desktop computer, you will still miss out on mobile traffic.

 Check out Google’s webmaster’s guide to mobile-friendly sites for more in-depth information on keeping your site mobile-friendly.

Content development strategy … not promoting your content

Promotion and distribution are key to giving your content that initial burst of attention and engagement. Without it, your content is likely to sit unread, gathering few shares or links.

According to research from Moz and BuzzSumo, 50% of all online content sampled had 2 or fewer Facebook interactions, and 75% had no external links. I’m willing to bet this was largely due to a lack of intentional distribution.

Have a plan for how you’ll promote each piece of content, whether that’s through your email list, social media, paid distribution, or a combination of all three.

 

Employing multiple keywords on a single page

Targeting keywords are still as important as ever. But trying to target more than one keyword is not as effective as focusing on a single keyword or phrase.

If you have more than one target keyword you want to focus on, consider breaking your article up into multiple posts.

 Not investing in a fast and mobile-friendly experience

SEO optimization is not only about content and keywords. It’s also about the quality of your website, particularly its performance on mobile devices, which are users’ top choices today. Google and other search engines can recognize when your website is not mobile-friendly (think about the Mobile addon update).

If you haven’t considered a  mobile experience for your audience, your rating on search engines can be jeopardized. The same goes for load speed, as search engines put an emphasis on that as well.

You can use online tools like Pingdom and GT Metrix to analyze where the speed problems come from and how to fix them.

Ignoring broken links  

content performance metrics
Content performance metrics.

A broken link is a name given to a hyperlink that no longer points to its intended destination. You’ve been won over by an article’s sales spiel, and you’re desperate to see what’s on the other side of the link, like the example below:

Obviously, anybody in their right mind would click a link that promised to make them look ten years younger, and then, argh! It’s broken!

Sites naturally accumulate broken links: however, they’re a major nuisance to your visitors and Google doesn’t like them either. But, if they’re so natural, why does Google penalize you for them?

It’s because bad links will earn you a bad reputation. And people with online reputations aren’t viewed as authorities on anything.

Measuring content performance … lacking formal link building

Again, it’s always possible for your content to get links without any additional effort on your part. However, more often this strategy will result in 90% of your content sitting stagnant on your site.

According to the 2016 State of Link Building Survey, the most popular link-building strategies among link-building professionals included content promotion (e.g., guest blogging), creating content that’s likely to attract links, digital PR, and getting local citations.

Related post: 10 Social Media and Business Marketing Killers

 Not employing performance metrics

Last but not least, the only way to know if your SEO optimization and content efforts work is to track their progress. Many marketers would disregard the numbers, but this is a serious mistake. Setting up and regularly reviewing your analytics is essential for your optimization results.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are just two of the main tools you can use to measure and get an overview of your website’s performance.

The bottom line

Search engine optimization is an indispensable part of any content marketing strategy today. While you can find plenty of advice online, making some typical SEO mistakes is quite common.

Instead, it’s better to get well acquainted with the challenges that others have experienced and avoided them in your marketing efforts. These errors have proven quite widespread, so they are now easier to recognize before you make them.

SEO has come a long way since the late 1990s, back then things were much simpler. All you needed to do was tag your site with keywords, submit it to a search engine, and a bot would crawl your site. Now the bots are more sophisticated, and many outdated SEO strategies are no longer effective.

 

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Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

 

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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+Twitter, and LinkedIn.  

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

  

More reading on social media mistakes from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

KPI Metrics … The Website Performance Indicators You Must Avoid

17 Cardinal Sins to Avoid in a Social Response Strategy

13 Social Media Marketing Trends Sure to Reduce Business

Voice Search as an Important SEO Trend: Changes Are Required

In the year 2011, Siri was introduced to the world by Apple. This technology was undoubtedly a novelty that provided important information along with laughable responses to several other queries. People and businesses found it difficult to understand that it would become one of the most important digital trends that would rule the future. Since then, voice search has gone through several important changes. Find SEO by Get House Deals.

There are important voice-activated technologies that are present in the market, namely Google assistant, Cortana, Alexa, and also, Siri. 

Advantages associated with voice commands

Since the technology of voice recognition is becoming versatile and accurate, users have started to realize the benefits that are associated with using voice commands. This has also allowed in a better ranking of the websites. The reasons as to why people are in love with voice search include:

  • They can multitask easily.
  • It is easier for them to complete their tasks faster. 
  • They can receive answers instantly.
  • It is also responsible for making the daily routine easy.

Optimizing for voice search

Indeed, the adoption of this amazing technology is still going on; however, smart marketers have started optimizing voice already so that they can get the best out of search marketing in the future.

Voice optimization is undoubtedly significant for most of the large as well as local businesses. Most of the individuals prefer using voice search when they are driving, asking questions regarding a particular business location, etc. Both the chain companies as well as small businesses are interested in optimizing for local SEO and they need to consider voice search queries. 

If you are interested in making your business stand out from the huge crowd and reach the top position within search engines, you have to consider optimizing for voice search when you are strategizing your content. Given below is a list of the significant changes that you should be making for optimizing voice search. 

Keyword research

It is your responsibility to consider all the semantic differences that lie within the search queries. You have to understand that people type as well as speak differently. You need to understand and brainstorm the different types of questions that people can ask based on the target keywords that you are choosing.

You can use several tools for doing this. You can use an important SEO tool; namely, Answer the Public, which has gained a lot of popularity. This tool will help you to understand all the questions that can be asked based on a particular keyword. 

Site structure as well as content development

When you are building an amazing content strategy and you are thinking about optimizing for voice search, you will want to understand the questions that your customers will be asking. This will help in making sure that you are available through voice search irrespective of the requirements of the customers. You have to consider the following points:

Apart from that, the three significant content types, which work ideally for voice search optimization include:

  • Information intent- Guides, how-to, etc. 
  • Navigational intent- Store locations, press releases, services, customer service information. 
  • Transactional intent- Videos, comparisons, product information, product stories

Structured data optimization

There is no denying the fact that optimizing for voice search is a hit and miss. Unlike regular results, where the results that appear second for any particular search query are going to attract traffic, voice search is responsible for returning one single answer from the result that is best optimized.

Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure that you are making the content informative and relevant so that Google finds your answer to be the best optimized.

You also need to make sure that all your pages can be crawled easily. If you have not done this, you need to ensure that you are creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google search console. Another important thing that can help Google bots understand the content, as well as its relevance, is using schema or structured data markup. 

Structured data markup will help in creating metadata, which will tell Google regarding the content, without affecting how the content appears to the users. Given below are a few examples of the type of information that you should identify for the Google bots. 

Structured data markup does not affect the rankings directly. However, it can help in boosting the results of voice search by depicting the relevance associated with the content for certain search queries.

Making use of schema data is also considered to be one of the best SEO practices, as stated by www.forbes.com

Mobile-friendly means voice friendly

The algorithms of the search engines have started changing and they have already made search engine marketing mobile-first. You need to know that most of the voice searches are responsible for coming from smartphones. Therefore, when you are optimizing for voice search, it is going to have a positive impact on mobile optimization as well. For instance:

  • Voice search results are responsible for loading 52% faster on mobile phones in comparison to average pages. 
  • Making use of structured data can help in making the content perfect for voice search. 

This has been stated by the professional marketers of SEO by Getting House Deals

Getting ready for future developments

While several steps can be taken for incorporating voice optimization, it is undoubtedly only the beginning. Home voice assistants have already started gaining popularity. People from different parts of the world have also started recognizing the capabilities that these tools have.

Big brands like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are constantly developing several features as well as capabilities to contribute to the growth of voice search. Therefore, the ideal thing that you can consider doing is to prepare yourself for all the future developments that are coming along the way. 

The bottom line

Voice search has already started dominating search engine optimization and it is also having a great impact on search marketing. You need to make sure that you are incorporating all the strategies that have been mentioned above so that you can prepare your business for the best even when the adoptions continue growing.