5 SEO Mistakes You Need to Stop Making Now

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is important for online content writers. Whether you’re a blogger or you’re creating content for someone else, you need to do what you can to have it read. And that’s where SEO comes in.

Have you ever wondered what leads to certain webpages to appear in the top search engine results? That is because these webpages meet the algorithm requirements that Google has put in place. And for you to meet those requirements too, you need to know about SEO.

Now, a lot of beginners or rookies might think they know what they’re doing. They either read something somewhere or got bad advice. The point is that bad SEO practices are bad for a blog or website that wants to attract online readership.

Here are the SEO mistakes you need to stop making now and how to correct them.

1. Keyword Stuffing

It is normal for beginners to think that SEO is only related to keywords. While using targeted keywords is important for online content to have a better chance of appearing in search engine results, keyword stuffing has a negative effect.

What is keyword stuffing? It is when one adds too many keywords in their content. The keyword density becomes too high and Google doesn’t like that. Even readers won’t appreciate seeing keywords that have no place being in every sentence.

How to Fix It: You need to learn about keyword density. Try and keep the density around 1-2% for a certain keyword. This means that if you’re writing a 1000-word article, use the keyword only ten to twenty times. Optimization plugins such as Yoast SEO can help you keep an eye on density.

2. Improper Linking

Linking to numerous other websites might feel that you’re giving your content credibility. But linking to low-quality websites isn’t going to help you. Furthermore, rookies also make the mistake of not linking to already present pages on their website.

How to Fix It: Link to high ranking websites. Even two or three such links in one article are better than tens of links to a low-ranking website.

Also, link back to already present articles on your website or blog. This will help create a connection inside your domain.

3. Not Writing for Readers

A lot of times, rookies end up being too by-the-book. They are focused on optimizing every piece of content by adding tags, images, and keywords. But in doing so their content suffers as the sentence structure doesn’t make sense to human readers.

How to Fix: While search engine optimization is important, don’t make it your only priority. Google likes content that has good grammar and promotes likes and shares. You don’t want people to stop reading your content because they can’t make sense of what you’re trying to say.

4. Not Adding Images Properly

Some beginners don’t add images at all in their content or they don’t add them correctly. You need to enable Google search engine spiders to read and understand what an image is for. Also, adding images helps to break up the content and make it easier for readers.

How to Fix: Whenever you add an image to your content make sure you add the targeted keyword in the ‘Alt-text’ tags of the image. Doing so will help Google know what the said image is for and how it relates to the content you’ve published. Don’t go overboard with the images though, unless the content demands you to.

5. Ignoring Social Media

You might not like social media but the truth is that it does help. Beginners don’t consider sharing on social media to be important. Some of them don’t even add social media sharing buttons at the end of their content. Sharing on social media helps your content be found by potential readers as well as search engine crawlers.

How to Fix: Ensure that you have social media sharing buttons at the end of every article. Even having ones for Twitter, Google+, and Facebook will do. Also, share every new post you write on social media yourself. You can also automate the process by enabling your website to automatically post on the linked social media accounts whenever you publish a new post. Study the demographic you want to target and share on the social platforms they commonly use.

Wrapping It Up

Search engine optimization is important for online content writers. It is also a continuously changing thing. Google keeps updating its algorithms to allow for the most accurate search engine results possible. While trying to understand all of the new algorithm updates is tough for beginners, what they can do is go over the information above and not make some common SEO mistakes.

Fixing these mistakes will surely help them become better online content writers and improve their content’s chances of appearing higher in search engine results.