Bloggers Should Avoid These Easily Overlooked SEO Errors

With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, the digital marketing sphere has certainly undergone significant evolution over the last two decades. That’s why it is easy to lose sight of the best practices we should be employing and make careless SEO errors. With every technological shift in search and new algorithm update, content marketers and bloggers become obsessed with how the SEO world will enter a wholly new paradigm, thus shifting their focuses to reflect these changes. As much as mediums may change, you should keep in mind that the core principles remain the same. Without further ado, it’s time to get back to the basics and explore some common blogging errors people tend to make.

Subpar Content Promotion

Content promotion related errors continue to stump small businesses and plague bloggers. Every content marketer knows in their heads that a good piece of content is a natural link magnet. However, this is not always true. A poorly written 500-word listicle and exquisitely written 3,500-word article (with superb imagery) are just equally useless if they do not drive traffic or conversions. The real focus should be on proper content promotion strategy and technical structure.

For example, you should leverage your connections by asking influential members of your organization to promote or share a piece of content. Alternatively, you can request a quote from an industry thought leader. Use what he or she provides you and place it in your content. You may also advertise this piece in your rich snippet, on popular social media channels. Next, you should determine which types of content perform best over certain social media platforms, e.g. listicles, videos, infographics, “How-to” or “Why” tutorials, and more.

Fail to Optimize Videos and Images

Apart from weak content promotion, another common mistake is ignoring video and image optimization. If you do not optimize your videos or images, they can increase the load time of your web page. Many website visitors may not have the patience or time to wait. Start making sure that your vector images are formatted as .png and on-site images as .jpg. You will want to optimize the image alt texts so that it can rank in a targeted keyword image search as well.

If your content features videos, considering hosting all of them in a single folder and then create a video site map. This allows search engines to index your videos. It’s a good practice to optimize the meta description of all video pages with targeted keywords. Don’t forget to drop a call to action in your video annotations too!

Poor Internal Linking Practices

In the world of digital marketing, backlinks are the gold standard of search engine ranking factors. Bloggers will want at least three to five internal links in each of their blog post. Ironically, internal linking is still one of the most overlooked aspects of SEO optimization. So, start conducting a comprehensive internal link audit and determine which web page possesses the most authority.

Also, you will want to amplify their magic via strategic internal linking, i.e. employing a navigation or drop-down menu on your home page to offer deep links to inaccessible web pages. Do this and Bing and Google will have an easier time accessing it. Remember, do not overuse links. You will need to limit the number of links between your home page and each blog post. It is important to distribute the link juice throughout your domain in a uniform manner. While you’re at it, take the time to vary anchor text phrases for each link, to cater to multiple search queries.