How to Avoid Making These 6 Content Marketing Mistakes

Hello there! I’ve got a question for  you. Say you’re trying to do a little  
pest control around your house, so you look up  pest control tips on Google. You see one page  
called “10 Awesome Pest Control Tips for Your  Home.” Then you see another called “Why Our  
Pest Control Company Is the Best Ever.” Between those two pieces of content,  
which one are you going to click? Probably the  first one, right? Yeah, because that’s the type of  
info you were looking for. That’s just one example  of a mistake companies can make in their content  
marketing, and there are plenty more. In fact,  you may be worried about making some yourself. 
Don’t worry, though — in this video, we’re  gonna go over six of the most common content  
marketing mistakes to avoid. 1. Not writing for search intent 
One of the absolute worst  content mistakes to watch  
out for is ignoring search intent.  But what is search intent? Basically,  
it’s what users are looking for when  they search for a particular keyword. 
So, let’s say someone searches the term “how to  set up a wi-fi router.” In the search results,  
they see one page titled “Why Wi-Fi  Routers Are Important,” and another  
called “How to Connect a Router in 5 Steps.” Between the two pages, they’re probably going  
to choose the second one. It actually matches  their search intent. Based on that keyword,  
the searcher is clearly looking for instructions  on setting up a router — they don’t really care  
about why routers are important. And let’s be real…that first  
article might not even show up for that  how-to search since it’s irrelevant. 
And even if a page does have the right kind  of content somewhere on it, you can still  
make the mistake of filling most of the page  with irrelevant information. You ever look up  
a recipe online and have to wade through some  blogger’s entire ancestral history before you  
get to the actual recipe? Yeah… those bloggers  definitely need to learn about search intent. 
Make sure you think about search intent in  your own content. If you’re writing a page  
for a particular keyword, look up that keyword  to see what’s currently ranking. That will give  
you a good idea of what users are looking for,  and you can add your expert insights from there. 
2. Being too salesy Another content marketing mistake to  
avoid is focusing too much on selling a product  or service. Now, let me clarify — it’s fine to  
have pages that talk about your products and  services, especially for pages that are targeted  
toward users who are ready to make a purchase. What you don’t want to do is write a page for  
users who are only just starting to get to know  you, and then pack the entire page full of sales  
pitches. That’s not going to go over well, because  those users are nowhere near ready to buy yet. 
This ties back into search intent. If  someone is looking for informational content,  
that’s what you should write. Don’t make a page  seem like it’s informational and then turn every  
paragraph into an ad for your company.  That’s how you push your audience away. 
If you want to mention your products  or services on a page, that’s fine,  
but set a low limit for yourself. Dedicate the  bulk of the page to providing helpful content. 
3. Directly copying other content Another content marketing mistake to avoid:  
copying content from other sites. Now,  there are a couple of versions of this  
mistake. The first one is where you literally  copy and paste entire paragraphs or articles  
word-for-word. That’s obviously not smart.  It’s blatant plagiarism. Not cool, dude. 
But even if you phrase things in your own  words and cite your sources, you still don’t  
want to copy the exact same structure as  another page ranking for the same keyword.  
Give the people something different! So, if you’re writing a list of tips,  
don’t just copy the exact same list as you find on  another page. Try to be better than everyone else  
out there. Give people a new perspective  while still meeting the search intent. 
Why should you do this? Because people AND  search engines want unique, helpful content. If  
readers find that your article is just a slightly  rewritten version of another page they’ve visited,  
they won’t stick around and you’ll start  to see your search engine rankings drop. 
4. Writing dense, hard-to-read content Next, it’s important to avoid making your  
content too dense or hard to read. Let’s  say you’re writing a blog post. There are  
multiple ways to write it, even with the  same information. You could, for example,  
write the entire thing as a series of giant  paragraphs with no breaks or headings. 
But as you might guess, that’s not a good plan. No  one wants to read that. It’s incredibly dense and  
it’s so easy to lose your place if you look away  for a second. Plus, users like to skim content,  
and it’s hard to do that when everything  comes in enormous paragraphs. Instead,  
keep all your paragraphs relatively  short — no more than a few lines each. 
Also, try to use bulleted and numbered lists  where you can, and break your pages up even  
more by using headings and subheadings. You can  also intersperse images throughout your written  
content where appropriate. 5. Not incorporating SEO 
Content marketing is a killer strategy,  but it can’t stand completely on its own.  
You should always try to pair it with search  engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is where you  
get your content to rank in search engine  results so people will actually find it. 
For that reason, don’t try to create content  without considering SEO. The first and most  
important part of SEO is people. Write for  people first by answering their questions,  
meeting search intent, and creating  a good user experience overall. 
Try to integrate the core keyword you  want to target so that search engines  
like Google will know what to rank  it for. Don’t overuse your keywords,  
though. That’ll make your pages unreadable. You may want to look for linking opportunities on  
other websites so you can earn backlinks to your  content. Backlinks are where other websites link  
to your content on their pages, which tells  search engines your content is trustworthy. 
You can earn backlinks by looking for  relevant websites, blogs, and articles,  
then contacting the site owners about those  opportunities. Try to earn backlinks from  
sites that are relatively well-known and  considered reputable in your industry. 
The backlinks may come naturally (without  manual outreach) as your online presence grows. 
6. Not making your content evergreen Finally, one of the key content mistakes to  
watch out for is making content that ages poorly. Yeah, sometimes a time-sensitive piece of content  
is necessary, and you’ll have to update it  as time goes on. But try to make plenty of  
evergreen content, which is content that will  still be fairly relevant years down the road. 
Of course, it’s inevitable that your evergreen  content will age. When that happens, though,  
don’t worry — you can go back and  update the content to match whatever  
changes have happened since it was written. Still, it takes effort to update pages, and  
you don’t want to have changes weekly, monthly, or  maybe even quarterly. It’s best to plan helpful,  
long-lasting content that won’t become  outdated over a short period of time. 
Want to learn more about content marketing  and how to make it work for your business?  
You’re in luck, because you’ve already come  to the experts. At WebFX, we have plenty of  
experience with content marketing, so we  know how to get the best results from it. 
You can learn more about content marketing,  plus SEO and other awesome digital marketing  
strategies, by subscribing to our  YouTube channel or our email newsletter,  
Revenue Weekly. Thanks for stopping  by, and I’ll see ya next time!