When you first start learning about SEO, you might think that it all seems pretty easy. The basic principles aren’t necessarily too hard to grasp and the tasks you need to do to implement them can seem simple too. But as you start to try and work on search engine optimization, you can quickly realize that maybe there’s more to it than you first thought. Even if you feel like you’re putting in a lot of effort, you can find that your SEO moves aren’t giving you the results that you’re looking for. If you’re failing at SEO, it could be because of a few different reasons. Here’s why you could be failing hard and what you can do about it.
You Have No Clear Plan
A variety of different tasks can go into good SEO, which means that you have to be organized to make sure you’re using the right methods. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is to start doing SEO without any kind of plan or strategy. You need to know what your goals are and what you need to do to achieve them. An SEO strategy outlines the actions that you need to take to get your website to where it needs to be. And once you reach the first goals you have set out, you can then create new ones to work toward.
When you have a clear strategy, you also know how you’re going to measure the success of your campaign. You’ll be able to check the right metrics and see how things are going, seeing what’s working and what isn’t.
You’re Not Up-to-Date
SEO is a field that moves fairly quickly. Best practices can change and experts discover new ways that they can find success through search engine optimization. If you’re not careful, you can end up using SEO methods that are out of date. While things have moved on, you could still be trying to make advice from five or ten years ago work for you. It’s essential to keep up with the latest best practices in SEO if you want to get results from your hard work. And if you don’t have the time or the ability to stay up-to-date, get someone else to do it for you.
You Haven’t Continued Working on SEO
Did you spend a while optimizing your site, and then just leave it alone? It would be nice if SEO was a one-time thing and you could simply leave it once you’ve done a bit of work. But the reality is that SEO needs your ongoing attention. It’s not something that you can do once and then forget about, waiting for the positive results to come in. If your SEO is failing, it could be because you haven’t worked on it for long enough. It takes at least a few months to start seeing real results. Ongoing SEO requires you to publish new content, get backlinks and work on keeping the site relevant and up-to-date.
You’re Only Doing On-page SEO
SEO involves three main categories: technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. Many people find that they don’t have much trouble with on-page SEO. They understand how it works and it’s even something that they can mostly work on alone if they want to and have the time. However, if you’re only concentrating on SEO, you’re missing out on a lot of things. Link-building, for example, is one of the important elements you need to use in your SEO strategy. It takes work to secure quality links, but it can give your SEO a big boost.
You Don’t Know Your Target Audience
Who is your website for? Who do you want to click on links to your site and what are they expecting to find? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, it’s difficult to get any real results from your SEO campaigns. The internet is huge, and you can’t try to target everyone at once. If you do, you will end up getting the attention of no one instead. Plus, you will waste a lot of time and money taking a blanket approach to your SEO. You need to know your target audience, what their needs are, and how they use search engines at different stages of the buyer’s journey.
When your SEO isn’t working out for you, you could be making some glaring mistakes. If you’re not able to get yourself on the right track, ask for some professional help to ensure you get it right. Contact UpFire SEO for your free Audit and Proposal.