10 deadly mistakes most content writers make (+tips on how to avoid them)

This is a guest article by Muhammad Hasan. If you want to submit a guest article of your own, be sure to read the guest article guidelines.

Without any doubt, the verdict is final that content writing is not an easy go. People who wanted to start their career in the field of content writing should be acutely aware of all the standards and regulations of that area.

It is a developed fact that not everyone who writes can become a content writer because general content writing in itself is divided into many other sub-types which have their own set of principles and styles which are followed throughout.

In this article, we are going to discuss the most shared and silly mistakes many content writers make intentionally or unintentionally, because they are not aware of the standardized norms that are followed and being practiced internationally by famous content writers of the world.

There are multiple factors which cause these mistakes to occur in your content. Now, let us dive into this and discuss the most crucial but easily identifiable 10 deadly mistakes most content writers make while writing content.

The best part of this article would be that we aren’t just highlighting those mistakes but providing you with the most appropriate solution as well so, here are those ten deadly mistakes most of the content writers do:-

• Not giving a pitch of your idea in introduction
• Using non-professional and over casual tone
• Not proofreading and publishing sloppy content
• Not maintaining a continuity throughout your content
• Extra usage of slang and unnecessary words
• Making your content unnecessarily lengthy
• Taking images directly from search results
• Not using the appealing writing method
• Not optimizing your content for SEO
• Not doing any research before writing

1. Not giving a pitch of your idea in introduction

Mostly it is observed that many visitors bounce back immediately from blogs and articles because they don’t find anything interesting at the start. Or you can say that at the introduction section of the articles the readers are unable to find anything that is of their interest.

Due to which they don’t even bother to scroll down and read the post further, they simply switch from there and leave the page.

This user behavior has two immersing effects on your overall credibility. First they don’t come back to read those articles which are authored by you and secondly, the increase in the bounce rate will decrease your overall SEO health.

Solution: Start writing in a more concise way and try to hit the readers mind in the very first lines of your article. Don’t just start talking about your main points deliberately, make a ground and then portray a wider view that what your blog or the article is all about.

This way you will not just succeed to keep your reader stuck for longer at your page, but they will feel desired to read more about the topic on which you’ve given an introduction.

2. Using non-professional and over casual tone

People will like you if and only if you will give respect to your reader. In short, if you will give value to your readers, then they will surely give you their precious value in return.

In 2017, it is observed that many readers like the casual style of writing in which they don’t feel any boredom at any stage. With this approach, they even read long-length posts.

But, this doesn’t mean at all that you keep all the formalities and norms aside and start using non-professional words and tone throughout your content. Readers will definitely love your content if you keep them engaged and show them things in a simpler and easier way but once you cross the limits, they will leave reading you.

For example, below given are two different lines both are in friendly and casual tone, decide yourself that which one is more professional and appealing?

• Hi dude, just check out these 50 mind-blowing amazing websites for crazy online gaming!
• Hey! Have you seen these 50 great websites for online gaming?

Decide yourself; I am pretty sure you can. If not then let me tell that the second one is more appropriate.

Solution: Make a habit and start reading others that how they write and what principles do they follow while writing. If they go casual then what are those peak thresholds you should know. Start building and enhancing your overall vocabulary and do follow the giant blogs and bloggers, especially those who have a huge following by the people.

3. Not proof reading and publishing sloppy content

Publishing your content without proofreading it for grammar, plagiarism, and others is one of those deadly mistakes many content writers do.

This is not just dangerous but quite affecting as well because if you publish a sloppy content i.e. without doing any quality assurance and without following a systematic cross check for grammar and plagiarism, then believe me: you will lose everything, be it your readers or your reputation among the community of content writers. You will be disgraced at every level. And, ultimately, this will demotivate you from your profession which is itself an alarming situation.

So try not to be so unprofessional that you lose your consistency with your skills and job.

Solution: Start using tools like Grammarly and free plagiarism checker tool. These tools are not only reliable to use but publicly available free as well.

Their advanced versions are paid which can be bought by paying very nominal charges to its developers, but frankly speaking, usage of these tools will surely make your content error free, and it is highly recommended to cross check your content before publishing your content.

4. Not maintaining a continuity throughout your content

Sensible writers always took care of this because they know that providing a smooth and continuous feeling throughout your article is a must.

While reading your post if the reader will face any breaks in your article he/she surely will leave and won’t carry on reading you because in one line if you are talking about something particularly and if in the very second line you switched from your topic then it is sure that you will face a drastic change in your readership even if your rest of the article is well written.

So, you have to make sure to maintain the smooth flow throughout the content.

Solution: To overcome this you should try out reading articles from giant bloggers. Keep an eye on their writing style and check how they were able to maintain the things connected. Try using interconnection technique under which your 2^nd paragraph is always interrelated with your 1^st and the 3^rd paragraph this way a reader will never find a break in your content and will continue to read it.

5. Extra usage of slang and unnecessary words

Use of slang is believed to be the most non-professional and unethical norm of writing. This shows how non-serious you are with your profession.

Additionally, usage of unnecessary and meaningless words are also one of those deadly mistakes many content writers are making deliberately and losing their readership, and according to research, it is proved that sloppy content is reducing the ROI.

Solution: Same here, make a habit of reading books and blogs as it will not just increase your knowledge but will help you out in building and nourishing your vocabulary as well. Make a habit of reading the dictionary as well because you will find new and undiscovered words with the help of which you can discard your bad habit of using slang in your content.

6. Making your content unnecessarily lengthy

According to studies and research, people love to read well researched, and detailed content on the web but only those which are properly labeled with proper citations otherwise your longer or even the longest content has no worth.

The following graph shows that lengthy content ranks higher in SERPs just because people love to read them, but if you see factually it proves that these content were properly cited and labeled. Even I had tried this technique of publishing ultra-lengthy content, but it doesn’t work for me, so I decided to post content with value, and it worked!

Solution: Place proper links at with good anchor text. Show legitimate references to your readers so that they should rely on the date and start sharing it. Do a thorough research before writing an article and always use relevant data in your content to support the facts.

7. Taking images directly from search results

This is one of those mistakes which have lead various content writers to quit on their profession or have faced heavy fines just because they have used any images in their content which were copyrighted.

Yes, it is absolutely right, you can search on the web for those writers who’ve gone through this punishment. Even many years ago I used to do the same (why should I lie). I just searched relevant visuals on Google images and started pasting it to my article.

As a matter of fact, we know that adding visual aids is important to add in your content because it supports your content and makes it appealing to your readers.

Solution: Use only those images which are not copyrighted, simple as that. Or, the even better option is that you should make your own custom images.

8. Not using the appealing writing method

I’ve seen many writers who write and they just write… I mean they just write without knowing the genre and needs of their readers. They never used the appealing method of writing content like making the heading exciting and title catchy which creates a desire in the reader’s mind to must-read content.

This is one of the quite apparent mistakes I’ve seen many content writers doing these days. If you couldn’t keep your reader engage till the full stop of the article then you are not a successful content writer, believe me, you aren’t!

Solution: To overcome this the best option is to follow the modern way of writing and blogging. Just like any other giant blogger write you should follow the same alignment for your article to make your content appealing and attractive.

9. Not optimizing your content for SEO

Being frank, SEO itself is a whole separate department. You can use and adopt little SEO tactics in your article, but you couldn’t be full-time for it. If you can, you are surely a champ.

Especially if you are working on a freelance basis, then you should know a little about SEO because fulfilling the search engine needs will make you rank higher in search engine results page (SERPs) and for sure, everybody wants that their article should be on top. If you miss this part deliberately, then you will face hurdles for making an exposure to your content.

Solution: There’s not tit for tat here as I said you should know basics of SEO so here I am telling you about it, just keep these points in your mind while shaping up your content.

• Do a keyword / topic research before writing
• Place focused keywords in title, meta description, first paragraph, and H2 at least.
• Make your URL short and user-friendly
• Use appropriate links (internal / external) to pass the link juice
• Use highly relevant images

10. Not doing any research before writing

As I said, not doing topic and keyword research before writing an article will kill your SEO and this is one of that reason due to which many good content writers aren’t getting enough exposure to show up their skills.

Apart from SEO, it is generally very important to do research because you should know that what you are talking about.

If I am writing this article entitled as “10 deadly mistakes most content writers make” without doing any research or interviewing fellow writers believe me I won’t be able to write this.

I talked to different content writers asked them that what they feel about this. I didn’t just stop on this. I also read various relevant articles available on the web. After this procedure I landed writing this article which you are still reading at the moment.

Solution: Make a habit of using Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and LSI Graph to extract different and interesting topics. Especially those who are user intent based topics because as a famous marketing quotation says: you should not find right customers for your product; instead, find the right product for your customers.

Wrap!

At this point, I am pretty sure that you are now aware of 10 different mistakes mostly content writers are doing these days. I have not only identified them but have provided you with the best possible solutions as well, and I believe that if you keep following this methodology you can overcome the obstacles you’ve been facing in content writing and you could even enhance your skills as well.

So, wrapping up the whole article I would like to make a request that if you find this article worth reading or it adds value to your skills then don’t forget to share this with those you care about!

About the author: Muhammad Hasan is academically a computer scientist and a digital marketer professionally. He’s crazy and passionate about everything related to SEO, social media, and blogging. Associated with FleekBiz!”