SEO is crucial if you want your content to show up on the first page on Google. And you should want this because, as the famous quote goes: “The best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search results.” And it’s true unless someone is determined to find a specific answer to their questions and there are no answers on the first page, and your content might as well not be there. So, the fight for those first few spots is always on. If you want your content to rank well, avoid these mistakes:
Forgetting the research
Before you start with SEO, you have to invest time in research. What this means is that you have to research the topic you are writing about before you start writing about it and that you should research your keywords. The investment in this research is beneficial because then you have a better scope of the work, and you can insert your keywords easily.
Using complex language
People tend to overuse long, complicated words instead of simple language because they want people to know that they are smart and that they are writers. However, all this does is make your content hard to understand, you seem stuck up, and no one gets any value from that. Instead, use simple words that people can understand. You should also stay away from jargon because it can only confuse the reader and often make them feel excluded from your content and your story.
Using your opinions as facts
Make sure you know how to differentiate between your ideas and real events, confirmed by science. While it may be tempting to use your personal opinions as facts, you should stay away from that. Depending on the niche, it could be dangerous, and it’s unethical in general. If something is your opinion, make sure that you have clarified it. You should also make sure that your users know when your content is an opinion and which content you based on facts.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past – or at least it should be. It should have never even been a thing. Why? Well, while your content might rank a bit higher for a while because of all those keywords, your users aren’t finding any quality there. The Google Bot will also realize what you did sooner or later and rank your content appropriately, placing it on the dreaded second page or worse.
Not being clear
How many times have you read something only to realize that you didn’t understand a thing? Probably many times. “This often happens when even the writer doesn’t understand the topic well. Luckily, you can remedy this by simply researching and making sure that everything you write is in simple language,” says Stan Petson, an SEO manager at Stateofwriting and Eliteassignmenthelp.
No writing accurate content
People are not grammar nazis, but they do prefer mistake-free content. You should always proofread and spell-check your content. The process is quite simple – use a tool to remove first, apparent mistakes and then go through the text on your own to catch anything that was missing.Here are some tools that you can use for the first part of the process:
- Academized is an online editing tool mentioned by Uk top writers that can help you remove all complex words and jargon from your content.
- The academic advisor and Studydemic are SEO writing guides which will help you learn all of the SEO rules.
- Big assignments and Australian help are content formatting tools mentioned by Best Australian writers. They can help you create plenty of white space and make your content look visually appealing.
- Grammarly is a grammar checker that can help you remove all of the initial mistakes in grammar.
Linking to irrelevant sites
Backlinks, both internal and external, are crucial for SEO. However, that’s only true if done right. If you link to shady and suspicious sites that could be plagued with viruses, sell unethical products and services or provide low-quality content, you can end up with a penalty from Google because of your content, no matter how useful and functional is leading users to something that’s not so good. Always link to high authority websites that will allow you to gain benefits from those backlinks. Make sure that the links pointing at your site are also high in quality.SEO has many rules, and just as many mistakes that you can make. While it’s quite understandable for beginners, you should do your research on SEO and best practices that you can use to up your ranking instead of getting it down. Hopefully, you’ll learn from these mistakes and find a way to fix them if you have already made them.