5 Obsolete Content Marketing Practices to Stop in 2016
In the past few years, content marketing has gotten a lot of attention as an effective online strategy. However, there are still many businesses that have adopted content marketing without really understanding what successful content marketing practices actually looks like. If you want to get better results from your content strategy, it is time to stop using obsolete content marketing practices that are ineffective. Here are 5 content marketing practices that you should stop using in 2016.
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Keyword Stuffing
While people have stopped writing gibberish articles that are simply filled with keywords, the bad practice of keyword stuffing has continued with people writing articles that are simply overly optimized for SEO. Keywords should be used appropriately in articles. However, they should not take away from the readability of your content in the process. As you create content for your business, remember that content quality comes first.
Rewriting News Articles
Unless your site is a well-known news site, chances are that you are just losing traffic to the original source of the article if you opt to rewrite news articles for your site. Rewritten news articles are often missing many of the details that the original source contained. In addition, because businesses often place a low value on rewritten news articles, these rewritten versions often contain incorrect facts or misappropriated sources. If you want to include news content on your site, consider hiring a journalist to blog for your site so that your site offers a unique perspective on the issue. Alternatively, you can also simply curate news articles by providing a link to the original source. Your readers will thank you for your integrity by considering your site as an expert source rather than a site that simply copies the news.
Ignoring Your Readers
Ignoring your readers’ preferences in favor of what you think they should pay attention to is a problem that still plagues many small businesses. The reason is these businesses are often not tracking their content to see what actually performs well. All content that is created for your business should be tailored to what your readers want and not what you want. By paying attention to their needs you can build an audience that is highly engaged with the content that your business creates.
Guest Blogging for Links
Considered to be one of the reliable content marketing practices, guest blogging can be a highly effective strategy for your business. However, if your only purpose in publishing a guest post links back to your website, you are doing it wrong. Instead, you should use guest blogging as an opportunity to attract a new audience by publishing high-quality content that is targeted to the specific users of that site. By focusing on quality, you can increase the chances that you will be given more opportunities for guest blogging since the blogger will see that you know how to attract visitors and increase engagement for the blogger’s website.
Publishing Short Articles
These days, the preferred style of content for the web is long-form content. If you are continuing to publish short articles on your site, chances are that you are not providing content that is of significant value to your readers. On every post, write longer articles that try to cover all of the most important aspects of a topic. A long-form article has a higher chance of being saved and shared by users because it is a piece that they can refer back to over and over as a reference. However, it is also important that you make sure that you go back and update this content on a regular basis if it is not evergreen content.
These are just a few tips to help you improve your content strategy in 2016. As you improve your efforts, you can expect to be rewarded with more engagement and loyalty from your readers.
Do you need help with improving your content strategy? Infintech Designs can provide you with a customized content marketing plan. Contact us to request a free review of your content strategy today!
