Easy To Avoid SEO Copywriting Errors That Ruin Content

Writing good website content can be difficult. Especially when you try to find the balance between valuable information and SEO.

Readers demand informative, thoughtful, well written content. If you don’t provide it they know someone else will.

But writing for SEO is different than other forms of writing. Not everyone can pick it up quickly. But if you’re mindful of these frequent SEO copywriting errors, you’re halfway there!

Cramming SEO Keywords

Forcing keywords into sentences is one of the most common SEO copywriting errors.

Keyword placement is hard to artfully master. Cramming keywords into phrases where they don’t fit leads to overly complicated sentences. The placement often isn’t grammatically correct.

If you make this mistake you ruin your content. Your attempt to force in high value words is obvious to readers who notice the repetitiveness.

When you need to use keywords, form the sentence around the keywords instead of forcing them into existing content TWEET.

By constructing the sentence in parts, you end up with a clear and accurate statement that isn’t awkward or confusing to read.

Poor Stylistic Choices

Poor stylistic choices plague websites written without the help of an experienced copywriter.

Especially when writers have a general idea about how SEO keywords work, but not enough information to use them correctly.

Keywords then get bolded, italicized or underlined for reasons unknown to most editors.

Sure, it does make them easier to find when reading. But  it also makes it easier for readers to know these words serve a forced marketing service. The styling doesn’t appear to be legitimate.

Also, search engines pay no attention to whether particular words have stylistic highlighting. They place no extra value on your page. 

For successful website copy, simply don’t style keywords any different from the rest of the text.  So long as keywords exist in the content they will be found.

Endless Paragraphs

Paragraphs seem the obvious choice for the structure of your web copy, but think again.

Endless paragraphs may be easy to write, but they’re difficult to read. Especially on the mobile devices that dominate Google’s searches.

“Call outs”, bullet points, and paragraph headers help readers navigate content. They make it possible to gain valuable information just by skimming.

They can also act as natural spots for keywords.

Poor Spelling And Grammar In SEO Copywriting

Proper spelling and grammar seems to be everyone’s least favourite part of writing.

Google doesn’t check if your commas and semicolons are in the right place when it ranks your page.  Some SEO Copywriters are equally happy to then disregard them as well.

But what Google does care about is user experience. If readers leave your page immediately because you can’t edit, your page suffers.

It’s a misplaced belief that red and blue lines in a word processor let you know if you’ve made an error. That kind of editing just isn’t good enough.

At minimum, reread your content and address these common mistakes:

• Sentences need both a subject and a verb. If you’re missing either, then it needs to be rewritten.
  
• Comma placement is not a free for all. Place commas between phrases that can be dependent of one another. Don’t place them where you want to add emphasis or think the reader should take a breath.
  
• If you have to guess what a certain punctuation mark does, or hope that it’s used correctly, simply don’t use it.
  
• Be very aware of homonyms.  Homonyms are words that look or sound alike but have entirely different meanings. Using lose instead of loose, or affect instead of effect, completely alters a sentence.

Write Better, Rank Better

Effective SEO copywriting requires a significantly higher level of creativity and attentiveness than many writers want to give it.

Writing empty content just to force keywords onto a page just doesn’t cut it anymore. Especially as Google pays more attention to user experience than ever before.

It’s important that your content is meaningful to readers. Good content encourages them to stay longer on your website. In turn they have the time to become drawn to your product or service.

SEO copywriting errors are far too common, and tend to force critical viewers away from your website.

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