Avoid these 5 common blogging blunders

There’s no substitute for great copy. The right words in the right context will move your audience to action far more often than any other incentive. As a blogger, trust and credibility are conveyed by the value you provide through the written word.

For that reason alone, it’s imperative to avoid these following five common copywriting mistakes.

1. Focusing on SEO instead of high-quality content

This mistake used to be more prevalent in the pre-Panda and pre-Penguin days. It actually wasn’t too much of a problem, because search engines didn’t penalize this type of writing as harshly as they currently do.

Nowadays, you must focus on writing for people first. Though there’s no specific rule, you should avoid letting your keyword density exceed 1 percent on most types of content. Keep your keyword density from getting too high even on content that people won’t be landing on as frequently, and use keywords only where they seamlessly integrate into your content.

2. Long blocks of text

You know Web readers want their information fast, so make your posts easy to consume—that is, easy to scan. “Long” is a subjective term, but generally keep your paragraphs to less than seven MS Word lines long, and ideally much less. Make sure you also: