Avoid making these writing mistakes to give your blog post the best chance at success.

Writing a blog post is all about creating content readers should enjoy consuming. I say should, because if you make any of these writing mistakes in your blog post, you’re making it harder for the reader to stay engaged!

Your goal should be to come off as a credible source of information. That means being correct. But that doesn’t mean being academic. 

There’s a certain amount of personality involved–and natural language–that allows the blog post to flow from the headline to the final words. 

There’s a delicate balance between writing in a way that’s engaging and has you come off as an expert. Avoiding the following mistakes should help your blog post be as consumable as possible, allowing the reader to breeze through your content with minimal roadblocks.

Writing mistakes to avoid.

1. Writing long paragraphs.

Here at Algorithmic Global, we consider anything over three sentences to be a “long” paragraph.

Why? Because this means that there is too much information packed into a small section of the text.

But wait… isn’t the goal to inform? And that’s a good question! But if readers see a wall of text, the information you want to convey has a higher chance of being lost. Or skipped altogether

A better strategy is to separate your content into many small paragraphs for readability.

2. Using long sentences

This writing mistake follows similar logic to the long paragraphs. 

We define a “long” sentence as one with more than two parts. They do creep into our writing from time to time, but we do our best to limit their frequency.

A multiple-part sentence requires the reader to hold a lot of information in their head. For the sake of our readers, we avoid them.

Minimize the use of commas if you want to try writing with shorter sentences.

3. Missing headings

Headings are what break the blog post into sections. A blog post without headings is another way of turning your content into a wall of text. 

Missing headings is one of the writing mistakes–along with the next one on the list–that has the highest impact on SEO.

Headings allow readers to skim to the part of your blog post that is relevant to them. If they can’t find an answer quickly, they can investigate many more results on search engines. 

Don’t make your reader’s lives difficult! Algorithmic Global’s heading recommendation is to include one after 3-5 paragraphs.

4. Forcing Keyword Inclusion

Every blog post should have a focus keyword specified. For the content to rank for that keyword, it must be present in the text. 

Simple, right?

Well, it’s not so black and white. It still needs to seem natural. Search engine algorithms look for keyword stuffing, so it doesn’t help to include your keyword where it doesn’t make sense.

Our recommendation? Keep it natural. Keep the topic of the blog post in mind and let the keyword show up on its own.

What if I have a big chunk of text?

Having a big chunk of text is what the above list of writing mistakes is trying to prevent! 

The first thing to do is go through and separate your content into buckets. Then, put a header on these sections.

Then, search through the text and see what can become separate paragraphs. Don’t be afraid to use a one-sentence paragraph!

Finally, go through your sentences and limit the use of commas. Done!

What are the different types of headings?

Here is a quick breakdown of headings:

• Heading 1 is for the main title
• Heading 2 is for the subtitle–further description of the blog post.
• Heading 3 is the subheadings, signs along the blog post to show readers the contents of each section.
• Heading 4 is the second subheading and can be used to denote parts within a heading 3 portion.

How many times should I include the keyword?

According to Rankmath (our go-to SEO optimization software):

“To get full marks on this test, make sure that your keyword density is between 1% and 1.5%. If you overdo it and exceed a keyword density of 2.5%, you’ll get a warning about that too.”

A keyword density over 2.5% will be flagged as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the other simple writing mistake that will have a significant impact on your SEO.

But, as was said before, let the keyword density take care of itself. The keyword will appear as long as you keep in mind the topic of your blog post.

Don’t stand in your way!

Keeping this list of writing mistakes might have you walking on eggshells when you write your next blog post. Self-editing is a good thing… unless it occurs while you’re writing! Then it’s just called writer’s block.

Our suggestion: 

1. Create your content.
2. Go back and check that you haven’t made any of the above writing mistakes.

Wait until after writing! Address all of these writing mistakes as you go back over your blog post. 

Another pair of eyes is also a valuable tool to fix anything on this list. The team of copywriters at Algorithmic Global work together to limit these writing mistakes. 

Let us know if you have any questions for our copywriting team. We’re also available to help with your next project, so your next blog post doesn’t include any of these writing mistakes!