Many common writing mistakes can damage a blog post; these mistakes can make your content hard to read, and may even prevent people from visiting your website thanks to poor search engine performance. But what are the biggest crimes? Let’s explore them together.
Keyword Stuffing
Back in the early days of SEO, bloggers would stuff their posts full of keywords in an attempt to improve their ranking on search engines. These days, the tactic called “keyword stuffing” not only makes your content difficult to read but also signals to search engines that you’re trying to manipulate them. As a result, your ranking could take a big hit.
Instead, include keywords naturally throughout your content and focus on creating helpful, informative, and engaging blog posts.
Paying Too Much Attention to SEO
Yes, SEO is important and you should try to include relevant keywords in your content. However, don’t get so caught up in optimizing your post for search engines that you forget to write for your audience. At the end of the day, your goal should be to create content that people will want to read, not just content that will rank high in search results.
Google doesn’t just look for the page with the most relevant keywords – it looks for content that helps people and provides a positive experience. If you can answer questions and keep people engaged, this tells search engines that you’re worth a click.
Spelling Errors
As well as frustrating people, spelling errors make you look unprofessional. They can also be costly – a study by Global Language Monitor found that the cost of a misspelled word in a company name can be as much as $500,000. If you’re not a confident speller, run a spell check before posting content. It seems simple, but spelling really does matter.
Not Citing Sources
If you use someone else’s ideas or statistics in your blog post, make sure to give them credit. Not only is it good manners, but it’s also essential for avoiding plagiarism. Citing your sources shows that you’re credible and trustworthy, and it allows readers to check your information for themselves. Whenever possible, link to the original source so that your readers can easily find it.
Posting Without Proofreading
Everyone makes typos from time to time, but errors can make your blog post look unprofessional. If you don’t have time to proofread your work, try reading it aloud or using a tool like Grammarly to catch mistakes. We mentioned spelling errors, but proofreading will also pick up on grammatical errors, incorrect word usage, and typos. Sometimes, you read back over a paragraph and have no idea what you were trying to say.
Not Using an SEO Agency
This isn’t the biggest crime in the world, but not understanding how a local SEO agency in Seattle can help is a crime. Often, people ignore agencies because they have misconceptions about pricing. The truth is, an SEO agency can be a great investment because they will improve your organic search ranking. What’s more, they will advise on content and boost your website’s performance many times over.
Offering No Format
Do you like reading a huge wall of text? No? Nobody does. That’s why you need to format your blog posts with headlines, subheadings, and short paragraphs. Not only will this make your content more digestible, but it will also make it more skimmable. Just look at this blog post as an example (if we say so ourselves!).
Other writing mistakes include:
- Not including images
- Creating random articles not part of a larger rhetoric or goal
- Forgetting your audience
