Never has an old proverb proven so practical and true as when it said, "you learn what to adopt by first learning what to avoid." We have to admit writing content online can be very confusing and filled with pitfalls. Everyone has experienced more than once that gut-wrenching feeling of expecting a certain blog article to do extremely well and then seeing how the numbers have drastically fallen. Doing this repeatedly, hoping something improves, is neither healthy nor profitable. We will keep today's article simple, even if only to counter the complex idea created regarding online writing in the minds of so many potential star bloggers. Yes, you can do it, and here's where you should start!
The mistakes we make while drafting our online content might not be apparent to us, but they are extremely apparent to our audience and the search engine itself. Adopting the proper practices of writing content online is imperative if you want your content to be visible to the right audience.
The first mistake we can make in our content writing journey is to believe that we know enough about a topic when we don't. As writers, we can often be overconfident - we believe our excellent way of conveying information will make up for the lack of information. But it seldom does. To attract a reader, the writer must have genuine, valuable information to impart that has not been provided anywhere else on the internet. At the end of the day, unique content is the foundation pillar of good writing.
Never start writing without having a clear idea of where your content is supposed to go and what it is supposed to achieve. Writing an idle article is a huge mistake; it irritates the audience and sabotages its performance on the search engine. When you form a structure and outline for your content, you will be drawing inspiration from a broader idea about the goals and objectives of your writing. So, you must first be clear with yourself about what these goals and objectives are. What do you want to achieve from your writing? What do you want your audience to achieve from reading your writing? Make sure you have clear answers to these questions.
Most of us know by now that keywords are essential for almost every level of optimization that you want in your writing. Most content writers fail to reach targets because they are either not aware of what proper keyword research is or are too lazy to implement it. Keywords are those specific words and phrases that search engines use to locate information about a particular topic on the internet. Many tools can list topic-wise or URL-wise keywords for you. But you can't use guesswork to select keywords from this list. Every single time, you need to look at the conversion rates, frequency, and other data related to these keywords and then decide which ones will work the best for your website.
Too many keywords in the content are known as keyword stuffing. On the other hand, a lack of keywords in the content makes it deficient in Search Engine Optimization. Your job is to find the golden balance. Again, don't make the mistake of relying on casual observation to determine your formula. To know how often you should use keywords, you need to have market information about your particular industry and routinely analyze the performance of your past writing on the internet. And most importantly, you need to keep yourself updated on the latest Google algorithm changes.
Never make the mistake of writing before you know what your target audience expects and requires from you. There is always an unmet relationship between a writer and the reader where the writer provides adequate emotional and factual information that matches the person's temperament and requirements. Try to focus on one target audience 'description' at a time so that you can implement all the needs in your article without fail.
Another huge mistake is not following proper writing discipline. Many individual writers, as well as teams, take the time interval between the two articles as unimportant. But remember, almost every credible blog produces content regularly - and when not regular, they have a specific, predetermined gap between the publishing of two different articles. And the only way to be able to publish a regular blog is to write regularly! Writing regularly also makes sure your blog contains information on all important trends and events.
Do not ever make the mistake of publishing the blog without multiple revisions and rounds of proofreading. Without proofreading and editing, your writing will most likely be filled with embarrassing mistakes. Often, a word doesn't mean what it is supposed to, or a certain punctuation mark has been placed in the wrong area. But revisions are not about surface-level changes. It also involves rewriting sentences so they are clearer, switching out one piece of information for another that is more vital, using tabular data, etc., to represent your writing, and so much more.
Always, always use every possible story in your article. The funny thing is that no amount of storytelling is too much in any blog article as long as it contains the required factual information. If you are a writer who is adept with fiction writing, you are going to love the idea of being able to craft stories again. But if you have no experience in this, do not panic! You can still write simple stories by recounting customer experiences, interviews, highlights of a particular campaign, listicles, etc. Just because you do not have a strong background of having used storytelling before doesn't mean you can't do it now.
A huge mistake writers continue making is not giving your online content the proper structure. Mostly all you need to do is follow the experimental research design and create a massive tool that makes your content appear similar to other high rankings on the same topic. So we can say that by properly structuring your outline, you can create a mental map that your reader will go through as they read your content. Nobody these days reads huge chunks of content. So, you should make your work much more readable by dividing what you have written into different headings and subheadings.
Jargon refers to the technical terms and in-professional names given to general things that others outside the profession may not know about. Jargons are generally bad, but they are worse if you use unfamiliar terms repeatedly and do not explain them. There is a deeper, more secret reason why you should not use jargon - these terms exclude audience members from the target audience dynamic. If the relatability of your content is gone, your writing will automatically suffer.
Once your writing has been rid of these mistakes, you can move on to incorporating better methods of making your content shine. Whenever you feel like it, take time off of your writing and spend time researching the market, learning how to forge better titles, understanding the theoretical background of blog writing, researching beginner to advanced SEO tools, etc. You will find a lot of such guides on this website alone! Until next time, take care.
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