Businesses are incorporating content marketing into their overall marketing efforts. Content is a great way to attract and nurture leads coming to your website. It helps marketers generate more inbound leads who could be potentially interested in their products or services. Blogging is an important part of content strategy. Through blogs, businesses can benefit greatly from an increase in visibility on search engine pages and attract traffic to their website.
Increasing number of businesses have their own blogs. According to DemandMetric, businesses creating blogs generate an average of 67% more leads monthly than those who don’t blog. However, it’s not enough to just create blogs. You need to ensure that your blogs are successful in capturing leads. Bloggers can sometimes make errors that can hamper the success of their blogs. In this article, we will discuss some common blogging mistakes to avoid which can help you create a successful content strategy.
Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
Overlooking your target personas
Buyer personas have an important role to play. They allow you to understand your target customer better. Just like any other marketing strategy, buyer personas are useful when creating blogs. When you know your customers, you get to know what they are looking for. Your blog topics should be based on the needs, interests and problems of your target audience. If you create blogs that are not relevant to your audience, you will not attract any quality leads. Audiences should be able to connect with your blog posts. Blogs should give your audience the information they are looking for.
Blogs show your customers that your business is aware of their needs and is educating them. The purpose of a blog is to provide useful information that can help your audience find solutions to their problems. Maybe your target customers are not completely aware about your industry. Educate your audience about your products or services. Before creating your blogs take a look at what problems your buyer personas face. This will help you create relevant blog topics.
Writing on broad topics
The more specific a blog topic is the better. Broad topics can only give very general information that is not very useful. Also, from an SEO perspective it is hard to rank for broader topics. Hence, write on topics that are focused on specific search queries of your audience. With keyword research you can come across numerous search queries that your audience is looking for. Select these specific search queries to create blogs that offer clear and precise information.
Specific topics can allow you to write on different angles of a particular topic. These specific topics should always be a part of a broader topic that is relevant to your business. The concept of topic clusters and pillar page can help you understand this better.
If you are not sure about what topic clusters are, here is a simple guide that can help you understand it better.
Using keywords that have no search volume
Keywords are central to your blog content. Based on these keywords your blog will show up on the search results page. When you are researching keywords pay attention to the search volume. You need to ensure that the keywords you select have some search volume. Keywords with high search volume can be very competitive to rank for. You can select keywords that have a medium or low search volume.
Even if you have written a great blog and you rank on the top of the results page, you will not get any traffic from it. Without search volume your blog will not reach your target customers. Hence, ensure that you do your keyword research prior to creating a blog and select the ones with a good search volume to reach your target audience.
Not optimizing blog content
SEO or search engine optimization is crucial for your content strategy. When optimizing your blogs there are a few areas you need to focus on. First, use the main keyword strategically throughout your blog content. Do not overuse the keyword as this might backfire. The keyword should fit naturally into your blog content.
Next, use on-page SEO. Ensure that you use your focus keyword in the blog title, URL and meta description. This clearly communicates to your users and search engines what you blog is all about. When search engines crawl your web page it needs to understand what topic it covers. Based on this search engines present your web page before audiences who are looking for this information. Hence, make sure that you do not skip this step.
Lastly, use internal links to help users navigate to other pages of your website. These links can lead users to another blog topic with relevant information. Or it can also link back to the main pillar page. You can also lead the users to the relevant products or services page. Internal links show the search engines that you have covered all aspects of a particular topic. Search engines then determine that your web page has all the information related to a search query. This helps you increase your rank in the search results page. Do not forget to use internal links in your blog.
Not paying attention to layout
A blog that is structured is visually pleasing to the audience. This helps you boost user experience. People will stick around and read your blog when you present it well. No matter how amazing your content is, a sloppy and messy layout can discourage your audience from reading it. Use a clear layout for your blog. Organize your blog with headings and subheadings. Use font size and weights to highlight the importance of a particular topic. For example, your title will be in big bold letters followed by a heading and subheading.
This sort of hierarchy can give your blog a more structured and organized look. You can also use color in your title and headings. Layout is important for your blog as it can create a great user experience which can encourage your audience to spend more time on the page.
Being inconsistent
If you are inconsistent with your blog postings, then you will not get much traffic on your website. Whether you post your blogs monthly, weekly or daily it is important to follow this schedule. The more blogs you post the more traffic you will get. Invest time to create regular blog content and maintain that flow. Like any other marketing strategy, blogging requires consistency and time investment.
Blogging may look easy, but it has its own challenges. However, these challenges are not very difficult to overcome. In this article we discussed some common mistakes that content creators make especially if they are beginners. You may come across more errors when you start creating your own blogs. But pay attention that you are not making these mistakes as it may hamper your blog’s success. Even if you have been making any of these mistakes you can start updating your previous blogs and adopt these good practices when you create new ones.
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