We will explore how unrealistic expectations, strategic missteps, and technical inadequacies contribute to SEO underperformance. By reading on, you will gain insights into avoiding common errors and enhancing SEO strategies for better search engine visibility and success.
The noindex button exists for developers, as they wouldn’t want Google to crawl and site that isn’t finished. In some instances I’ve come across, some developers forget to untick the button!
If using WordPress > Settings > Reading > noindex?
Technically, if you had bad relations with your web developer/ marketing agency, they could have ticked that button out of spite to rank your rankings…which is extremely unethical and poor taste.
If you don’t have a working xml sitemap, Google cannot find your pages on your website to rank them. It’s also best practice to setup a GSC account and tell Google that you have a site you want to rank (but if it’s a good website, Google will automatically do this…it will just take a lot longer to rank!)
Buying bulk links, keyword stuffing and black hat techniques can all get your site penalised by Google (meaning they will purposely not rank your site, until these are fixed). Every SEO campaign that I do, I will review your sites link quality and assess if any need to be noindexed to ensure your website is not percieved as spam by Google.
This is a BIG one! So you’ve got a clothing brand and you want to sell your t shirts. There’s absolutely no way you’ll ever be able to rank for the keyword ‘t shirt’ as you’ll be going against every conglomerate clothing brand ever…
What my job as an SEO specialist is, is to find an angle, a niche which can separate your t shirt/ business from the competition.
E.g. Maybe you sell ‘uv protection t shirts’ that is a niche industry, separating your products from the massive companies, essentially removing your competition.
In every industry, there is always a niche. Let’s discuss yours sometime?
The journey to SEO success is often marred by unrealistic expectations regarding the time frame and magnitude of results.
This is why an SEO audit is essential to determine at what stage your website is at in terms of SEO, so that realistic expectations can be set.
If you have a brand new website with 0 SEO done in the past, it will take at least 6 months of investment to build up the trust in Google to then deliver consistent results.
If your website domain has a history, SEO can take effect in a lot less time. If the DA score is above 50 – the optimisation and effects can be almost instant.
Impatience can lead to premature changes in strategy or abandonment of SEO efforts altogether. Recognising that SEO is a long-term investment, essential for sustainable online growth, is crucial to prevent disillusionment and ensure continued effort and resource allocation.
So before investing, please ask for realistic expectations. With increased budget, you are likely to see improvements faster. But overall the time scale all depends on:
I’ve seen keywords rank nearly instantly with high and low domain authority websites, and conversely it can also take months to achieve the desired ranking, which all comes down to the goals that you set. Typically, it takes between 3-6 months before the SEO work starts to take into effect. With each month of SEO work compounding results each month.
Many SEO failures stem from a tactical approach that focuses on short-term gains rather than a comprehensive, long-term strategy. Strategic SEO involves a holistic view, considering market trends, audience behaviour, and continuous content quality improvement.
Relying on outdated SEO practices such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, or buying links can not only diminish the effectiveness of your SEO efforts but also risk penalties from search engines. Modern SEO requires adherence to current best practices that prioritise user experience, content relevance, and ethical techniques.
Technical issues like slow website load times, poor mobile responsiveness, and complex site architecture can severely impact SEO performance. Search engines favour sites that provide a smooth, fast, and accessible experience across all devices and platforms.
The same goes for Facebook marketing. Do you think these companies will want to send their visitors/customers to a poor user experience? No, because it will reflect badly on them.
The cornerstone of effective SEO is high-quality, relevant & useful content that meets the needs and interests of your target audience. Failure often occurs when content is thin, poorly researched, or doesn’t align with user search intent, leading to low engagement and poor rankings.
An overemphasis on keywords, particularly through practices like keyword stuffing, can harm SEO. Conversely, neglecting keyword research and targeting can result in missed opportunities for ranking in search results. A balanced approach, focusing on long-tail keywords and content that naturally incorporates these terms, is essential for successful SEO.
Successful SEO strategies heavily rely on building high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant websites. However, acquiring low-quality backlinks or participating in link schemes can negatively affect your site’s search rankings and lead to penalties from search engines.
In fact, before Google was called Google, it was actually called BackRub (Google was probably the better name?) It was called this as its first algorithm was based entirely off how many external sites linked back to yours, and it was used as a sign of trust and usefulness from other websites to determine your ranking position. To this day, that idea is very much heavily weighted.
While social media directly impacting SEO rankings is a subject of debate, its role in driving traffic, enhancing brand visibility, and contributing to a comprehensive online presence is undeniable. Neglecting social media platforms can result in missed opportunities for content promotion, audience engagement, and potential backlink generation.
The success of an SEO campaign can be significantly influenced by the choice of agency or partner. Collaborating with agencies that employ questionable tactics, offer unrealistically cheap services, or fail to understand the specific needs of your business can lead to suboptimal outcomes and SEO failures.
Also, with online services, how do you know who’s actually carrying out the work on your website? An SEO company may just be attaining the leads and using another company to do the work (whitelisting).
That’s not the way I personally would like to conduct business. I’d like to face the person I’m speaking to and know that they’re the ones whose doing my work. I think it’s a bit unethical but hey, the digital world is sneaky.
Secret: You can find out by going on LinkedIn and seeing if they’re on it or not.
So next time you’re shopping around for SEO agencies and you’re getting schmoozed by the grinning and overly friendly SEO salespeople, ask yourself:
Why have they got such a big grin? Is it because they’re going to take all of my money?
Then wipe the smile off of their face and ask:
Effective SEO requires alignment between the strategies employed by agencies and the overarching business objectives. Failures often arise when there is a disconnect between what the SEO efforts aim to achieve and the actual goals and values of the business, leading to misdirected efforts and wasted resources.
This is absolutely horrendous if the SEO agency is generating the wrong traffic for your business, as they won’t convert. Remember, quality traffic is much better than quantity.
Regularly analysing SEO performance through tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console provides crucial insights that guide strategic adjustments. A common reason for SEO failure is not utilising analytics to understand user behaviour, search trends, and the efficacy of different SEO actions.
With our campaigns, we make sure you have access to a bespoke dashboard that pulls in data from GSC, GA4, PPC, Facebook Ads and GBP (if applicable) and this enables you to check up on your progress at any time. I’ve always believed in full transparency and trust and it’s my job to prove my worth.
So you can access results and data at any point! Not just at the end of the month. Also, some other agencies could potentially manipulate the data to sugarcoat their work if you haven’t got access, however, with my solution, you can check up on results all the time to validate the campaign’s success.
The digital landscape and search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, necessitating an adaptable SEO strategy. Businesses fail in SEO when they stick rigidly to outdated tactics without responding to new search trends, algorithm updates, or shifts in user preferences.
Outdated tactics include:
Keyword stuffing: People back in the day would hide keywords in their background. This gets you penalised.
Buying links or participating in link schemes: Purchasing backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant sites, or engaging in reciprocal link exchanges purely for SEO benefit, is a blatant violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and will lead to manual penalties or algorithmic devaluations.
Failing to update content: Content that becomes stale or inaccurate loses its authority and relevance over time. Regular content audits and updates are crucial to maintain freshness and accuracy.
Disregarding technical SEO fundamentals: Issues like broken links, crawl errors, poor site structure, or incorrect sitemap submissions can prevent search engines from properly indexing and understanding your site, regardless of content quality.
SEO can fail due to a variety of reasons including unrealistic expectations, inadequate investment in resources, poor strategy execution, neglect of ongoing SEO trends, and failure to align with user search intent.
The biggest problem with SEO often lies in its complexity and the constant evolution of search engine algorithms, making it challenging for businesses to maintain high rankings consistently. If you follow ethical practices, you’ll ensure that your websites rankings remain long in the future.
If your SEO is not working, it could be due to outdated tactics, poor keyword selection, technical issues on your website, or a lack of quality content that meets the needs of your audience.
SEO is difficult because it encompasses various elements like content creation, keyword research, technical optimisation, and link building, all of which need to work in harmony to achieve success in search rankings.
Numerous factors affect SEO, including website speed, mobile-friendliness, content quality, backlink profile, and user experience, each playing a pivotal role in search engine rankings.
A bad SEO score indicates that a website does not meet the essential criteria set by search engines for quality, relevance, and user experience, often leading to lower rankings and reduced online visibility.
People often fear SEO because of its perceived complexity, the opaque nature of search engine algorithms, and the time it takes to see tangible results from SEO efforts.
Bad SEO can result in search engine penalties, decreased website traffic, tarnished brand reputation, and loss of potential revenue due to lower search rankings.
Marketing with standards.
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