Bad SEO Content Tactics
Selecting the good SEO content tactic is an important part of an effective SEO marketing strategy. But you can invest a lot of money before you actually see any results. Wrong tactics are a waste of time and money.
F5 Studio content marketers and on-page SEO specialists shared an experience, so I have come up with a few pieces of advice for you.
Note! These tips are based on the assumption that your corporate site was built by pofessional team of UI/UX designres and web developers. It means that your business site works great for visitors.
Writing too short webpage content
Some people look up to Apple websites or other successful companies’ websites that use short content. Some people think that visitors “don’t read a part of the content.” These misconceptions can hurt your site, conversions and reduce the revenue of your business.
These assumptions make sense in some cases, however for the majority of websites, it is better to use “just enough” content. In other words, you need to describe the subject of a page in the right amount of details that your visitor needs. This content will be useful enough for a search query, searcher’s intent, and searcher’s micro-moments. The main groups of micro-moments are I want to know – I want to go – I want to do – I want to buy.
This does not mean that you must use long-form content; there’s no correlation between long-form content and ranking. Unfortunately many “content marketers” use this popular SEO misconception to make a little bit more money. But you need to be critical of such experts.
Ignoring your actual business goals
Why do you write content? It is time to pause a moment and answer some important questions “Who is going to read this?” and “How does it reach target audience?” You should forget advice saying that you need to write “tangential content,” which means content creation that’s loosely related to your business.
We all know that people like “buzz topics.” But do you really need the number of social shares? What if your company’s goal is attracting new customers or find more qualified leads? Do you need to shorten the time that it takes for those leads take to convert? Is the content appropriate for different stages in the customer’s journey?
It is a difficult task, because clicks, shares, and engages will reduce. Don’t worry, because if you make things right, sales will increase.
Copy competitors’ SEO content tactics
You can see many suggestions that recommend you to copy your competitors’ tactics. It may seem a natural way to success, but it is actually a bad idea.
The content tactic is just a part of marketing of your competitor. Just because your competitors are doing these things, it doesn’t mean it’s working for them. Also, you need to keep in mind the quote: “Past performance does not guarantee future results.” So the competitor’s tactics won’t work for you.
It would be better for you to find and target your competitors’ weaknesses instead of copying their strengths. In this way, you satisfy your clients.
Prioritizing Site Content Quantity Over Quality
Hand in hand with content consistency, content quality matters too, if you want to increase relevant traffic to you site. Unfortunately, many people make mistakes here. Content consistency forces you to create a specific amount of content.
However the quality of your content makes the biggest difference for your customers and search engines.
You need to revise your content marketing processes. Sometimes it is enough to just reduce your quantity of publications, however other times you need to hire new authors.
Do only that the data says
Certainly, the data is a great source from which to make decisions. Digital marketers love to use web tracking tools to collect data on the user’s behavior.
Although the usage of data can sometimes help us, the data really just confirms that we did some things. But data can’t confirm the things that we didn’t do. This is why if you use the right data, it won’t guarantee a positive result. Data is based on past activities which could include mistakes or were good for a certain time. Any business decision includes a significant amount of risk.
You need to interpret the data to see the true trends. The truth is your progress will be achieved with breakthrough decisions.
To pick one format
It is so tempting to optimize content marketing costs by picking just one format of content. Just because one format of content is more effective, it doesn’t mean that other formats are ineffective. Each of us differently perceives information, and your audience consists of people who prefer a variety of types of text, video, and audio.
You should spend some time and resources on different formats of content. This way helps you to keep your content fresh and on multiple platforms where different audiences can find you.
Don’t use keywords
While Googlers says that their search engine based on advanced algorithms the reality is that keywords matter. Experiments and observations of F5 Studio show it. Even now, search algorithms are still so far from an intelligent system.
To help search engines understand your content you need to use relevant phrases that correlate with search queries, but keywords research is the difficult task.
Keywords planners from Google Ads do a little, because this tool is focused on paid search. Third party tools use keywords and search phrases from their database, not from search engine databases. So, if you use these tools you will get outdated and inaccurate information.
You need to understand how people search for information about a topic. You need to use searcher intent. Provide keywords research for business in the right way.
Use “LSI-keywords”
LSI (latent semantic indexing) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called singular value decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of texts.
In short words, modern search engines (such as Google or Bing) can’t use this method because this method is based on a necessity to check all documents that were indexed. For this reason, it is a slow method for modern search process that lasts less than one second.
Don’t waste your time and resources on things that are not related to reality. You should focus on more important and real things.
Be like a reporter
Many content specialists think that journalism is the best way because it seems objective, however this isn’t true. The main goal of marketing is to create a change.
To influence the purchase decision you must use facts about your product or service as selling points but marketing is still subjective. Some your potential customers will be triggered by some selling points better than other.
You should use a reporter style approach for some posts where it will flow naturally, but for the majority of your posts, you should use a marketing approach. In most cases it’d be better to use digital PR and send articles to newspapers or local magazines.
Content equals blog posts
It may seem weird but many marketers are too focused on blog posts.
Go beyond a blog post and use how-to-do guides, product descriptions, FAQ pages, GIFs, social media posts, short videos, checklists, case studies, podcasts, etc.
Think about what would appeal to your target customer and then create that content.
Lots of action, but no master plan
The master plan means that you have clear goals and documented activities in place which will help you to achieve these goals.
It doesn’t mean that you will achieve all your goals, but to have a plan is better than to have no plan. To avoid chaos, you need to find out what your “who,” “where,” “why,” and “how” are.
To reduce the risks and have more transparency through your content marketing, you should not rely on luck.
This is why F5 Studio’s SEOs use strategy-driven approaches, create a content plan to orginize a workflow around this plan.
Ignore content distribution
Many marketers think that good content does not need distribution within additional activities. They think that quality and unique content will attract people, but that is not true.
Unless you put your content out there in front of your target audience through different social media, email, forums, and other channels, your content is unlikely to make a big impact. At best, your content would attract visitors in 10-12 months, but well-orginized content distribution will reduce this time to days.
Use content marketing without SEO marketing strategy
You need leads because leads are more important for your business than website traffic. Certainly, content marketing is a big deal, but, every day people add over 2 millions blog posts, so, it is difficult to compete with others. That is why an SEO changes to the real SEO to be valuable for businesses.
The content marketing have to be the part of a SEO marketing strategy that helps to build your own “query space”. You need to attract your own audience or, rather, group of your “content fans”. Create something different. Something that makes your brand, products or services stand out in a crowd. It can be unique topics and studies, original pictures, or special styles, which forcing people to look for every one of your posts.
That is why it’d be better to hire SEO professionals, who are able to provide advanced SEO services which includes content marketing service. It is also cost-effective for the regular business because it is affordable and this approach can generate leads for your business.
Final thoughts
Sometimes your good article just didn’t work out, that’s all. In some cases a content marketing doesn’t work for your specific niche and you should use another way to attract customers.
I know it’s frustrating, but the fact is, many marketers use bad content tactics which don’t work for the business.
The banal main reason for using bad tactics is lack of resources (time and money). We all search for things that will give us a fast result, but this leads to bad tactics and poor results.
So it is better to use an approach that corresponds to your business goals, not to popular blog articles or gurus. Visibility and Loudness aren’t synonyms for Professionalism and Competence.
Think about your target audience. Be creative. Use critical thinking.
In this case, you will avoid bad tactics and achieve the results that you expect.
