Most SEOs fail because an overwhelming majority of business owners don’t know the science behind their search engine optimization efforts and what it takes to nail the SEO.
They spend their time on outdated theories and tactics that do not work in today’s digital landscape and make the mistake of using complicated tactics that they are not fully aware of, resulting in a poor return on investment (ROI).
Unfortunately, few businesses have the resources to invest in a private consultant or even a small working group within their technical departments.
By learning why most SEO campaigns fail and how to fix them, you can begin to see the results you deserve without spending a fortune on ineffective marketing tactics.
SEO is an ongoing process, and it is crucial to reassess your SEO plan and its situation every six months or so to evaluate what is working and what is not.
In this article, we’ll take a deep look into the root causes of SEOs failure to produce results, list all possible reasons behind SEO campaign failure, and share some best solutions to fix them. Let’s get started!
Most Common Reasons Why SEO campaigns fail
There are many reasons why most SEO campaigns fail to produce the desired results.
You must have a deeper understanding of your target audience, keyword frequency, and competition. In most cases, SEO fails due to following reasons:
1. In-effective Keyword Strategy
Once upon a time, general and simple keywords were good enough to drive traffic. However, this is not the case anymore.
Nowadays, you must use long-tail keywords along with simple keywords to make them aligned with specific user intent.
You must conduct thorough keyword research on your niche and find relevant keywords that fit your prospective customer’s user intent.
How to fix it?
- Avoid targeting competitive keywords
- Use keywords with high search volume
- Implement hub and spoke keyword strategy
- Refrain from keyword stuffing
- Use analytics to make informed decisions
Read: Top 10 Franchises- An Entrepreneur Must Have To Open
2. Short and Irrelevant Content
It all comes down to the importance of keyword research and content marketing. The length, quality, and relevance of your content to your business are the most important things you can’t ignore.
If your website is full of irrelevant information and poorly written articles, you will not be able to generate much traffic from search engines.
How to fix it?
Write in-depth, long, and value-rich content that provides as much information on the topics as possible.
The ideal length for a blog post is 1,600 words, but it is better to Google your topic and visit the top 10 results in SERPs to see their word count. If their word count is longer than 1,600, then yours should be too.
3. Poor Website Design and Structure
The search engines now have over 4 billion page views each day, so it’s vital that your website is mobile responsive and has a newer version of its website or content available.
The website structure, which is too complex to navigate between pages, and drop-down menus with too many links are often the main culprits behind the increased bounce rates.
How to fix it?
The few recommended practices you can use to improve your website structure and site links by Google’s algorithms include:
- The website structure should follow a user-friendly and predictable order.
- All-important pages should be accessible from the homepage.
- Optimize CSS and HTML code to improve crawlability.
- Use breadcrumb navigation
4. Lack OF Optimization
Another deadly mistake that could drag your website down might be the lack of optimization. You can shine in a crowd if you’re wearing the same dress as others.
The same goes for the SEO ranking, so you must make sure your website is optimized for search engines.
This doesn’t only include well-coded scripts but also applies to making sure your site is mobile responsive, has rich content, and much more.
How to fix it?
Here are some ways to optimize your website for SEO and conversions:
- Publish relevant and value-rich content
- Update your content regularly
- Optimize for on-page
- Optimize for off-page SEO
- Use engaging Meta descriptions
- Use alt tags
- Build a link-worthy website
5. Lack Of Domain Authority
While there are many reasons why businesses struggle with SEO, lack of domain authority is high on the list.
If your website isn’t attached to a well-known brand name or category, it won’t generate any search traffic that Google can index.
Poor positioning on search engines can also mean poor conversions and revenue. The higher your domain authority is, the higher you will rank on the search engines.
How to fix it?
- Choose a pertinent domain name
- Make sure your website is only accessible to one domain.
- Optimize your on-page content
- Create linkable content
- Improve internal linking structure
- Remove bad links
- Be an authority within your niche
6. Bad Redirects
A bad redirect happens when a visitor clicks on a URL to see some specific content but is instead taken to the home page or any other page with different content than the original page. When this happens, SEO rankings for that URL are lost.
Providing relevant information to visitors is one of the pillars of SEO; therefore, make sure to create pages with optimized technology and use the HTTPS Protocol to present cleaner URLs.
How to fix bad redirects?
- Go to Google Analytics and export all landing pages ranking in Google Search.
- Upload the list of URLs in Screaming Frog
- Identify all bad redirects and create an alternate URL for every new redirect.
- Ensure that visitors are redirected to a new page with the same or even better content than the previous page.
- Don’t change the old URL unless your new one is ready
- Ensure that your new page fulfills the user intent
7. Your Website Loads Slowly
Just like structure, website speed is another significant ranking factor. Statistics show that over 50% of users abandon sites that take more than 3 seconds to load.
One of the best ways to assess the loading time of your website, you can run a PageSpeed Insights tool and follow the suggestion below to improve the website speed:
- Upgrade your server
- Clean up your code by removing unnecessary elements
- Use external hosting for large files
- Resize and compress images
- Use a CDN for quick transfer of images
- Minimizing redirects
8. Site not Complaint with SEO
Having a website that is not SEO compliant or unable to mark an online presence could lead to a poor SEO ranking.
Make sure to optimize your site for search engines so they can effectively discover and index your pages, resulting in more traffic and leads.
From a responsive design, careful keyword research, and quality content, to detailed linking strategies, and well-executed conversion approaches, everything must be SEO-Compliant.
How to fix it?
Here are some ways to make your website SEO compliant.
- Use responsive design
- Target valuable keywords
- Adding meta tags and image alt texts
- Optimize header tags
- Optimize images on the website
- Use internal linking
- Optimize meta descriptions
9. Poor Link Building
Establishing backlinks with renowned and authoritative websites is vital to your Google ranking. If a page doesn’t have sufficient links pointing back to it, Google will not consider it as relevant content and will not direct users toward it.
Building dead links may also harm your SEO rankings by sending signals to Google that your website is outdated.
How to fix it?
Here are some tactics you should avoid:
- Links in the footer
- Links from sites irrelevant to your industry
- No-follow links
- Links from spammy sites
- Links from Link-mills websites
- Link directories
- Linking with low DA website
10. Your Content Is Duplicated
Duplicate content can also be one of the major reasons why most SEOs fail. It confuses search engines, making it difficult to determine which piece of content they should index, which subsequently lowers the performance of all versions that will hurt your SEO rankings.
How to fix it?
- Implement 301 redirects from non-preferred versions of duplicate content
- Add a canonical link to the HTML head of duplicate pages
- Link back to the original content
- Add Meta Robots Noindex tag to the HTML
- Add a self-referential canonical link to existing pages
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Wrap Up
SEO optimization can be challenging, and watching your SEO efforts fail is like watching a horror movie. You can see the same mistakes being made, and you wonder, why can’t I pivot?
Why didn’t our competitor? With the right information and knowledge, you can fix these problems, empowering your own business rather than letting someone else make the decisions.
There are many competing priorities, and it’s not always clear what they should be.
Even if you have the right strategy and start executing well, things can turn out poorly if the right set of activities isn’t put in place to ensure ongoing improvement.
The best way to fix this issue is by having thorough knowledge about your business, its goals and needs, and what are the best practices you can follow to achieve them.
Amit Gupta is the founder of DrFranchises – a digital marketing agency that helps brands rank better on Google Maps through local SEO strategies. Amit has over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing. He’s also the owner of multiple franchises and has helped countless brands achieve success online. When he’s not working, Amit can be found playing with his dog.