These Terrible Tips for SEO Will Hurt Your Blogs

Believe it or not, there are plenty of terrible tips for SEO out there. I’ve collected a few of the worst here for you. 

You’re probably wondering why I would waste my time doing this. More importantly, why would I waste your time with this?

Hear me out – there’s a method to my madness. 

There’s tons of information out there to tell you how to do SEO properly. But, has anyone told you exactly what not to do? 

Hmm, yes… There it is, young grasshopper. 

Some of these nuggets of SEO advice can be chalked up to old habits. But most tactics are downright black hat marketing and can damage the integrity of your blog and your website as a whole. Whether you’re new to SEO or not, knowing what’s guaranteed to hurt your blog’s SEO standing will help to keep you on the right track to Google’s first page. 

I’ve spelled out what you should NEVER do when writing blogs for SEO and explained what you should do instead. Let’s take a look, shall we?

RELATED: SEO Writing Tips For Bloggers and Business Owners

Mistake #1: Keyword Stuffing Your Blogs

This one is pretty obvious, so let’s just get it out of the way.

Keyword stuffing your blog is the equivalent to overindulging during a holiday meal; just because you could eat another slice of apple pie, doesn’t mean that you should. 

Keep your keyword usage moderate and tasteful to yield better SEO results.

Let’s say your keyword is “local content creator.”

Here’s an example of bad SEO keyword use:

Every business should hire a local content creator for their online presence. Thankfully, you’ve found the best local content creator around! 

The keyword should be used sparingly and certainly never twice in the same paragraph. Not only does it sound unnatural, but Google has upped its algorithms to recognize keyword stuffing so that it hurts your credibility with the search engine. 

Now, an example of good SEO keyword use:

As a small business owner, I can testify that having a local content creator on your team is a huge help. With the help of mentors and a lot of trial and error, I have learned how to do both!

Using your keyword once in the first sentence of your introduction is always the best way to get Google’s attention. After that, use your SEO keyword roughly three times for every 500 words on your blog. That doesn’t give you much wiggle room, so be strategic about your keyword placement! 

RELATED: Advanced SEO Tips for Bloggers

Mistake #2: Making Your Audience Read Multiple Blogs To Get Their Answer

The beauty of Google is that you can ask it just about anything, and you’ll have an answer within seconds. The same standard should be applied to your blogs. 

People want answers quickly. Don’t beat around the bush by creating duplicate content before giving them their answers. Give them what they want and they’ll keep reading!

Oh yeah, and actually answer their question in your blog. This sounds silly, but you would be surprised. Some people will create an entire blog (or YouTube video) just to tell you to stick around for part 2 next week. Or they’ll tell you to sign up for their email lists to get the complete answer.

Don’t do this.

What To Do Instead: 

Rather than just answering one of your reader’s questions, go above and beyond to tell them things that they hadn’t even considered until they read your blog. If you want your reader to take some sort of action (like sign up for your email list, buy your product/service, or follow you on social media), make sure you‘re providing an incentive for them to take this action.

This action should provide them with supplemental information on the topic you’re discussing— not be the move they need to make in order to get the answer you promised them in the first place.

If you want to keep readers on your website to improve your search ranking, here’s my favorite SEO tip: Include Related links.

RELATED: SEO Tips and Tricks You Almost ALWAYS Forget About

See? Just like that.

If you’ve piqued their interest, these clear related links to your other blog posts give them the option to decide if they want to read more of your wisdom. You can see I have quite a few of these in between my subheading in this blog! This will keep them on your website, instead of going somewhere else for answers. 

When setting up your related links, click “Open Link in New Tab” to ensure the secondary blog post doesn’t interrupt what they’re currently reading. The last thing we want is to frustrate your readers, so keep it as streamlined as possible!

RELATED: SEO Tips for Small Businesses - How To Use Your Blog To Build Your Business

Mistake #3: Relying Too Much on Yoast for SEO Tips

This one is for you my WordPress bloggers!

The Yoast website plugin is designed to handle the technical side of SEO so that you don’t have to. Just hit those green lights and you’re good to go, right?

This can be helpful, but there’s still a lot that Yoast doesn’t do.

For example, it won’t help you determine the best relevant external links unless you pay extra. In fact, it will encourage you to use any and all external links! Plus, it doesn’t tell you how to improve your SEO writing after its points out where you went wrong (e.g. using too much passive voice, breaking up the text, etc).

What’s even more annoying is that it doesn’t work with common website servers like Squarespace.

What To Do Instead:

Once you’ve found what works for your blog, use the same format every time you post a new one. No matter what you’re writing about, you’ll always want an introduction, subheadings, and images. If you need something to work with, try my FREE SEO blog templates. You’ll get two writing prompts and SEO keywords, too!

Like I mentioned earlier, use your keyword a total of three times for every 500 words as a rule of thumb. Once in your intro, once in your H2 heading, and one more time in your closing statement. 

Sign up for The Blogger’s Journal to stay up-to-date on the latest SEO rules. Unlike Yoast, I’m here for you and we share all of the same interests. Do you think, maybe, we could, like, get coffee sometime? 

RELATED: How To Start a Blog Post Introduction That HOOKS Your Readers

Mistake #4: Posting 2 Times or More Per Week

Many people don’t get into blogging because it takes “too much time.” 

In reality, it takes about the same amount of time as it does to make and edit a video or post consistently on social media.

Honestly, sometimes even less time!

But, you may have heard people say that you have to write blogs consistently and repeatedly at a rate of at least 2-3 times per week.

WRONG. Don’t do this! 

What To Do Instead: 

Your blog is not a news source publication that needs to churn out content 3 times a day to stay relevant. Posting once a week is enough, I promise! 

The key to blogging success is to consistently put out quality content. Never ever sacrifice quality for post volume. 

Instead, concentrate on SEO keyword research for just 4 blogs a month. Make sure you’re using quality external sources (no, not Wikipedia) to back up your expertise. This tells Google that your blog is trustworthy, so it will reward you by increasing your ranking score. Then you can use all that free time to focus on your email or social media marketing effort.

The Worst of the Worst SEO Tips for Bloggers

Ok, ok, those were pretty bad, right? Well, here are the absolute WORST tips for SEO success. 

You don’t need to share blogs on social media

Uhm, false. The number of reads you get on your blog directly impacts your SEO. Bump your work on your social media and make sure to have a website plugin that allows your readers to easily share it on theirs.

Use keywords with high search volume.

This is a trap! Go for the low-hanging fruit; you’ll get more consistent visitors and you’re more likely to show up on the front page of search engines. 

Get ads on your blog right away.

Bad move. Ads slow down your website speed, which will make people want to leave before even reading your content. It also looks spammy and unprofessional, especially if you’re a service or product-based entrepreneur. Wait until you start getting a decent amount of monthly reads before you do this unless you’re good at keeping up/fixing your website speed.

See? Knowing the worst tips for SEO will keep you from falling into traps and making common mistakes.

Time to get serious. Make a plan for your blog and stick to it with these 3 Blog Writing Prompts To Create Consistent Content

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