Why Your SEO Campaign Isn’t Working

If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably struggling to get more traffic to your website. What’s more frustrating is that you’ve put time and money into your SEO efforts but you’re not seeing any results. So, what could be wrong?

Here are some reasons why your SEO campaign may not be working.

You May Be Targeting the Wrong Keywords

Keyword research is vital no matter what type of website you have. If you don’t know what keywords people are searching for, how are you going to try to target them? That’s a problem many businesses have. The business owner assumes they know what people are searching for without doing any research and they build an entire website around the wrong keywords. Ranking number one for a keyword that receives no traffic is pointless. Volume and relevancy are the keys to sales.

You’re Using Outdated SEO Techniques

If you’re still using SEO techniques from the 90’s or early 2000’s, you better stop what you’re doing. Mass link exchanges and automated submissions to low quality directories do not work anymore. In fact, using these outdated techniques could potentially get your site penalized or even worse, banned. Google has made it more difficult to manipulate the SERPs (search engine ranking positions) over time. Back in the days, SEO used to be about who had the most backlinks. Now, it’s about who has the most quality backlinks. Also, back then, there was no such thing as social media. Today, it’s one of the biggest factors of SEO.

Your Website Lacks On-site SEO

I can’t stress enough, how important this one is. On-site SEO can make or break a website. Is your robot.txt file set up correctly? If not, it could prevent the search engines from crawling or indexing your site. Are your URLs optimized for the search engines? Is your content optimized with the right amount of keywords embedded? Is your site structured in a way that is easy to navigate and use? Is your website design causing high bounce rates?

These are all very important questions that every business owner should ask prior to getting a website built. I often tell people to build websites with SEO in mind because it’s easier to set the foundation in the beginning vs later on after you’ve added hundreds or even thousands of pages to your site. There are many elements of a website that can help with your search engine rankings, while improving user experience.

You Might Have Hired a Scammer

Unfortunately, it’s much easier to scam someone than do SEO. It’s true – that’s why there are so many scammers out there. Before you hire an SEO company, make sure you do some due diligence, or better yet, ask a friend if they know anyone. While most scammers will take your money and run, there are some companies out there that have nerves of steel.

These SEO scammers usually prey on unsuspecting small business owners that don’t know any better. They will lead you to believe that they are working hard to improve your search engine rankings, when in fact, they are doing little to nothing for you. These companies will send you bogus reports of things they have supposedly done for you. Then, they’ll collect payments from you, month after month, with 0 results. And when you ask them why your business isn’t receiving more traffic or sales, they’ll give you some BS excuse.

Don’t get me wrong. SEO isn’t easy and it takes time to do properly. And, sometimes certain industries require more time for improved rankings, but after several months of SEO work, you should at least see some kind of upward movements – whether it’s rankings or traffic.