SEO Writing Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make in 2018

SEO Writing has very much evolved in the past couple of decades.  The main difference that we see now is a shift in writing for search engines, to writing for users. There are a lot of ways for webpages to rank well on Google, and in turn there are now more ways for webpages to rank poorly.

Here at PureSEO we are constantly conducting content marketing and copywriting work for our clients. With that experience, we’ve compiled a list of the worst SEO writing mistakes you really want to avoid in 2018 below to ensure you’re in line with industry best practices.

Keyword Stuffing

It’s highly unlikely that content creators are still using keyword stuffing to boost SEO. However, in the off chance that you are, you may want to seriously reconsider. Keyword stuffing will quickly earn you a place in Google’s blacklist. Keyword stuffing results in a negative user experience because your content is likely to be irrelevant, and probably sounds very unnatural.

Ignoring Search Intent

Intent matching is now more important than exact keyword matching. There are many ways for people to phrase their search queries, yet they probably have only one reason for why they’re conducting a particular Google search.

Ensure that your content focuses on search intent so your page visitors can find the vital information they need.

Unoptimised Title and Content

Optimising a web page’s title and body content continue to be crucial elements of a successful SEO strategy. Target keywords need to seamlessly fit into these two sections to ensure that search engines understand what your content is about.

Headlines, URLs, meta descriptions and even IMG Alt attributes are no longer primarily used by search engines for rankings. However, they do contribute to improving overall user experience, which in turn contributes to site credibility and overall ranking.

Neglecting User Experience

Google continues to upgrade its algorithm to provide a better search engine for its users. We know it’s working because Google is the most widely used search engine worldwide today. In turn, Google expects the same from webmasters and content writers.

Engagement metrics (such as bounce rates, session length, etc.) help Google to decide whether or not your webpage is more relevant than everyone else’s for a specific query. Make sure that you monitor these engagement metrics, and always keep your users in mind when writing web content.

Ways of improving content user experience include:

• using bullet points,
• creating clear headlines,
• utilising white space, and
• writing in a clear, natural style.

Writing for SEO is no longer congruent to writing solely to be found by search engines. SEO writing has evolved into creating meaningful content for your users. 

Find more tips for boosting user experience and generating leads in our free guide below!