5 blog mistakes your business is making

What’s the one way to really win your audience over? The answer is content marketing, more specifically, writing targeted blog posts that adhere to SEO principles, guaranteed to transform your readers to loyal customers. However, a lot can go wrong. Often, seemingly harmless or undetected blogging mistakes can lead to big problems, negatively altering readers’ points of view and subsequently causing your Google ranking to plummet. 

If you’re here, then presumably it’s to prevent this from happening, and you want to use content as a way to strengthen your business rather than hinder it. We’ve previously discussed how to be a good writer and our favourite blogging tips, but now we’re here to warn you of five blogging mistakes your business could be making, and how to avoid them in the future. 

1) Tone of voice

Before you start typing away, knowing how to get your tone of voice spot on requires research and careful planning. TOV (that’s tone of voice, you know) is key for nailing your blog posts, and it’s one way to ensure that you’re attracting loyal readers who will keep coming back for more. Blogging is all about making a personal connection with the reader, relating to their pain points and working with them to resolve these. Ultimately, your ability to do this will determine your overall Google ranking – so it’s a biggie. With this in mind, you should avoid using the wrong tone at all costs, as this could be the difference between business success and tragic failure. 

To establish the right tone for your blog, you need to get to grips with your brand’s values. How would you describe your culture? What makes you stand out from the crowd? And, most importantly, who are you appealing to? Readers from different ages and backgrounds will have a preferred tone, whether it’s a little tongue-in-cheek or formal and professional. Avoid making blogging mistake number one by being either overly familiar or too formal when it’s not appropriate. 

2) Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is an old-school, black hat SEO tactic, and although Google has since seen considerable advancements to its ranking criteria, sneaky marketers will still attempt (and fail) to trick the system.

For those that are innocent, you may be wondering, ‘what on earth is keyword stuffing?’ This strategy involves incorporating as many keywords as possible into the text in an attempt to rank higher on Google, creating a piece of often illegible content that looks like it was written by a robot, for a robot. If you were to attempt this technique now, you would end up in Google’s bad books. 

Luckily, there are ways to rank higher on Google without keyword stuffing. Your blogging (and business’s) success will rely heavily on keyword research to determine topics that are “in”. Once you know what you’re going to write about, you can begin to naturally inject these keywords into the title, subheadings, meta tags and main text – without sounding overly artificial. 

3) Blogging consistency

In a world teeming with competition, you’ll often have to remind your readers that you exist on multiple occasions for them to become loyal customers. Hubspot recommends that smaller businesses post one to four times a week, whilst larger businesses should post daily, or multiple times a day to stay on top of their game. If you feel as though you’re falling behind, it’s helpful to put together a detailed content calendar, highlighting any upcoming blog posts that need attention. When you have an organised strategy to hand, your business is much more likely to come out a winner. 

4) User-focused content

Taking a user-centric approach is the route to success, as once you’re aware of what your readers really want, you can start producing some brilliant blog posts. Upon stumbling across your web page, research suggests that the first ten seconds will determine whether or not a person decides to stick around. So, if your first sentence isn’t grabbing enough, or if the topic is unappealing and doesn’t resolve the pain points, it’s probably time for a rethink. Question yourself on whether your post includes topics that you personally would want to read about, or if it guides your audience to achieve the desired goal – whether this be a purchase, a subscription, a share etc.

5) Topic relevance

You’ll have noticed by now that there’s a running theme of really getting to know your demographic, and truth be told, efficient target audience research produces showstopping blogs. When doing your keyword research – even though a topic may be trending – ask yourself whether it’s relevant to your brand. Does it align with your values? Is there a way you could link it to your product or service without too much of a stretch? If the answer to these questions is no, you need to head back to the drawing board. 

Whether you need content marketing advice to produce some quality blogs, or if you need assistance across SEO, paid social or PPC, we can work with you to form a digital marketing strategy that generates real results. Get in touch with us today to start making your business the best it can be! 

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