Top 5 SEO Mistakes Bloggers Must Avoid

Daily and in the past several years, the digital marketing landscape has had tremendous and very significant changes. The reasons for these changes emanate from the fact that bloggers are becoming more knowledgeable and serious about blogging business, and the search engines are becoming smarter by the day. Nobody wants to lose out amidst all these changes. Bloggers have discovered that blog posts which specifically use a variety of on-page SEO tactics can give relatively more opportunities to rank in search engines and get customers to visit any site. Whether you’re new to the blogosphere or you have been blogging for some time, it pays to be aware of some of the most common SEO mistakes relative to blogging. Significantly, some SEO mistakes may seem basic because they occur often. Even at that, they manage to hinder many blogs from achieving optimal search engine rankings. Optimizing blogs for SEO may be a very tedious business, but it is necessary if you’re looking to reach your audience and compete against others in the blogosphere which a highly competitive atmosphere out there on the Internet. Here is a list of the top 5 SEO avoidable mistakes which many bloggers routinely make.

01. Not Inserting Internal and External Links in Your Blog Posts
 
Inserting links on blog posts help to prove to search engines that your content is valid and relevant. Internal links should link to a core or pillar page on your website, as well as direct readers to a related blog. If your blog includes a topic that has been mentioned in another blog post or web page, you should link back to that page. Internal linking helps to keep visitors on your site and helps surface your other authoritative pages to search engines.

02. Failing to Optimize Title Tags

A real grave error if optimizing title tags is overlooked. This is because title tags are one of the most important aspects of search engine rankings. Readers and search engines use title tags to determine the relevancy of any blog content. The real reason you should always keep your title tags targeted towards a keyword whose popularity you must have chosen using any relevant keyword tool before optimizing for it.

03. Keyword Stuffing

This is at times known as blackhat technique in SEO which many search engines now frown at. It should be avoided at all cost. Expert bloggers now know that keyword stuffing, that is, including keywords as much as possible in your content, is readily one of the most common SEO mistakes many bloggers make. It can be avoided by sticking to one or two long-tail keywords to center your blog post around. Long-tail keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. They invite and encourage visitors to read your whole post and seek more information from you thereby helping to recognize your expertise.

04. Poor Page Copy

Blogging is a highly competitive business and the attention of online surfers is always very limited unless there is something unique that helps to arrest their attention for a while. Therefore, when writing a blog, you must keep in mind that you are writing to help people solve their problems. Your blog is not meant to impress search engines but to impress real people. For this reason, you must endeavor to keep your content light, informative, educational and entertaining. A good content is one that can be easily understood and is visually appealing, utilizing the simplest language while discarding unnecessary jargon.

05. Not Writing Enough Content
 
Out of pure laziness, many bloggers tend to write too little content. Search engines have no respect for content that is too scanty. Besides, writing short posts can hurt your reader loyalty. When search engines identify your blog as “low quality” simply because it doesn’t have enough content, it is extremely difficult for them to rank. Expert bloggers now recommend an ideal blog post of 300-750 words. Don’t get caught in the web of not writing enough content for your blog. If you do, it can rub off negatively on your blog ranking. 

 

Don’t be Afraid to Fail

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

Are you afraid to fail? Have you failed before? Do you like failing? Cheer up! That you’ve failed at doing something in the past is a clear indication that you tried to get something done. It is only do-nothing people that never fail. The reason they remain mediocre all their lives. Nothing enviable there believe me! Yes, you are striving to get something done. Yes, you are getting things wrong and making mistakes all along. So what? Do not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another positive step forward. The mistakes you make and discard must not be repeated. As the mistakes get discarded and reduce in number, it takes you closer to getting it right. If you allow these mistakes to stop you, you can never succeed in getting anything worthwhile successfully done. Just keep going, taking actions, making mistakes and making progress. That is the right way to go.

Let your business life be motion and movement all the way, mistakes or no mistakes. Reason is, it appears success is irretrievably connected with action. That is exactly why successful people are always on the move. Even if they make mistakes as we all do, they keep moving and never quitting. They always manage to stay on course and eventually succeed. Therefore, no one should be afraid to fail. Even you fail, don’t dissipate energy trying to cover it up. The way to go is to learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. Meaning? It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing. If you are not growing, you can’t hope to succeed at anything worthwhile in your entire life.

Get busy right now because…. “No pains, no gains. To get the prize, you must pay the price.”


 

Small Business Solution: Avoid Following All Generic Advice

 It pays to be creative in handling workers-related issues if you are running a small business. Your business does not need every advice no matter the credibility of the source. What gets good results is all that counts no matter who is giving the advice. This doesn’t in any way mean you shouldn’t follow a business advice when genuinely given. You must be able to distinguish between genuine advice from blanket statements. Avoid the one-size-fits-all type of advice because same advice may not necessarily apply to every business. In many cases, following generic advice is often what leads to avoidable mistakes.

Generally, as each situation is different, so the solution! Small and large businesses all have their own peculiar characteristics and have to do what’s best for them. Anytime you read up or hear something that could be good for your business, be sure it is suitable for the business before you apply it. What works best is to follow your instincts most of the time. Alternatively, you can seek out expertise advice from a professional who will tailor such advice specifically to your situation. Generic advice can fail you but expert specific advice hardly does.

 

Be Ready to Learn From Experience

“When obstacles arise, change your direction to reach your goal, not the decision to get there.” -- Zig Ziglar

“Experience” they say “is the best teacher.” If you make mistakes, correct them and move on. The more mistakes you make the nearer you are to the solution provided you do not do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Keep good records and refer to them as a guide to avoid previous mistakes. As narrated by Shiv Khera in his book “You can Win”, Fritz Kreisler the great violinist was once asked how he played the violin so well. He replied that it is because of practice and experience. “If I don’t practice for a month, the audience can tell the difference. If I don’t practice for a week, my wife can tell the difference. If I don’t practice for a day, I can tell the difference.”