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Top Ten Mistakes Content Writers Make



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Top Ten Mistakes Content Writers Make

Top Ten Mistakes Content Writers Make
These days, a high quality ad copy is vital for a successful online marketing campaign. It is up to the content writer to make sure
that the company's message clearly gets across the target audience.

This means that any mistake made in the content copy, has a huge impact and is something that a writer, veteran or newbie, should watch out for.

Making any of these mistakes, when writing content, shows a level of unprofessional attitude and carelessness, that would also reflect badly on the client. To avoid any such mistakes, a content writer should always proofread his work, before submitting it to the client.


1. Crafting elegant, but hard to read sentences

The long, streaming sentences of Shakespeare or old writing gives the vast majority migraines. "Every one of those commas! Eeek!" Those who exceed expectations in the scholarly expressions tend to utilize huge sentences. The individuals who don't exceed expectations in the abstract expressions have a tendency to not read huge sentences. Your substance might be flawlessly composed, yet exquisite writing is most appropriate for books, not website pages. Web movement needs data. They need it lickety-split.

Try not to make your activity battle to peruse your substance. Compose on a third-grade level. Utilize shorter, uneven sentences. In the event that you do this, more individuals will read it. They will return for additional.

If people possess a high degree of literary ability, they want to use it. But, using it on a webpage will cause many of us who don't have a PhD in the humanities to skip on past. Don't encourage people to pass you up. Write for your traffic, not for yourself or your ego.

2. Despising repetition

Most writers learn early to use synonyms instead of repeating the same word over and over again. Doing this increases the literary quality of prose. But, it can kill you in the search engine world. A good writer has to suppress the instinct to substitute alternative words in the place of keywords.

Keywords rule the search engine world. The search engine world really rules traffic. So, if traffic is your goal, stick with repeating your keywords. Of course, don't engage in keyword stuffing, but don't sacrifice a repeated keyword just because you used the same word or phrase a sentence or two ago.

Get used to using the same keyword phrase multiple times in your writing. Just think of it as proving your literary genius to a computer algorithm!

3. Emphasizing style over content

Information drives the internet. 99% of your website traffic will overlook your style completely. They don't even look for it. They want the content. Most of them have typed a keyword into a search engine and want answers. Fast. With websites, there is no time to build to a crescendo. You have to deliver immediately.

If you can interweave your style with content, do it. But, make sure you are direct, succinct, and deliver quickly with the keyword-focused content.

4. Being paralyzed by perfectionism

Perfectionism is a killer. It kills productivity and like a millstone around the neck. A good rule of thumb is to publish as soon as it is written and you have proofed it yourself one time. This does two things for you:

First, it keeps you cranking out new content. Search engines and readers both love this. If you read your work over and over again, you will produce much less.

Second, perfectionism denies you the opportunity update your pages. It is important for the search engines that your webpages are not static. If you achieve perfection before publishing the first time, they will likely never need editing.

Of course, you can always add information, but simply correcting errors serves a valuable purpose. Each time you update, re-publish, and re-submit your website to a search engine, you show that you are actively improving your website. You must show the search engines this. Going back and editing for either content or errors can help you gain ranking and traffic on Google and the rest.

5. Failing to ask for help

Even the best writers need help in making sure their content is easy to read. Proofreaders are a huge help here. Good writers often can't drop their level down to one understandable by everyone who isn't quite as gifted with words. So, if the good writer is writing for the masses, it is likely that the best person to help is one of those less-gifted writers. Unless you're writing for elite writers, get some help from an average Joe. He will help you dumb down your writing for the rest of us. We will very much appreciate it!

6. Not being organized

This fact of life holds true for any type of profession that a person may be in. Without organization a person cannot find their tools of trade. Without some kind of matrix to know what date jobs can be produced is bad for business. The webmaster will not know when to expect your work and most of all you won't be able to know either if you do not have a schedule of priorities. Being organized holds the key to success in any vocation let alone content writing.

7. Not knowing SEO

A writer that does not know nor understand the essence of search engine optimization will never be able to induce high rankings for any website. Knowing the basics of SEO is the foundational base for attracting high ranking pages for a website. If a person who writes does not understand what popular Meta keywords are being used by the consumer then that particular website will be one of the millions that will not be seen nor ranked high in any search engine traffic.

8. Not being proficient in the English language

This is a primary consideration when embarking on being a proficient writer. A person must have a strong foundation in the construction of sentences in English. Without this foundation it would be hard to get the message across to the general public anything worthwhile. Webmasters work hard at their trade or services that they sell to the public. A writer has to work hard in their trade in order to attract traffic to the website as well.

9. Not providing quality content

Not writing to the highest degree possible content on a website will certainly show in the page rank of the website itself. Content is the primary driver of ensuring that a website will rate high within the algorithms of the search engines. That pertains to any article that is written whether it is a blog post or a pillar article that is to be distributed to article directories. Ensuring that the content is of the highest quality is something important to remember.

10. Saying too little or too much

A copywriter should comprehend both the readers as well as the product to be sold to them. Some write-ups may involve a number of pages while others mat need only one or two tweets to get your message across and get the desired outcome. In both the cases, the vital point that must be kept in mind is to write concisely. Conciseness helps to prevent unnecessary and irrelevant text from cluttering the entire write-up.

Comments

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keen2write
Much obliged rob for the great post all around. When I make new blog entries I don't distribute them straight away I simply bash away at the keyboard and once completed I then go over it to make show to use proofreading editing on each posts. As at times some use a lot of adverbs and passive voice in there posts. So I do try my best to make it unique.



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wiseagent
Wow... Oh, my! What a great article!

It's like a big and heavy slap in the face of the bad / terrible writers who sell themselves as great / excellents writers, haha! The 10 points are totally relevant and consistent with the reality of many of them scattered around the world.

Thanks for sharing this.



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Judas2018
The repetition thing is tricky. Yeah you want to make your content rich for search engines and your overall SEO fortunes. But using the same word over and over again can really make it appear as if you have a limited vocabulary. Always a bad thing as a writer. Striking that balance between text rich - and not sounding like a broken record is tough.



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Corzhens
I agree with your point #1 that sophisticated words do not make a good content. Whenever I would read an article that has several uncommon words in the first paragraph, my tendency is to exit instead of spending my time in searching for the meaning of those words that I’m not familiar with. To be frank, I read not just for learning but also for enjoyment so if my reading becomes an ordeal then I wouldn’t continue reading.



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Pixie06
That's a very interesting article. Quality content is the most important for me as this is what will attract visitors to your blog. If someone is not good in English then he can hire a content writer. He can also take an English Language course and then write his own articles in the future. SEO if done incorrectly can harm a business. It is preferable to hire a SEO specialist who has the knowledge and experience.



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Kakashi2020
I agree fully with you on that I believe that a writer can always produce a good piece if he gives his best to the job. Getting everything right is a meticulous process that includes Grammar and Spell checking, Punctuations check and overall a good review of the content configuration. And all these can be solved in a step by step manner, but sadly due to time constraints or pay amount considerations, this process is cut short. It really depends on the time a writer has alotted to his project.



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coolavender
The first mistake on the list is quite possibly the most common mistake committed by writers transitioning from other fields. Writing web content requires a different style from that typically used in offline media like newspapers, books, or magazines. A blogger or online writer needs to consider the persona of his target readers and online readers in general. Web content readers are typically skimmers and as bloggers, we not only have to write in short easy-to-manage sentences but we also need to know where to place the most important ideas for optimum effect.



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Aeolos
The things listed above are the common problem for amateur writers just starting to find a career online. For those who just started finding career in writing, this article is a great way to guide as how to become successful. There are things in the list that sometimes I ignore to add a personality to my write-ups to become unique in this line of work. However, I am grateful for the person who made this since it will be really beneficial to a lot of people.



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Kakashi2020
I do agree with you that using complicated words can have negative effects. Readers are always looking for easy to understand and easy to read articles. Also long complicated and serious articles are a turnoff to readers.



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cmoneyspinner
1. Crafting elegant, but hard to read sentences
I'm not sure I will ever be guilty of Number 1. I don't like reading long sentences and I don't like writing them either. LOL.

As for the others, I may be just a tad bit guilty. Especially Number 7. Not knowing SEO.

Nevertheless, working on it!



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jpk0007
Great post explaining the most basic things that can be ignored by content writers while doing there work. I think that it is much better to keep it simple and easy for the readers to understand quickly what you are saying, being very articulate and including difficult words is not required to explain your point. Often the writers have a tendency to write very eloquent and sophisticated words to impress the readers, this can be great when you are writing for the print media but the readers online don't have the time to take the effort of deciphering every word that you have written. They would quickly move on and go to some other article which they can easily understand.



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