5 Content Mistakes That Sabotage Your SEO Efforts

When writing content for your website or blog, including relevant keywords might not be enough. There are a few other considerations to keep in mind when it comes to creating SEO friendly content.

Let’s take a look at some content related mistakes that can ruin your perfectly on-page optimized pages.

1. Low Content Ratio on Page

Google values long-form content. In-depth articles with 1200 words or more tend to provide more insight into each topic, proving to search engines that these articles have more authority and knowledge than listicles or short-form paragraphs.

Having empty pages, or pages with a low content ratio on your website can ruin your efforts in being seen as an authority figure on a specific subject that you are trying to rank for. If you want to prove to Google that your website is the best choice to appear in search results for your desired keywords, you should invest in rewriting short-form content into longer and more high-quality articles.

How to add content to a page without seeming spammy?

Try thinking about your target audience and their customers' journey. What is your audience interested in? What type of problem can you address or solve for your ideal user?

To get answers to these questions, you can use google suggestions at the bottom of the page, or google questions. Include questions and answers in your content and address issues that concern your audience. This way, you will add more ‘meat’ to your existing content, naturally.

2. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is a no-no in the SEO world. By copy-pasting the same content on your website, you are signaling to Google that your content is not high quality. Duplicate content might be flagged by Google and you can get a penalty for your website.

How to check duplicate content on your website?

Duplicate site checker tools, like Siteliner, can show if you have duplicate content on your website. The Siteliner tool will show you the percentage of duplicate content on each page and highlight the pages that have the same content on them.

Rewrite duplicate content to ensure that you present to the world the best version of your website.

What happens if you must include two versions of the same page?

If you absolutely must include two pages with the same content, make sure to use canonical tags. This way, you can indicate to Google, which page is the original version and which one is a ‘copy’ version of the same page.

3. Keyword Stuffing

We all know the basics of making SEO friendly pages. Keywords should be included in the title of the page, the meta description, the H1 and in the body of the content. However, how many keywords are too many?

Focusing on one main keyword and three to five supporting keywords is enough for each blog page or article. You don’t need to use ten or more keywords in a page, because it will not improve your Google ranking. Your writing should be natural and only include keywords that naturally flow in your content.

Keyword stuffing is an antiquated SEO practice that used to work for websites long ago, but doesn’t work anymore. Google is working on improving artificial intelligence algorithms to help Google to recognize natural speech better. Write for people, not search engines!

4. Bad URL Structure

A good URL structure includes the title and the main keyword of the page. If your page title is too long, the URL structure shouldn’t be too long as well. Google will cut off your URL in search results if it goes beyond 512 pixels.

Try to use core keywords in URLs and avoid numbers, hashes, signs, and characters.

For example, if your title is “10 Best Design Tips for Your Living Room in 2020”, then a good URL for that article could be: “www.site.com/living-room-design-tips”.

5. No Internal Linking Strategy

Interlinking between pages on your website is critical for a healthy website. When Google crawls your website, it is crucial to showcase your website structure as a web of connections. No page on your website should be an ‘orphan’.

Make sure that all the pages of your website are inter-connected in a natural way. When creating new content for the blog, try to keep in mind relevant pages that should be included in new pages, in advance.

Are you ready to boost your rankings? SERP Wolf is here to help. Schedule a free SEO consultation today for your business.