SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a familiar term and of great importance. Every website aspires to be on top of Google's or any other search engine's SERP organically.
Nowadays, the competition is getting higher in digital marketing. Due to the pandemic, many businesses have extended their business arms on the internet for more reach and brand awareness in the last two years. This has led to websites competing to increase SEO.
Google also advances the algorithm updates every year, making the webmasters keep their website optimized and qualitative.
Due to high competition, maintaining your online presence and keeping yourself on top of SERP has become more complex. If your SEO campaign is going in the right direction, you will probably get the result in 4 to 5 months.
However, what if your hands are still empty after working on SEO for 4 to 5 months? This indicates that your SEO campaign or strategy is going in the wrong direction. So, how do you analyze the failure of your SEO Campaign?
Let’s find out!
Top 8 Reasons your SEO Campaign is Not Working
On-page Optimization
On-page optimization for a website is an integral part of a successful SEO campaign. It is a base of an SEO campaign to rank higher on SERP. Without on page SEO, a website cannot stay on top of search engine rankings.
Therefore, the first step is to optimize your website for On-Page. You have to optimize for website URL structure, Robots.txt, Sitemap.xml, meta tags, Alt tags, keywords in website content, and proper internal linking.
Poor Quality Content
Content is king, many SEO experts say this, and it is the ultimate truth. Quality content helps you rank on SERP and also boosts your business.
Low and flimsy content on the website negatively impacts your SEO campaign. The website content should not be spammy, and it should not be bombarded with keywords. Your website content should be SEO-friendly and understandable to the user.
SEO-friendly content is content that follows the search engine norms. The content's keyword density should be proper, and the keywords should be chosen in a way that is best suited for your niche.
User-friendly content communicates with the readers, is interactive, and intends to solve users' queries.
Low-Quality Backlinks
When the content is well framed, the next thing you have to do is take care of backlinks. A content backlink is the other pillar of SEO that helps the website rank on top of search engines.
There are two types of backlinks:
Dofollow backlinks pass the ‘link juice' from one website to another. The passing of authority of the origin site to the destination site is called ‘link juice.'
It helps to boost the website's Domain Authority. The higher the domain authority, the higher the chances to rank on the top of SERP.
So, what are the low-quality backlinks?
Here it is, low-quality backlinks come from non-trusted websites, spammy websites, links generated through black hat SEO, links from other niche websites, link buying, and so on.
Here are some criteria for a high-quality backlink:
High quality and do-follow backlinks help build a strong backlink profile that allows your website to rank higher on search engines to gain more visibility.
Competitors Analysis
Keeping an eye on your competitors is essential to know what they are doing differently to keep themselves on the top. If you do not plan to do the competitor analysis, you are missing out on many things. This includes how your competitors optimize their website, on which websites they build links, how they optimize their website content, and what latest topics they are working on.
Competitor analysis helps you understand the optimization gap between your websites. You can perform many criteria for competitor analyses like complete website analysis, competitors keyword analysis, competitor backlinks analysis, competitors content analysis, etc. while doing this analysis.
So, make sure you do a competitor analysis to help you from FOMO!
Not optimized for Google Update
Google always keeps improving its search quality to provide high-quality results to its users. So, Google brings new algorithm updates and keeps rolling out on time. Some critical Google updates include a penguin, panda, BERT, Rankbrain, link spam, etc.
You have to keep optimizing your website and strategies of your SEO campaign according to these updates. Not every update puts a penalty on your website, but it can impact your ranking on SERP.
Not using a Responsive Website
With the increase in people using smartphones and mobile internet access, it is apparent that websites must match consumers' expectations for a seamless and relevant experience. Having a mobile-responsive website version is one of the most basic requirements.
Responsive web design improves your site's functionality and design by scaling content to the users' devices, resulting in a consistent user experience across all platforms. It also allows you to share material across all social media platforms, allowing you to reach a larger audience.
You are losing a lot of traffic if your website is not available on mobile devices. This could be one of the reasons for your SEO campaign's failure.
Not leveraging Social Media
There is a massive increase in people using social media for various purposes. Social media presence has become unavoidable, whether for the review of products or services, sharing knowledge, building a business brand, promotional activities, etc.
Some social media platforms would boost your website more than others, depending on your business and niche type. Using social media to share material increases your brand's or business's visibility and opens up a world of possibilities.
Social media can create high-quality online traffic, so it indirectly influences criteria that affect search rankings. Searching for any brand name on Google will show you the brand's social media handles, mostly on the first page.
Wrong Keyword Targeting
Targeting the wrong keyword can be a significant reason for a failure in your SEO campaign. Google is getting smarter day by day. Google is now focusing more on keyword intent than keyword meaning. So, you need to be aware that just stuffing keywords would not give you a better ranking on the search engines.
For example, if your keyword is “how to build a website with PHP,” your content should pass the knowledge about building the website using PHP instead of explaining what PHP is and how it is used.
Also, while targeting your keyword, keep the keyword difficulty in your mind. If your website is new, focus on easy-rank keywords rather than target high-difficulty keywords.
So choose your keyword wisely for the success of your SEO Campaign.
Wrapping Up
There are many factors that you should keep in mind to avoid the failure of your SEO campaign. Some of them are mentioned above.
After finding out where you went wrong with your SEO campaign, you will find it helpful to do an SEO audit. This will help in all your SEO campaigns.
It is important to understand that everything cannot happen overnight. If your approach is correct, you can easily save time and run your SEO campaign.
Doubts? Confusions? Feel free to contact us for assistance, and we are more than happy to help you achieve your website goals!
Editor: Amrutha
