Don’t Break These Blog Rules
Writing For Search Engines, Not People
Some of the biggest mistakes to make when writing blog content fall under the desire to write for the Google search robot and not for actual people who might read the content. This can develop into a large array of bad decisions and practices. For example you might write your blog based upon keyword research and then proceed to stuff your articles with keyword and long tail search terms. This was once an acceptable practice until the Panda update from Google. Over-optimization is now punishable by being banished to Search Engine Obscurity.
Don’t Publish Spam in Your Own Site
In the effort to increase the number of pages in your site, you might be tempted to publish a large number of very short articles. First, Google is not impressed by these trivial efforts and will not likely up your search “stock price”. Second, imagine one of your readers browsing your other blog posts. What will their opinion be if 50% of the posts they open are a hunderd words or so. Certainly nothing there to sink their teeth into.
Avoid Obvious Laziness
We already covered the topic of short blog posts, but you can also look less professional and trustworthy, when you have text-only posts. If you are truly adding to the conversation online, you will concerned with formatting, links, sources and maybe an infographic or chart.
Avoid the Online Tupperware Party
This is the trap of blatant self-promotion. You blog post should add value for the reader, not sell your services. If they consume and appreciate the content they will hunt down your contact info and reach out. Self-promotion in your blog is akin to inviting your friends over for a party and then they find out that you are just going to sell them Tupperware.