Here’s Why Your SEO Strategy Isn’t Working

StrategyDriven Insights Audio

In modern business, there is one thing that can either make or break your business: marketing. More specifically, digital marketing.

If you don’t get it right – and a lot of businesses simply don’t – it can mean the loss of profit, poor brand exposure and ultimately stilted business growth. As simply put, people are more and more interested in what a business is doing online in the modern age. So failing to put forward an effective digital footprint can be a real hindrance to your business efforts.

At the top of these failures tends to be a business’s approach to SEO. They understand that good SEO can push their business website forward, but don’t particularly have the right approach to make it work and actually gain the benefit that SEO presents. It’s a big issue and one you want to prevent from Day One of your digital marketing exploits – or at least very early in your campaigns.

So, if you are frustrated with the SEO aspect of your digital marketing then here are some sure-fire ways you’re going wrong. And, more importantly, how to fix them!

Outdated Tactics

The best practice when it comes to SEO changes every day. Largely because Google will cotton on to a new technique, view it as ‘spammy’, and update their algorithms accordingly. Some of these tactics may even be considered to be Black Hat SEO. Take the recent August update, for example. It saw a big problem that many people were exploiting – long, advice based, content that may or may not has been actually helpful – and made it more sustainable. Ostensibly, to better both user experience and help legitimate advice sites prosper.

For this reason, it is very important to keep on track of Google’s and other search engines guidelines. Be aware of the different tactics and what may be considered ‘spammy’. Otherwise, you may find that your site faces punishment as a result of not actually following the right rules.

On the whole, SEO tactics vary from person to person. Some people swear by link building, others value content and even more think the technical side is where the future of SEO is heading. Test out what you think might work, but then don’t be afraid to change tactics if something isn’t working for you.

Technically Incompetent Website

Yes, the quality and ‘technical’ backdrop of your website actually have a big impact on your SEO and subsequent rankings. If you have a website that isn’t particularly good, has thin or weak, or poor user engagement then it simply won’t help to convert for your business. In fact, you could even find it more of a money drain and hindrance than anything else.

If your website is poor, then you’re going to struggle both in terms of ranking and conversions when users actually do go on site. Also, bad sites simply turn off users; so, having the right level of ‘polish’ to a site is simply necessary. Otherwise, you will find your site filtered out by the masses who simply expect better from their online experience.

Misunderstanding Data

A lot of SEO is incredibly data-driven. You have to understand the traffic your site is gaining, what this means about your acquisitions channels and ultimately how to generate more. All from a few numbers and line graphs that Google Analytics presents.

It’s easy to see all of the data presented by Google Analytics or other sites, then feel disheartened or as if your efforts aren’t quite there. However, it’s not necessarily about the data. It’s much more about your interpretation thereof. Interpret right and you could end up generating thousands of more users, better conversions and overall have a better website. Whereas interpret it wrong and it will simply sit there with very little views and traffic.

If you’re confused about analytics, there are plenty of resources to help you become a Google Analytics expert.

Terrible Keyword Targeting

You understand keywords. Which means that you know how to research them, implement them on your site and the supposed results that this should bring. However, it simply doesn’t. Your rankings remain a flop, even with the ‘right’ implementation of keywords. Chances are you have really miscalculated your keyword targeting.

This miscalculation can come from a number of different issues. Targeting keywords with too much search volume, targeting those with too little and sometimes you may target the wrong keyword altogether. It really is a mixed bag of reasons on a good day.

Try changing your tactics. Pick two targets; one long-term and one short-term. From there, you can decide whether your strategy is working in the short term, then make adjustments to ensure it continues or begins to do so in the long term. Thus, hopefully, removing the issue of wasted time potentially.

Impatience

One of the worst things, in terms of your SEO campaigns, can be a level of impatience on your part. By no means is SEO a get rich fast tactic. In fact, when done right SEO is a slowly building organic process and gradually improves over a long period of time (though this differs from business to business, good SEO can take up to a year or more). It’s all about sustainability and not appearing ‘unnatural’.

This level of impatience is why many clients and marketing agencies fall out, as the client is often impatient for quick results. Some of these situations even lead to the involvement of mediation solicitors. However, this is unfair in many cases as SEO is a slow method for achieving great results.

For that reason, even when your SEO strategy doesn’t seem to be working the best thing to do is to not panic. Simply look at what you’re actually doing and look to adjust. Make beneficial, smart, changes and you can easily find a strategy that does actually work for your website and business.