The production of quality content is a notably difficult task, and it certainly is not made easier by the need to balance SEO and the desire of readers. Many people would say that copywriting could be compared not only to a balancing act on a tightrope, but the simultaneously balancing across multiple tightropes that deal with the abstract and the concrete. One wrong move can result in imminent disaster, which in the world of SEO means less visibility, less engagement and less authority. In order to provide the best content experience for readers and search engines alike, some basic error avoidance is critical. We’ll discuss below a few simple mistakes that copywriters will want to avoid in order to please demanding audiences and picky search engines.

Keyword Stuffing

There are many ways in which you can quickly alienate readers and search engines, but the use of keyword stuffing is a notable example that must be mentioned. Pinging websites with one set of keywords after another in each piece of content is not only distracting for readers, but it also indicates to search engines that you are not ready for prime-time. Google and others monitor keyword appearance very carefully, as it is a way to determine how the content should be classified. When the same words are used too often, it comes across as blatant marketing spam to search engines, which have become exponentially more intelligent with content analysis over the past few years. The same sentiment more or less is felt by readers, who then begin to identify your content as thinly-veiled promotional and/or monetized drivel.

Continuous Streams of Thought

Have you ever stumbled across a comment on social media from a friend who seemingly has never met the shift or enter keys? The need for humans to format their written or typed commentary is not present in everyone from a writing standpoint, but it is needed from the perspective of reading content. All too many people now access content via mobile devices, in which the content being displayed must be read on smaller screens. Whenever hundreds of words are crammed into a single, overly-sized paragraph, then the likelihood of people rolling their eyes and leaving the page exponentially increases. Be sure to segment your thoughts in order to reduce bounce rates and ensure overall SEO integrity is maintained.

Terrible Grammar

If search engines can determine that you are using too many keywords or what subjects the content pertains to, then they can certainly proofread your content. Nobody is perfect, but the presence of grammatical errors in this day and age is inexcusable. With built-in spell checks in all browsers, there is no reason why your content should be littered with capitalization issues, misspellings or incomplete sentences. Nobody wants to be pinging websites for respectable, intelligent information, only to find out that the person providing it didn’t bother to take a few seconds to correct their grammatical errors. Always be sure to evaluate your content for errors, as readers and search engines alike will be doing the same.