Blogging is an extremely beneficial marketing strategy for your business, as it can help direct traffic to your site and help you convert more leads. However, blogging is only successful when it’s done right. Unfortunately, many businesses think that simply having a blog on their website is enough to generate new traffic and improve their SEO. We’ve compiled a list of the top mistakes that businesses make while blogging to help you avoid them and create the best strategy for your business blog.

1. Keyword Stuffing

Anyone with basic knowledge of SEO knows that keywords are important. However, people with old information and people who aren’t skilled with SEO often stuff their blogs with as many keywords as possible, trying to improve their search engine ranking. Some people will even include the same keyword as many times as possible to improve their ranking for that keyword. However, keyword stuffing makes your blog sound awkward and will decrease the number of people who want to read your blog. Additionally, keyword stuffing is actually penalized on search engines, rather than rewarded.

2. Failing to Edit

When you’re busy, you might crank out content for your blog without reading it over. However, when you don’t edit your blog posts, the quality will drop significantly. Not only will your readers enjoy an unedited blog much less, but you will also hurt your search rankings because Google rewards high-quality blogs. To make sure your blog posts are of the highest quality, always make sure to edit them.

3. Lacking Focus

Focusing your blog posts is especially important when you’re first starting your blog. When your blog topics are all over the place and lack focus, it will be difficult to improve your search rankings. Focus on a few select topics you want to build a reputation for on search engines and blog about those topics. Once you’ve established your blog on search engines, you can expand your target keywords and get to work on ranking for more topics. However, when you try to write about everything in the beginning, Google will not know what your focus is and will not know hot to rank you.

4. Forgetting Headlines

Many people who read your blogs will skim through it. You’ll find that a good portion of users just want the main ideas, rather than reading through all of the content on the page. For this reason, it’s important to make sure your blog posts are skim-able. One of the best ways to make sure your blog is skim-able is to use headers and break up your sections as much as possible. Not only will this organization improve the readability of your blog, but it will help your SEO as well, because search engines like well-organized blogs with multiple headlines.

5. Worrying Too Much About the Numbers

When you’re first building up your blog, worrying too much about traffic will do more harm than good. It takes time to build your presence on Google and to have enough blog posts to generate any significant traffic. For this reason, it’s a good idea to wait to measure your traffic until you’ve been working on your blog for a while. It will take a few months of regular blogging before your website will gain any significant traffic, so there’s no sense in worrying about the numbers until that time.

6. Inconsistency

One of the worst mistakes you can make when writing a business blog is failing to post regularly. Without consistent posting, your blog will not be successful. Consistent new posts are important to make sure your readers keep coming back and to improve your SEO. It’s not enough to create a few blog posts then leave your blog alone for months. It’s important to post frequently to maximize the success of your blog.

7. Focusing on Self-Promotion

Some people who create a blog for their business make the mistake of writing a blog focused on promoting their business. Your business blog should be an educational resource for consumers, answering common questions, creating helpful tips, and providing useful information. Providing valuable content for your customers is important for them and to improve your SEO. When you focus on self-promotion, your blog will not generate traffic and will not rank well on Google for any industry-related search terms.

8. Forgetting Visuals

When small businesses quickly create blog content, they sometimes opt for a paragraph or two that they can publish quickly. However, to create a successful blog post, it’s important to include visuals. Every blog post should have at least one photo included to break up the post and to create interest. Visual content is more popular across the Internet than text content, so it’s important to include visuals to improve your readers’ experience and to generate interest when you share your posts on social media.

9. Forgetting a Call to Action

When you create a blog post, you should always add a call to action to the bottom of the page. Blog posts provide useful information to the readers, educating them on different issues and answering their questions. The call to action at the bottom helps them move from the research stage of their buyer’s journey to actually contact your business. When a reader clicks on a call to action, you can capture them as a lead. For this reason, if your blog post doesn’t include a call to action, you’re missing your opportunity to turn your readers into leads. If your blogging strategy isn’t focused on getting leads, it’s unlikely to help your business.

ImageWorks, LLC | CT Blogging for Businesses

Is your business’s blog not getting the results you’re looking for? Are you worried you don’t have the time to turn your blog into a true resource? When it comes to attracting, converting, analyzing, and integrating, there is nothing that is out of the reach of our capabilities. As a leading CT Inbound Marketing firm, ImageWorks LLC uses state of the art techniques and is focused on the success of your business. We work with you to improve your current marketing plan, overcome your challenges, achieve your goals, and meet deadlines. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more.