Content Optimization Tactics to Avoid Common Mistakes
Content optimization is without a doubt an essential digital marketing technique. The importance of SEO lies in the fact that without having a decent rank in the search results, the traffic rate will be low. Low traffic rate influences the overall website success since it leads to a low click-through rate, low sales rate, and low conversion rate.
Even though most marketers, entrepreneurs, and SEO developers understand the value of SEO, what some don’t understand is the complexity of it. That leads to many repeated mistakes that only hurt their content optimization. Being informed about how to avoid common SEO mistakes can save you a lot of time and effort. So, here are some useful content optimization tactics that will help you stay away from frequent optimization mistakes.
Research the Competition
You can learn a lot from your competitive brands. Their successful work or the ineffective attempt will show you what you should and shouldn’t do. The sources you can use are their websites, blogs, social media channels, or any other content distribution channel. You probably already have the knowledge of who is the best and the worst in your branch so start by making the comparison of the two. For example, find topics that they covered in a blog that address similar subjects and pay attention to structure, keywords, links and anything else that influences their SEO. It is better to learn from other people’s mistakes than from your own.
Do a Regular Check of Broken Links
Broken links are one of the biggest pet peeves of website visitors. Having broken links in your content will affect your credibility, increase the bounce rate, and therefore hurt your SEO. In order to avoid hosting broken links in your content, use a broken link checker on a regular basis. There are lots of great and reliable broken link checker tools that can speed up this process. This is such an easy routine but it will mean so much for your content optimization.
Use Headings and Subheadings
Using headings and subheading is essentially one of the best tactics for structuring your content. Having a clear content structure is relevant because without it the visitors will find the content overwhelming and tiring. Headings and subheadings organize the content and show the visitors what they can expect from it. They also influence the content’s readability. When content is easier to read, the visitors will dwell on the site longer which will signal search engines that you have engaging content to offer. Additionally, since the search crawlers categorize the content, they will encounter a hard task when your content is densely packed. By adding keywords in headings and subheading you will help search crawlers to understand why your content is relevant to the audience.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Everyone knows that keywords have one of the crucial roles in SEO. The whole commotion around keywords has led many SEO developers to stuff the content with keywords. You should know that search engines have the ability to recognize the keywords stuffing and will penalize anyone who does that. The reason why is that search engines’ primary concern is to provide users with relevant and high-quality content. Content that is unnaturally stuffed with keywords can’t be high-quality. The ideal keyword density is 1%-2% and you can use the keywords density calculator to make sure that you haven’t gotten overboard. Pay extra attention to how you spread the keywords across the content. The keywords need to be embedded naturally. A useful tip to avoid content full of keywords that stick out is to identify the keywords first and then to start with writing.
Ensure a Good Loading Speed
If your content loads slowly, you should know that your bounce rate is bound to go up. According to research, 46% of people say waiting for pages to load is what they dislike most about browsing the web on mobile. Human’s patience and concentration level are only going down thanks to the speed of all smart technological devices. Being used to fast response, they’ve lost the patience for slow loading speed. What leads to slow loading speed is:
- Irresponsible and inadequate host.
- Many HTTP requests
Keep in mind that overly interactive content increases the number of HTTP.
You can use a website speed test to check if the page’s loading speed is satisfactory. Know that the pages that load within two seconds have an average bounce rate of 9%, while pages that take five seconds to load have a bounce rate of 38%
Choose Visuals Carefully
Visuals enrich your content and make it more interesting and engaging for the audience. However, that is not all they do. Visuals also affect your content’s rank. What you should pay attention to when choosing visuals is:
- Image quality.
- Image size.
An image that is too large will slow down the page’s loading speed. On the other hand, a poor quality image will hurt your website’s credibility and increase the bounce rate. Don’t forget to optimize the image by adding a relevant image description. Name the image descriptively and use plain language.
Never Stop Working on Your SEO
These tips aren’t a one-time thing. It is crucial that you make content optimization your habit and watch out for these common optimization mistakes at all times. Even the most experienced professionals slip up from time to time. What is important is that you try to prevent the mistake or identify it and correct it. Don’t forget about these important aspects once you find yourself to be proficient in content optimization. Always keep these tips in the back of your mind and get back to them if you feel that you’ve lost your way.
Ignoring digital marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.
Anonymous