As a content manager, you’ve grown far beyond the kindergarten-esque practice of keyword stuffing. You know better than to toss keywords haphazardly into your blog posts and landing pages. And you’ve taken your web content to new levels by wielding top-notch marketing skills. But even experts make mistakes that cost potential conversions. Making sure you stay on top of your game by avoiding these common mistakes will optimize your strategy and your results.
1. Fearing long-tail keyword obscurity
You need more than a high page ranking through a popular keyword to gain real conversions. Say you’re promoting a fitness center in Sarasota, Florida. Optimizing keywords to show up on the first page of search results for “fitness center” or “gym” isn’t likely to gain new customers. Optimizing for “Sarasota Gym with Child Care” or “Florida fitness center with Crossfit experts” defines your audience specifically and leads to remarkably improved click-through and conversion rates.
The key is simple: rather than going for the most high-volume search terms, go for the ones that best define you and what you have to offer.
2. Blanketing your site with a single keyword
Once you have the perfect keyword polished, evaluated, and narrowed down, it can be tempting to scatter that keyword throughout your site to rake in the traffic. Only problem? It doesn’t necessarily work that way. Targeting a single keyword too widely across a site can have two very sad implications:
(1) You scatter your shiny new keyword among pages without the page authority to gain them a high ranking.
(2) You’re competing against yourself for high page rankings, and no one wins.
Instead of scattering that keyword widely, focus each page on drawing in relevant, specific traffic. By strategically placing your keywords on relevant landing pages with the page authority to actually score highly, you’re setting yourself apart from the competition.
3. Ignoring your history
Living in the here and now has its perks, but marketing without regard to previous success or failure spells stagnation. That sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s surprisingly common among even content marketing pros. Failing to take advantage of analysis of your site’s history and success or failure with specific keywords is so 2013. If you’re not taking advantage of some type of analytics software, you’re cutting yourself short of true content marketing glory and turning your keyword strategy into a guessing game.
There are plenty of analytics options out there. Possibly the most obvious is the free brainchild of Google, Google Analytics, which yields a wealth of information once you’ve learned how to make the most of it.
If you’ve fallen prey to any of these mistakes, don’t fret. Pros trip over similar issues all the time. But addressing them now adds valuable tools to your skillset and enables you to work with your freelance writing service more effectively than ever. Because planting beautifully effective keywords right where they’re needed cuts the detours on the way to your content marketing goals.
Writer Bio: Steffani J is a part-time freelance writer who runs on chai tea and loves playing with words to help clients optimize their content strategies.
