Web Content Mistakes to Avoid

1. WEB CULTURE S T R E E T W E A R M I S T A K E S T O A V O I D CONTENT

2. So you’ve put up a content calendar of relevant articles for your site. You have gathered your facts and created a neat outline of the ideas you wanted to convey. You clearly believe that you have written content that fits your buyer persona to a tee. You made sure that each phrase and sentence were grammatically flawless. You sprinkled yourself with a lot of inspiration before you started off with each piece. However, you do not think that your efforts are counting. They do not perform as much as you expected them to bring in your target traffic and conversion. What else is amiss? We’re talking about the goals you want to achieve and the purpose of your content efforts that are integral to your overall marketing campaign. Alli Berry came up with one good article about the common mistakes in Content Writing that ought to be pinpointed during a content audit. I find her article straightforward, and unlike any other list of content writing mistake, it focuses on leading your site visitors through their customer journey towards actual buying customers. Whether you are a technical SEO or your own small startup CEO cum CMO, you can learn a thing or two and apply them to your next content writing piece.

3. AN ABSENCE OF CLEAR CALLS-TO-ACTION When a customer arrives at your website, there is a big possibility that they are doing research or comparison shopping on a product of interest. This is a great chance for you to drive the awareness of your product. It is also the first step towards highlighting the selling points of your product and what your brand can offer. So while they are on a specific spot in your website, they should have access to the clear direction of what you want them to do next. An example would be leading them to read another compelling article that would elevate their awareness of your brand. In this case, a button that entices them to read the next article should be obvious. Or, you can have them jump on your catalogue to get introduced to your products. That is if you think they are ready enough to do so, at the stage of their buying journey. Other examples would be, an invitation to download a free e-book that would answer all their possible questions in a nutshell. Get them hooked to stay long enough on your site until they are ready to take their customer journey to another level. Other landing pages even have strong interactive calls-to-action even for when a visitor decides to leave. If it is good enough, your call-to-action message can still recover your visitor at that point and reconsider.

4. LACK OF CONTENT IN THE STAGES OF THE BUYING JOURNEY The sales funnel include these specific stages: awareness, consideration, purchase and retention. These likewise should be the end goals on top of mind while crafting content for your marketing campaign. The idea is to have a well- balanced density of articles for each phase of the buying journey, regardless how brief that stage is. The idea is for your visitor to feel ushered all throughout their journey. Alli provided a list of possible content format for each page. See below: Awareness – blogs (explainers, how-tos), e-books, webinars and infographics, videos, etc Consideration – product reviews, testimonials, case studies, etc Purchase – catalogue, brochure, or product pages, trial offers, coupons, free demos Retention – blog posts on success stories, newsletters or social media content updates

5. NOT HAVING TESTIMONIALS ON THE PAGES WHERE THEY MATTER MOST Aside from having your testimonials all in one page, there are better places where they can perform better. For example, a customer has testified to great shipping and delivery experience. The best spot to place this testimonial is on the shipping page. If a customer tells about how a product has changed her life, then the product page is the best place for that testimonial. Those statements can enhance your site pages and possibly remove hesitance from customers that possibly hold them back from patronising your products and services. NOT MAKING CONTENT LOCALLY RELEVANT, WHERE IT MATTERS For businesses where location matters a lot, it makes sense to use testimonials to boost local relevance. Also, if you localise your business, it is accessible and advisable to get feedback from your local community. After reaching out to them about how you can help, you can address questions through content. This improves your local relevance, builds trust and loyalty from the community.

6. NOT MAKING PRICING INFORMATION AVAILABLE Cost is always a consideration in the buying journey. Whether it concerns a customer’s buying power or their intent to compare product in terms of benefits vs their prices, it makes sense to be transparent with the price point. Being too vague or dodgy about this information can drive away a certain percentage of visitors from your site. Transparency builds trust and makes customers feel that you are confident with the quality of the products or services that you offer. BEING LOST IN TECHNICAL JARGONS If your content is easy to consume and speaks to your visitors with very little effort to understand, your visitors will be comfortable staying a little bit longer. The idea is to focus on using simple concepts in explaining why customers should care about your product, how it is going to impact their lives, and what they should do next.

7. HAVING DUPLICATE PAGES DUE TO SITE MIGRATION This mistake spells more impact on your rankings rather than your visitors’ experience. Though still, it doesn’t make it look good for human visitors to be seeing a lot of duplicate page contents. When moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS version. Running regular crawls and making sure 301 redirects are set up from HTTP to HTTPS version of your site will avoid unintentional duplication of content. POOR INTERNAL LINKING If your site is poorly structured, users will find it difficult to navigate your site and get the information they need successfully. Search engines will not quickly determine which pages are important. Having a list of your pages on your webpage is one-way users can easily find what they need. Having internal links from one content to other pages that are relevant is a good linking practice and exemplifies good site architecture.

8. SOURCE: https://anythingseo.word press.com/2018/03/16/w eb-content-mistakes-to- avoid/