Everything that a website contains, any textual, visual and aural information, is considered content. No website can exist without content, and no website can be successful without an efficient content marketing strategy. So here is today’s blog post, which is itself content ;) and will tell you how to improve your content to get the maximum effectiveness from it. We have previously mentioned how to meet web content accessibility guidelines and how to check it. But what are the other mistakes except ignoring users with disabilities that you may be making without realizing it? What practices will help you avoid or fix these mistakes? Find the biggest content marketing mistakes right now.
How to avoid or fix common content marketing mistakes
No content planning and big-picture thinking
- Try to publish your content (e.g. blog posts) at equal time intervals.
- Plan your future content instead of random spontaneous posting.
- Make up a content calendar with dates and topics and adhere to this schedule.
Not researching what audience wants
- Create a user persona.
- Use Google Analytics to track visitors’ behavior on the website.
- Adapt your content to the needs, interests and preferences of your target audience.
- Personalize your content.
No or poor SEO
- Use meta title and meta descriptions.
- Use ALT text for images.
- Use appropriate keywords, but moderately, watch out for over-optimization.
- Use H1, H2, H3 etc. for headings and subheadings.
- Use external and internal links, as well as backlinks. Use meaningful and not long anchors.
Duplicate content
- Set up 301 redirects from duplicate pages to original.
- Use robots.txt file to block the access of search bots to the duplicate pages.
- Use rel="canonical" link element to show search bots which page is canonical and deserves to be given all the value.
- Use the “noindex” meta tag to tell the search engines to not index text and “nofollow” tag where links shouldn’t be followed.
- If you have two versions of your pages, one with and one without www in the URL, choose only one and put a redirect for the other.
Badly structured content
- Chop solid chunks of text into small paragraphs of 4–7 lines.
- Write subheadings to give names to logical pieces of content that contain keywords and sum up its main idea.
- Highlight important phrases and sentences with bold, italics, and bigger font size.
- Arrange concise content in the form of enumerated or bulleted lists.
Grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes and typos
- Check and recheck what you have written for grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes and typos before you publish it on your site.
- Use special programs and online services (like Language Tool) to find mistakes and misspellings.
- Have your text reviewed by another person with philological knowledge.
Sticking to only one or few content types
- Diversify your content.
- Use images, infographics, charts, videos and audios along with text.
- Use H5P interactive content (like quizzes, questionnaires and games) to encourage uses to take actions with it.
No evergreen content
- Don’t focus solely on content that can boost traffic temporarily, like daily news and viral buzz topics.
- Produce some evergreen content that won’t lose its relevance with time and will keep on driving traffic for years.
Forgetting about previously posted content
- Update your content if there were some changes in things mentioned there. Pay special attention to keeping the home page and landing pages up-to-date.
- Delete content that is no longer needed.
- Constantly check for comments and reply to them.
Ignoring the power of social media
- Put social sharing buttons and social media follow buttons on site pages.
- Create pages for your business on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, or Google+ and promote your site content there.
No, or not enough, CTA
- Place calls-to-action above the fold, in the middle area, in the sidebar or at the end of the page and make them easy to notice.
- Choose contrasting colors for CTA buttons, anchor fonts, and backgrounds.
- Clarify in the anchor how clicking on CTA will help users solve their problems.
So, we have mentioned the biggest content marketing mistakes that commonly occur on the web. Focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to content. If you need professional help to make your content SEO-optimized or conduct an audit to detect weak points on your website, contact our Wishdesk masters, who will make your wishes come true.
