Why Your Businesses might be Failing in SEO

Posted on October 31st, 2016 by Quertime Writer in Web Development

Why is everyone getting desirable SEO results except me? With everybody seeming to be ok, you might have asked yourself such a question at some point. SEO has topped the marketing list for a considerable time and it’s not like the trends are going to change. This might not have been the same for you. What could be the possible reasons why your business might be failing at SEO?

1. Poor Inbound Links

Link building is no doubt an essential component of SEO ranking. Through organic links, the search engines are able to crawl through your site more easily. Even more, users looking for related content can easily access them. Apparently, many businesses seem not to understand the essence of link building. As such, most people do link building without considering relevance of the content they are linking to.

To fix this, you need to make use of anchor texts and link your content to three or more articles related to it within your site. This ensures your links remain relevant and achieve greater potential for attracting more organic links.

2. Choosing Highly Competitive Keywords

Everyone wants to rank high in search engines; that in itself is a problem. In a bid to dominate SEO rankings, many people go for highly competitive words. Centring your content on such keywords leaves you at an awkward position of uncertainty about ever getting somewhere with your SEO campaigns. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, opt for keywords and phrases with a decent number of searches instead of the overcrowded ones. Optimise such words and find yourself ranking higher for such words.

3. Assuming Broken Links

The last thing you would probably want to see is a 404 error on your site. Although a couple of broken links within your site might not hurt your rankings, a little more than is necessary can turn out disadvantageous. Every time a customer hits an error page, he is more likely to leave your site in search for alternatives. That’s one of the reasons most sites suffer from higher bounce rates.

Worse still, your rankings get affected every time the search engines crawl through your site and hit broken links. In a similar way, your rankings will hit a snag. You only need tools like SEO Spider to identify and fix broken links.

4. You’re Waiting for Backlinks

Many businesses have been made to believe that quality content is all they need to get good organic backlinks. Unless you are targeting intentional link building, your perfect content might not generate as much backlinks as you expected. For every link-worthy post, ensure all potential targets are aware of it. If your content can serve as a great resource to other bloggers and they know about it, you will obtain the number of links you require to take your campaign to the next level.

5. You’re Overlooking the Essence of Site Links

Site links appear under the name of your company in search results. They serve as key entry points to site visitors. At a glance, one can be able to know if what they are looking is within a given site. Although businesses might not have direct control over the appearance of the site links, they can choose to weed out the ones they wouldn’t want to show in the SERPs. Simply log into Google Search Console and go to ‘Search Appearance’. Under that, choose site links and mention the site links you would not want Google to list in future.

6. Overconcentration on On-Site Optimisation

On-site optimisation plays a critical role in attaining high search rankings; there are no doubts about that. More often however, many people assume that this is all they need to get their pages in the first page. You are wrong. Appropriate use of Meta tags within your site for optimisation purposes is good for business but that is not all. For best results in search engine marketing and SEO optimisation, you need to appreciate and embrace off-page optimisation techniques like site speed, link building, and better site structure.

7. You Believe Meta Descriptions Don’t Count

You might be right because Meta descriptions do not have direct impact on SEO rankings. For most people, this is reason enough to opt for automated descriptions at the expense of finely structured Meta descriptions. You need click-throughs as much as you need higher rankings. Always focus on optimising and perfecting them, making them almost irresistible for people to click through.

8. Opting for Shorter Content

A report released by Searchmetrics 2015 Ranking Factors revealed that the top ranking sites had average content of 1100-1300 words. If your content is consistently falling way behind that, then there must be issues. As much as possible, you need to focus on longer content which is more comprehensive and of good quality. Nevertheless, even shorter content that is well structured with appropriate keywords and links can rank highly so do not strain focusing on length at the expense of quality.

9. Downplaying the Essence of Analytics

There can never be success without assessment. You only know how effective your efforts are when you keep track of your progress. For SEO, Google Analytics is the perfect drawing board that shows you how successful or pathetic your efforts have been. Constantly be in the know of what works and what’s crap by checking the metrics. You will know the keywords, content and traffic sources that are driving more results then apply the knowledge in subsequent strategies.

You Need It All Today

Patience. SEO dominance is not something that takes place overnight. You must admit that however difficult it might seem, search engine optimisation is a journey. Unlike Google AdWords and other marketing options where you can attain results in a week, SEO calls for patience. The truth about SEO is that its benefits are long term. Before you get there, however, you will need to wait.

Back to the Drawing Board

You have probably made one or more of these mistakes. It is never too late to right your wrongs and set your SEO campaign on the right path. Trace back your steps and identify where the rain started beating you then work your way upwards.

Author: Selina Jenkins

Selina Jenkins is the founder and CEO of an SEO firm – SEO Services USA in Seattle. If she is not writing and crawling through resources for the latest SEO techniques, she is probably traveling. For any questions on search engine marketing and SEO optimisation, feel free to contact her.