Three Spooky Content Marketing Practices That Will Scare Off Readers

Published: October 27, 2014

By Eric Vidal, Director of Product Marketing, InterCall

Many companies have turned to content marketing as an effective way to boost their search engine rankings, promote their products or services and connect with customers. But when producing original content, marketers should be mindful of a few practices that will discredit their web site and scare readers away. In the spirit of Halloween, here are three spooky content marketing practices to avoid.

By Eric Vidal, Director of Product Marketing, InterCall

 

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Many companies have turned to content marketing as an effective way to boost their search engine rankings, promote their products or services and connect with customers. But when producing original content, marketers should be mindful of a few practices that will discredit their web site and scare readers away. In the spirit of Halloween, here are three spooky content marketing practices to avoid.

1) Ghost Posts

An authorless blog post sends red flags to readers and leaves them guessing the authenticity of the material. Who is the source behind this? Are they credible? Why is no one willing to claim the material as their own? How do I know if this information is reliable? Authorless blog posts come off as random, unquantifiable pieces of content. Instead, always include a byline and an accompanying author biography for readers to see the post came from a valid source or an industry thought leader.

2) Batty Topics

Although connecting your material to current events is a great way to keep your content from feeling too much like a blatant advertisement, marketers should stay clear of controversial or strange subjects. Instead, keep your content fairly neutral and uniform in terms of topic and delivery so as not to draw unwanted attention or criticism to your posts. That being said, don’t forget that the purpose of your content is to ultimately promote the company. All content should at some point either inform readers about the business or link them to a product or service. The language and subject matter of your content should always reflect your company ideals.

3) Black Hat SEO

This SEO term refers to the use of aggressive, misleading strategies used to boost a website higher in search engine rankings. Not only do black hat SEO strategies go against search engine guidelines, but Google Web “spiders” scour the Internet looking for such scams and, if caught, your web site may be banned from the search engine altogether. Some example black hat SEO strategies include keyword stuffing, adding unrelated keywords, invisible text, doorway pages and cloaking which makes a website appear different to search engine spiders. These strategies are not only obvious to readers, but also very frustrating. Using them will scare readers away from your site. Instead, stick to organic content production, and your website will do just fine in search engine rankings.

All three of these practices discredit your website and turn off readers. Avoid these mistakes altogether, and focus instead on delivering informative content that is representative of your company.

 

Eric Vidal, Director of Product Marketing at InterCall, has more than 15 years of experience developing, implementing and optimizing virtual business strategies for numerous organizations and Global 2000 companies. As the director of product marketing for InterCall’s event services, Vidal manages the strategy and initiatives for the virtual technologies that include virtual environments, streaming, event management services and operator assisted services.

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