If you’re new to search engine optimisation (SEO), check out our 101 guide to the basics of SEO copywriting.
You’ve done the keyword research, ensured they are in all the right places, and you’re uploading on a consistent schedule. But traffic simply isn’t coming in. What gives?
To say that content marketing is hard work would be an understatement. WordPress is just one blog hosting site, and their bloggers write a combined total of 2.75 million posts daily. Even when you’re doing everything right, it’s hard to stand out in this saturated field. After all, there’s nothing stopping your competition from writing faster and better to snag the coveted spots on Google’s frontpages.
Thankfully, wiping out common SEO mistakes can put you lightyears ahead of most of your competitors. With just a few simple corrections, you can shave off penalties that are weighing down your score and propel your website through the rankings.
SEO solution #1: Publish evergreen pieces that weather any season
You don’t want to be constantly threading water just to stay afloat because: 1) It’s inefficient, 2) It’s not sustainable. Evergreen content can buoy your website’s score and greatly complement your regular content stream. They also act as a great failsafe during downtime periods. .
Well written evergreen content answers questions that your target audience will continue to ask for years to come. They can be broad questions that beginners often ask (how to convert marketing leads?) to topics that often come up during client discussions (should I continue to do SEO once I rank highly?).
One thing to note about evergreen content is that it does not necessarily have to be written in an article. Tutorials, FAQ pages, downloadable e-books, and even videos are great ways to make your website searchable while simultaneously creating a centralised anchor to the rest of your content.
SEO solution #2: Sometimes, less is more: reviving old content
On the flipside, old and outdated content could be sabotaging your SEO efforts. Unless your website is known for documenting changes in the industry, posts on 2010 industry trends are unlikely to generate many clicks today. The few readers who stumble upon your post by accident will probably click away and cause your website’s overall dwell time to tank as well.
That said, it’s worth attempting to salvage these posts before deleting years worth of hard work. Giving old content a new makeover is a common strategy marketers employ when growth rates are stagnant.
If your old posts are still worth reading today, then all it needs is a bump in visibility. This can be achieved by replacing obsolete keywords with new ones and removing broken links. You can also take this opportunity to build internal links to your newer posts.
You will likely come across blogs that require entire chunks or paragraphs to be rewritten or deleted as well. That said, that’s still more time effective than planning and executing a whole new, untested content strategy.
SEO solution #3: Everyone is tired of waiting for your website to load
Nobody likes a slow website. It’s not hard to imagine why readers would prefer reading a website that loads smoothly as opposed to one that returns a white page of nothingness. If you’re unsure of how fast your website has to be, get this:
47% of internet users expect websites to load within two seconds
And things just get worse the longer your website takes to load, Google has found that users are 90% likely to bounce if a page takes five seconds to load. That’s approximately the duration of one breath cycle. So don’t expect anyone to hold their breath waiting for your website to load.
A good place to start would be to ensure that all media on your pages are properly compressed. There are a ton of free compressors online that you can use to ensure that photos and videos don’t take up unnecessary bandwidth. It also helps to keep your plugins in order and minimise the number of HTTP requests that your website calls.
Also, keep in mind that Google scores mobile and desktop versions of websites separately. So there’s really no excuse to not conduct mobile testing anymore. In fact, it should be a priority as the majority of readers now favour mobile over desktop, a behaviour that Google has duly noted with its mobile-first algorithm.
SEO solution #4: Free up your time by entrusting SEO to the professionals
By now, you might have realised that SEO is tedious work. If the average blog post is a little more than 1,000 words long, then it is not a stretch to compare most mature blogs to the length of a novel or college level textbook. Throw in the list of ever-changing SEO metrics to monitor and you have yourself a mammoth of a task to tackle.
Thankfully, we word geeksTM at Etymon are absolutely fascinated with how words interact with the digital environment. We’ll meticulously comb through your entire website and offer you the most efficient solutions to get organic traffic flowing. If you’d like to receive a free website audit, drop us a note, or send us an email at hello@etymon.com.sg.