Content Marketing is a proven and white hat SEO strategy that many SEOs praise for its advantages. But are you implementing the effective strategies for content Marketing? Well, if you're not, your content is going to be "dog’s breakfast." I.e. a mish-mash of disparate idea that aren't all going to be relevant to your reader.
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Let's review the top 9 common mistakes people make in their content marketing.
1. Creating content on a very common topic
Writing content on a very popular topic is an often-used approach to content marketing. How many times people write blogs on “basic seo factors” or “weight loss tips.” This approach not only sinks your content on Google, it also brings you little-to-no results for your efforts – Don’t carry coal to Newcastle!
How to Avoid: Investing time on generating unique, fresh and high quality content is the prime factor of effective content marketing strategy. If you're going to cover a common topic, be sure add unique value that is not found on other blogs.
2. Low quality content
Web is filled with millions of pages for each search query and topic typed into Google. To survive in the content war, you should come up with content that provides an extra value to your audience. Your content should be authentic and insightful rather than rehashed ideas.
How to Avoid: Do a research on your a niche. Not only will you get ideas, but thorough research can help you to hit on the topic and write with an authentic view.
3. Content submission to low quality sites
If your content is linked from or submitted in low quality websites, there might be chances that your content marketing efforts are in vain.
How to Avoid: Get ready with a list of high quality sites you wish to target for your content. An industry-leading sites is able to “spread the word” and a boost your authorship. You can get the list of high-quality websites by using online tools like Open Site Explorer
4. Content without a Purpose
Content should be always have a target audience. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience - what content do they want to read and how you can meet their expectations? Figure out the needs of your target audience and help them by providing a great solution. This is the basic strategy of effective content marketing. Producing content without any value or reproducing content can get you nowhere in content marketing.
How to Avoid: Identify your content marketing goal. Are you trying to get brand awareness? Or want to make conversions? Or just want to spread awareness about your services? List out your goals; what do you actually want to achieve through content marketing?
Identify your content marketing goal and form the strategy accordingly.
5. Less frequently updated content
Your audience and search engines find it useless if your content is outdated. To be authentic, you must provide information that is updated regularly. To get a top ranking in search engines with an outdated content is rare. Though an evergreen content strategy can help your blogs rank long-term.
How to Avoid: Consistently updated content increases credibility of the topic. Visitors find it reliable to refer. Get updated with your niche and update your content regularly if needed. Re-purpose your outdated content.
See a best example here: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
Moz regularly updates the latest Google algorithm changes and it has become the most reliable reference for internet marketing experts to get a quick check or detailed data of Google algorithm history and updates. In fact, this page became more reliable than the data Google provides. :-)
6. Low quality outbound links
Reference links offer a better knowledge-based experience to the visitor. But you must be careful about the authority/quality of these reference links. Linking to low quality sites not only affects your site authenticity, but worse, it can also lead to Google penalty.
How to Avoid: Check out the quality of the linking domain/page – usability of content, site authority/rank, etc.
7. Content that is not SEO friendly
Well, you created a great article and now what? Though the content is meant for the visitors, you must optimize it for search engines. Create content for the visitors, optimize it for search engines. This can help in bringing organic traffic as a bonus for your content marketing effort.
How to Avoid: Ensure that you have done the on-page optimization for your content (of course, only white hat SEO :-) )
8. Not using the marketing platforms
Producing high-quality content alone will not bring you massive traffic. When combining with proper online marketing platforms content marketing can be even more effective. Without using the suitable online marketing tools it is going to be a tough job for you to reach your target audience.
How to Avoid: You have to make use of the effective internet marketing tools to promote content. This can help you save a lot of your time and make it easy to explore new opportunities.
9. Absence of shareability
So you have high quality content that is ready to go viral? It's meets and even adds to industry standards, but you don't provide adequate ways for people to share it on social media! Visitors tend to share high-quality content on social and this in turn helps your content to get noticed in social networks.
How to Avoid: Utilizing the social platforms is a must have technique in content marketing. Providing user with social share buttons with optimized images can help you spread the word about your content.
Now, here is how the above content marketing strategies can negatively impact you:
- Misspent Time & Resource
Spending time and resources on content marketing can inversely affect your productivity if the effort fails to return the expected result. By choosing the wrong strategy, you can end up wasting time and resources. You should have a solid ROI plan for your content marketing budget.
Recommended read: KPIs for measuring content marketing ROI
- Negative brand reputation and credibility
By producing low-quality content, you let your audience will find your content irrelevant (if they even see it at all) and this in turn affects the credibility of your business. You may find it difficult build trust and to convince your target visitors that your brand is reputable.
Recommended Read: Why Small Businesses Should Think about Branding
- Low profile backlinks
Low-quality or outdated content has little chance of getting linked from authority sites. You are losing the opportunities to get high-quality baclinks by not offering unique and fresh content. Content that has no unique value to offer will get backlinks only from low quality sites and this in turn can cause a Google penalty.
- Unimpressive Social Media Presence
With the absence of quality content marketing, your site is losing social shares and publicity. Social media audience should be one of the prime focuses for every business. Building high engagement and circle of connections is a must have strategy for every brand to make its move on social media. This is not possible with low-quality content.
- Obscure Authorship – Find Yourself Nowhere in the Niche
Google Authorship has a major impact on search engine rankings. Content written by a well-established author tends to get higher positions in SERPs. It is important that you provide high quality content in order to get a high authorship profile, failing to do this can inversely affect rankings and your authorship profile gets devalued with low-quality content.
on
Content is not hard to create or find. The real problem arises in the distribution of that Content. If a firm has thousands of Product, and still nobody gives a shit, thanks to organic reach. People are not going to know about your Collection of Products. You must be consistent and unique from the start.
on
To be more successful above everyone else you need to be different.That’s what separates the successful from the none successful.If you follow one successful person who achieves things differently from everyone else you can learn a lot.If you follow a person who achieves things the same way has everyone else, you gain nothing but competitors.