A lot of SEO work goes into managing fresh site content. For some e-commerce sites, the freshest content comes from new products being added to the shop, and variations made to product descriptions that might hyperlink to a new long-tail keyword you are pursuing.
For sites geared towards offering a service (rather than a product), the most frequently updated pages are almost always on the blog. That is to say: if you do have a blog, you should be posting enough to make it the most frequently updated page on your site. As Google loves fresh content and values it highly amongst their 200+ ranking organic page ranking factors, optimizing blog posts is an important feature in a website’s overall SEO strategy.
However, in a lot of cases, the blog happens to be the weakest link in the SEO chain without the author even realizing it. If you are writing great content but still find your site wallowing in the second page for your keywords, then it’s probably you are making some easily-fixable mistakes.
Here are 7 common SEO mistakes made by blogs:
Poor Keyword Planning
There are two main purposes to developing a keyword list. The first is about accuracy: a site should be populated with keywords and phrases that directly relate to the purpose of the business. Keywords are, after all, the bridge between your business and your customers. The second purpose is about notoriety: keywords and phrases that people already search for should be included in a list. That does not mean going with whatever is most popular – a common mistake in blog content creation. It means honing in on specific keywords that will bring customers who are already interested to your site. When done correctly, these two purposes support each other in generating traffic and sales to your site. A blog post is usually the place to incorporate keywords and phrases that you want to rank for – but it only matters if you’ve done sufficient research.
Keyword Structure Issues
Once you have narrowed down a keyword list, it’s time to think about using them effectively. One of the most common mistakes with keywords is they get placed in a blog with context or explanation. This makes it seem like they are not really part of the blog itself – they are just stuck in there for keyword notoriety. Another oversight is the failure to use keywords in meta descriptions, title tags, and headers. Ignoring these optimizations greatly reduces the potential ranking of the page.
Poor Internal Link Structure
Internal linking is often overlooked or misunderstood. For example, it’s not ideal to link back only to the homepage. Nor is it ideal to include only one internal link per 500-word post, linking back to the homepage with a drop-down menu where the visitor began in the first place. Strategic internal linking means conducting a site audit to see which pages have the most authority on your site, and then hyperlinking from high-authority pages to less-authoritative pages to even the playing field.
Page Content is Lacking
A lot of the time blogs can fall flat because of poor content. At the end of the day, without strong content that resonates with your customers, it will be very hard to generate growth.
No Use of Images or Video
Part of the blog content question involves multimedia like images and video. Images play an important role for readability and SEO score. Google bots will register the image file, and if it has a keyword-optimized alt tag then it contributes to the overall SEO strategy.
Lack of Promo
A blog needs to be promoted and shared wherever possible – and yet far too often they sit at the back of a site without anyone paying attention to it. The fact is that a piece of great writing is not going to generate a following all on its own.
Spammy Backlinks
A common mistake with blogs is to overuse external backlinks. An average of 3-5 external backlinks per 500 word post is in the optimal range. Any more than that and it verges on spam. Trying to attach your blog to high-authority sites in your niche can be done many different ways than backlinking to it in every blog article. Furthermore, the days when Google prefered volume of backlinks over quality are long gone. Today what matters is the quality of backlink used in a digestible way throughout the text.
Make A Checklist
The most efficient way to ensure SEO quality is to make a checklist of all the focus areas. Like all SEO work, the key to a successful blog is to remain consistent with search engine optimization techniques and track the impact of your keyword selections over 4-6 weeks.
For more SEO tips and strategies on how to manage your blog, contact one of the best SEO consultants today. Also please add Paul Teitelman on LinkedIn when you get a chance for even more upates!
