5 content mistakes to avoid making on your website
The content your visitors first see on the main pages of your website has a job to do.
1. Forgetting the Needs of the Customer
Your main focus should be your current and potential customers. You should be creating valuable content in order to educate and attract the audience and the end goal is that your current customers stay loyal and that newcomers opt in to whatever you offer them. The first mistake we can make is to forget to create content that meets our customer’s needs. When the customer doesn’t find something they are interested in, then they won’t read your content or choose your business. From the beginning make sure you know who your audience is and tailor your content to be informative and engaging.
2. Stuffing your content for SEO
SEO is of course important, but don’t let it take over your content strategy. If you’re making the mistake of focusing too much on SEO, squeezing keywords into every other sentence, then your content may start to sound a little unnatural. Remember that the main focus should be on your audience, and sacrificing quality content for keyword-laden content for the sake of SEO will lose the audience’s appeal.
And anyways, keyword stuffing isn’t the best approach in SEO these days. Nowadays a good link from a source that actually likes your content and doesn’t think you’re a keyword stuffer or spammer has much more value than squeezing in 10 more of your keywords on the page. A good rule of thumb is to write your content first and then strategically place your keywords within the finished product.
3. Cluttering your page with too much of a good thing
Don’t make the mistake of allowing too much content clutter take over your page. While having lots of quality content is great, you still have to think about the aesthetics and how all the content is laid out. Don’t be afraid of white space. It does a good job of guiding the viewer’s eyes around the page. If there’s too much to look at in one space, they won’t know what to look at. That’s frustrating and visually unappealing. They’ll move on to something else, or leave your website completely.
Write short paragraphs with visuals to break up the chunks of text. Utilize bullet point lists. Use good-looking visuals. Overall, keep your audience engaged while they scroll through your pages so they don’t leave! And if you don’t think aesthetics are your thing, then consider hiring somebody else to help you out.
4. Call to action is nowhere to be seen
Your audience has taken the first step by visiting your website. Provide them with the next step by including a call to action. To figure out what kind of call to action you should use, first think about what your content is saying to your audience. Then think about what your audience might be interested in after seeing this content. Maybe it’s a “sign up for free” button, a “call now” or a “subscribe to our newsletter.” Or perhaps it’s an “add to cart” or “download e-book now.” Your content should be like a pathway to this call to action. If you don’t have any sort of next step, then what is your audience supposed to do? Don’t make the mistake of leading them nowhere by forgetting the call to action.
Another thing to note: Maybe you have a call to action but it is hard to find on the page. Create a visual layout that makes your call to action easy to be seen.
5. You only use written content
Written content should be the core of your content strategy, but don’t forget about videos, podcasts, graphics, short embedded slide presentations or whatever you think your audience could gravitate towards. You might not be able to engage your audience when there’s only words after words after words. Break up the text with something else to keep your website from being mundane.
