Why Are Your SEO Efforts Failing?

Search engine optimization is often thought of as being the key to online business success. If you can get visitors to your website in sufficient numbers, then it should be possible to produce the sales that you require.

Over time, you’ll generate a Return On Investment (ROI) that means that SEO is great value for your business. That’s the theory, but how do things pan out in practice?

For some companies, everything goes according to plan. That investment in SEO produces the expected results, ensuring that a business is able to make substantial profits from online sales or leads.

But it doesn’t work out for everyone. You may be well aware of the theory, but disappointed by the reality. There are number of reasons why your efforts may not be paying dividends.

Consider timescales

The first thing to consider is that SEO does not produce overnight results. Although you may have seen stories of small businesses suddenly receiving a massive increase in visitor numbers and sales, this is by no means the typical picture.

In most cases, SEO takes months to pay dividends. It’s not simply a case of making a few changes to your website and then expecting to be top of Google. Instead, you’ll need to wait for the search engines to take account of on-page changes and your link-building campaign.

If you were expecting to see strong results within a matter of days, or even weeks, then this may explain why you’ve been disappointed.

Targeting the wrong keywords

How did you tackle the keyword research phase of the project? You did spend plenty of time on that phase, didn’t you?

It’s amazing how often keyword research is given little more than a passing glance. What many people don’t realise is that this is one of the most critical stages of any SEO project. If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, then you’re really facing an uphill struggle.

It’s tempting to target search terms that generate the most potential traffic. It’s easy to see how that appears to make sense. But a better approach is to identify keywords that are more likely to lead to sales. You also need to think about competitors…

The competition

You may think that you’ve done a great job of optimizing your website. You may feel that you’ve also attracted many great quality links. So why aren’t you top of the search engine results?

It’s worth remembering that your competitors are also looking to constantly improve. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, they won’t be standing still.

This clearly has implications in terms of your approach to SEO. You may feel that you’re doing a pretty good job, but are you doing better than your rivals? It’s important to take a look at what they’re doing. Try to be objective too. That’s not always easy, but it is useful to take an honest look at what you’ve achieved.

You’re doing better than you think!

Why do you feel like SEO is not working for you? Is it because you’re not seeing sales as a result? One issue here may be that you’re improving positioning and getting more visitors, but that your website is simply not converting those visitors into buyers.

As mentioned above, you may want to check your keyword targeting strategy. But you should also check your website. It could be that your SEO is great but that your website needs more work!

As a provider of search engine optimisation consultancy, Keith Barrett helps with SEO Hampshire services and associated strategies to improve online presence.

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