With an SEO campaign, you can generate tons of organic traffic. Is it an investment worth making for your business or website? To determine that answer, it is important to look at the history of this methodology.
Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing began in the early 1990s. It emerged as websites became more prevalent and accessible to the public during those first days.
Businesses realized they needed to optimize their content to make it easier for people to find them. Consequently, these efforts to reach out to potential customers evolved the online user experience.
The first websites were built to look “cool” and focus on the business or creator. With SEO, the Internet shifted to a user-first mentality.
How could information be provided to people on slow connections? What options did people want first, and how could that be offered efficiently?
As search engines evolve, they play a major role in shaping modern SEO practices. However, staying on top of those changes can often be the difference between a campaign’s success or failure.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
The easiest way to think of an SEO campaign is to picture a map for the Internet. When you look for something online, like the “best pizza near me,” search engines like Google use this map to find the most relevant places to show you.
Generally, an SEO campaign helps businesses and websites make their spot on the map more prominent. That allows more people to find and enjoy their content.
If successful, it often leads to product sales or service hiring opportunities.
As with any marketing effort, SEO is not guaranteed to work. In fact, many investments don’t provide the results that businesses want.
When you know why a campaign fails to deliver, it is much easier to avoid those issues and earn a higher page rank.
What Causes an SEO Campaign to Fail?
Search engine optimization is a marketing investment that makes sense on several levels. You get to tap into more organic traffic and connect with an audience that already wants what you have.
It seems like it would be easy to achieve results with SEO. For many businesses, the opposite occurs.
Many SEO campaigns fail because of several common reasons. Here’s a closer look at what could be happening with your efforts.
1. Unclear SEO Campaign Goals and Strategies
It is difficult to find success if you’re unsure what you want to do. Similarly, it helps to have specific objectives beyond trying to “get more traffic” or “increase visibility.”
For most businesses, clear objectives are necessary. Use goals like “increase organic search traffic by 30% in six months” to provide more direction for your campaign.
After that, if you’re not tracking key performance metrics, then you won’t know what is working. Analytics tools are essential for measuring SEO success.
2. Incorrect Keywords
Finding the right keywords for your campaign is crucial for SEO success. In the following steps, you can discover the most effective options for your next optimization campaign.
- Understand Your Audience: Gain a deep understanding of what your role is with your business niche. Then, identify your target demographics, pain points, and associated interests or needs.
- Brainstorm the Seeds: Start this process with a list of general terms related to your offer. Include synonyms and variations to see what options connect with visitors.
- Use Your Tools: Keyword research tools are everywhere today. Use your seed keywords to find suggestions and data based on trends, competitive use, and search volume. Consider using longer phrases since they have a higher conversion potential.
- Consider Intent: It helps to understand what people are thinking behind specific keywords. Are they looking for information? Does it trigger a transactional process?
Once you have the keywords to start targeting, try targeting the best ones with the most relevant in every category. For instance, you’re looking for a balance between search volume and competition.
3. Poor Content Quality
High-quality content engages users and builds trust. It improves the user experience by providing relevant and immediately usable information.
It is possible to have excellent information within a poor structure. People need to understand what you publish for your content investment to offer dividends. If users cannot find what they want, you’ll typically see an above-average bounce rate.
Here are the signs of poor content that could impact your search engine optimization efforts.
- Lack of Clarity: Poorly organized or confusing content can make it challenging for readers to grasp the intended message.
- Inaccurate Facts: Information filled with errors or outdated information diminishes its value to the reader.
- Compositional Errors: Frequent typos, grammatical mistakes, and awkward phrasing detract from the content’s credibility.
- Plagiarism: Copying content from other sources without proper attribution is a significant ethical issue. It can lead to legal consequences. You cannot copy-and-paste your way to a profitable SEO campaign.
Other issues involve having overly promotional content or needing more visuals. Readers don’t like confusion, so they need help with complex topics. In other words, it helps to try to keep your content conversational to make it intriguing.
Finally, if you only superficially treat a topic without exploring it in depth, you can leave people feeling unsatisfied. That reaction reduces the likelihood that you’ll earn a customer.
4. An Impatient SEO Campaign Schedule
Several variables impact how fast an SEO investment will start generating results. It’s essential to remember that a new website takes longer show authority, so a more established site will often see quicker improvements.
Additionally, the level of competition in your industry or niche can affect how long it takes to see results. Highly competitive markets may require more time and effort to rank well.
Some other factors contribute to your SEO campaign and possibly trigger its failure. Let’s take a closer look.
- Technical Issues: Problems like site slowness or a lack of responsiveness can hold your SEO back, even if everything else is optimized.
- Keyword Difficulty: Targeting a competitive keyword can take longer to rank with an SEO campaign than less competitive, long-tail options. Instead of using “pizza,” consider having your content target the “best pizzeria in Manhattan.”
- Inconsistency: Writing one post is not enough to generate SEO benefits. You must consistently create, monitor, and improve to achieve successful outcomes.
There isn’t a specific timeframe to follow when making an SEO investment. However, it is not unusual for brand-new websites to need six months to begin establishing authority.
If you’re in a competitive market, it could take a year or more.
That’s why investing in an established website beforehand is a priority if you know timing is a concern for your SEO campaign.
5. Ignoring the Algorithm
Google uses several algorithms to focus on different aspects of content quality and search engine optimization. Bing and others follow a similar process, although there can be critical differences between providers.
SEO professionals and website owners must stay updated with the latest trends and best practices. These algorithms are continuously evolving to provide better and more relevant search results.
Here are some focus areas to consider if you suspect your SEO campaign deals with issues in this category.
- Social Signals: While the impact is debated, social media activity can influence search engine rankings. Popular content on these platforms can lead to more visibility in results.
- User Behavior: How users interact with the results they receive is a trackable metric. Traditionally, high click-through and low bounce rates show the content is relevant and valuable. If the opposite occurs, a lower ranking is likely.
- Relevancy: Some algorithms focus on fresh content, especially for topics that need current information. You’ll see this algorithm issue when including news and events.
- On-Page Work: Proper techniques here include meta tags, headings, and image optimization. This information helps a search engine understand the context of your content.
Please remember that search engines favor informative, high-quality content. Therefore, it gets rated with factors that include originality and readability.
Google aims to provide the best answer to each search query immediately. If your website delivers that result, you’re more likely to earn a spot at the top of the page.
6. Zero Mobile Awareness for an SEO Campaign
As the dominant search engine, Google places significant importance on mobile optimization. Sites that meet this standard typically rank better than others.
Focusing on this element within your SEO campaign can drive more engagement and downloads if you have a mobile app. Indexing it will help that content appear in the results.
With the rise of voice-activated assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, mobile devices also play a significant role in voice search. Targeting this space gives you a natural advantage if your competitors make a different investment.
It’s also crucial to remember why people use mobile devices for searches. It’s often done to find a local result, like a nearby business. Using SEO to appear in these results more often can increase foot traffic and conversions across different channels.
These are the proven ways to emphasize mobile awareness in your next SEO campaign.
- Responsive Web Design: Your website should adapt seamlessly to different devices and screen sizes. This ability eliminates the need to maintain separate sites (mobile and desktop).
- Information Layout: Design your site with mobile users in mind, focusing on legible text and simplified navigation. Your links and buttons should be of appropriate size for tapping.
- Page Load Speed: Consider compressing your images and enabling browser caching. These steps can improve results with your next SEO campaign.
- Sitemap Submission: Create and submit a mobile sitemap to search engines to help them index your mobile content accurately.
Simple things, like an unwanted pop-up, can drive up your bounce rates and interfere with your SEO work. Avoid anything intrusive when developing a campaign to prevent negative impacts on the user experience.
7. Inadequate SEO Campaign Backlinks
This issue can impact your overall authority when developing an SEO campaign. It helps to ensure your backlinks come from several websites instead of only a few. Diversity is always better!
Quality is still more important than quantity. Therefore, try to focus on developing backlinks from authoritative sites. It is more effective than using a large number from low-quality sources.
In the past, you could trade links with other businesses and maintain separate pages. Some older sites still use this format and call the exchange a “sponsorship.” It was effective 20 years ago.
It does not work today. Traditionally, good backlinks drive genuine visitors.
If you need to improve your backlink profile, taking some specific steps can help your campaign see more positive outcomes.
- Create Exceptional Content: You must create informative and engaging information that others want to link to for this method to work. Start by using keywords with high search demand, then deliver your expertise.
- Drop the Broken Links: Get rid of any links on your site that are broken. You can also look for areas in your niche and suggest your content to replace those facing a similar issue.
- Infographics: Develop appealing graphics filled with relevant information, then share with a backlink to your site.
- Build Relationships: Cultivating connections with creators and collaborators makes it easier to find new opportunities.
An “Ego Baiting” technique has been successful for many SEO campaigns recently. Try mentioning an influencer or expert in your field in your content. Notify them of your activity, and you might earn a backlink.
Is an SEO Campaign the Right Way to Go for My Website?
Deciding on an SEO campaign depends on your business goals. This investment can boost online visibility and traffic. Still, developing your expertise within each targeted audience takes some time.
It is a valuable resource for many businesses but can fail without patience and persistence. For the most part, it helps if you stay on top of these multiple marketing elements while providing a unique information resource to your audience.
One of the first steps is to evaluate your specific needs and budget. If your competition is already in the space you want to be, you’ll need to develop a plan showing your value in ways they cannot provide.
Time is necessary for SEO to work.
Partnering with an experienced agency can also help with your SEO campaign. You receive immediate expertise while getting to focus on what you do best!