What if you knew that all of the content you’d put hours of hard work into was driving little more than clutter to your site?
Too many marketers fail to optimize their content for SEO — and the cost is real. Under-optimize and you hand your search traffic to competitors. Over-optimize and you risk penalties. Content marketers face the unique challenge of walking the fine line between creating content that works for Google and content that works for their customers.
If you’re creating new content for your business’s blog or website — or auditing what you already have — there are a few key things to look for to make sure you’re SEO ready.
Google is fairly transparent about what hurts and helps your content marketing strategy. We’re pulling from Google’s own guidelines and tips from SEO pros to help you avoid common mistakes and get the most out of your content.
1) Keywords
Keywords are the foundation of driving traffic through search engines. While choosing keywords may seem like a matter of common sense, this approach often leads to missed opportunities. Many businesses rely on obvious, broad keywords — creating stiff competition and diminishing returns.
Focusing on specific and strategic keywords can give your business a real competitive edge. If your competitors dominate high-traffic keywords with robust SEO strategies, targeting those same terms can waste valuable time and resources.
For instance, a cosmetics company aiming to rank for “lipstick” would face intense competition. Instead, targeting something like “long-wearing hydrating matte lipstick” attracts a highly specific audience — users who are closer to making a purchase and more likely to convert.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is an outdated practice that involves overloading content with repeated keywords. It damages user experience and invites penalties from search engines.
Search engines prioritize quality and relevance. Tactics that degrade the user experience — like keyword stuffing or other black hat SEO techniques — will hurt your rankings, not help them.
Focus on User Intent
To succeed, prioritize research into user intent and update your keyword strategy regularly.
This ensures you adapt to evolving search patterns and industry trends. By addressing the specific needs and questions of your target audience, you’ll drive relevant traffic and build lasting credibility.
2) Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Title tags are the clickable links that appear on a search engine results page (SERP). They matter for both SEO and user experience — the right title tag catches the eye, drives clicks, and can even boost social shares.
Meta descriptions are the block of text below the title tag, giving users a preview of what the page is about. Combined, your title tag and meta description are your best opportunity to convince a searcher that your page is exactly what they’re looking for.
Optimizing Title Tags
The most common title tag mistakes are writing tags that are too short, too long, or that don’t make the most of the available space. Title tags carry more keyword relevance weight than any other tag on a page — so choose your words carefully.
Your title tag should always read naturally, but avoid stop words where possible to get more punch out of the element. Google also weights keywords based on how close they appear to the beginning of the title tag, so lead with your most valuable terms.
Keep title tags at 70 characters or less. Anything longer will be cut off in the SERP, leaving users with a partial phrase and an ellipsis — wasted space. Use pipes, colons, or commas to separate keywords and improve readability, with your brand name going last. For example:
Band Name | Record Label Name
Instead of:
Band Name Record Label Name
Optimizing Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions don’t carry as much direct SEO weight as title tags, but they’re critical for click-through rate. Use yours to tell your target audience exactly what they’ll find on the page — think of it as your sales pitch to a potential visitor.
Keep meta descriptions between 135 and 160 characters, include your focus keyword, make it unique to the page, and set clear expectations for what visitors will find when they arrive.
Use a SERP checker to confirm your title tags and meta descriptions display correctly before publishing.
3) Anchor Text
Once your SERP metrics are optimized, it’s time to focus on your anchor text (AT). This is one of the most commonly overlooked opportunities in on-page SEO.
A frequent mistake is using vague anchor text like “click here.” While functional, it’s a missed opportunity to improve rankings and establish a clear site hierarchy. Always incorporate relevant, targeted keywords into your calls-to-action. For example:
Do this: To catch them on their latest North American tour, click here for Band Name Tour Name dates.
Not this: Click here to see the new dates for Band Name’s 2017 tour.
Avoid Duplicate Anchor Text
Another common issue is using the same anchor text repeatedly to link to the same page. This can look awkward to users and may read as keyword stuffing to search engines.
Vary your anchor text while keeping it optimized, and avoid using the exact same phrase more than 50% of the time. If you need to use generic “white noise” anchor text, boost keyword relevancy by placing related keywords naturally in the surrounding copy close to the link.
4) Content
Finally, assess your actual content. Many companies focus on all the metrics above but neglect the substance of what they’re publishing. There’s no way around it — the content on your website has to be worth reading and linking to if you want to rank well and deliver a good user experience.
Two of the most common ways bad content ends up on a company’s site: using automation to produce “spun content,” and hiring poor writers. Spun content puts existing articles into a blender and produces a franken-content mess that looks like an article but doesn’t read like one.
For marketers with basic SEO knowledge, it’s clear why these techniques hurt rankings. Unfortunately, plenty of content farms and robot-writer developers use their own SEO skills to exploit a lack of knowledge among marketers.
Bad Content Hurts Your Brand
Remember this guiding principle: if it’s bad for the user, it’s bad for you. No customer wants to read the results of a content spinner. Hosting that kind of content sends two messages to your visitors: that you don’t value their time, and that you’re willing to game Google to get to the top of the SERP.
When customer loyalty is already low and a competitor is a click away, that’s not a position you want to be in.
Create Content Worth Reading
If you’ve put time into well-written pieces but they’re not performing, rethink the topics and tone. To gain links and traffic, your content needs to be interesting, relevant, and worth your visitors’ time. If you wouldn’t want to read it yourself, your visitors probably won’t either.
Focus on top-funnel content that gets visitors spending time on your page and builds authority. Don’t forget to promote it on social channels — a great way to build brand awareness and drive engagement across both your website and your social media.
Optimize for Mobile
Great content isn’t great if it isn’t optimized for mobile users. Use segments in Google Analytics to determine what percentage of your users are on mobile — and plan for that number to grow.
Google penalizes sites that fail to deliver a solid mobile experience, making this a major factor in optimizing content for lead generation — and an opportunity to outrank competitors who haven’t caught up.
Optimizing your content isn’t always easy, but it’s well worth the effort. Even great content that isn’t optimized is a waste of valuable space, time, and money. Audit your current content with these tips in mind and measure the impact on your traffic and leads.