In the world of SEO, keeping track of the effectiveness of the strategy that you have deployed, is extremely crucial. If you are not doing it frequent enough then you are already falling behind. Success in SEO, in fact, in anything is all about finding out what works and what doesn’t and then using that knowledge to improvise your plans. This careful analysis can give you the edge that you need over your competition.
If you are not getting your desired results with your SEO strategy then there is a good chance that you need to tweak it a little bit. But how do you know if your SEO strategy is working or not? Here are the top 5 signs your SEO strategy might not be working.
You are Losing Your Organic Traffic
The most important factor that you need to take note of is your search traffic. You need to carefully analyze your few months traffic report to see how things have been with your website lately. Most SEO experts know about and use Google Analytics for generating website traffic reports. If you haven’t used it then you should absolutely check it out. Google Analytics gives you a comprehensive report about the performance of your website in terms of Organic traffic.
Also read: Why Fresh Content Matters In SEO?
Now if you see a decrease in your organic traffic then it is a clear sign that you are doing something wrong. The most common reasons for traffic decrease are
- Years old SEO strategy
- Improper Indexing
- Irrelevant Content
- Not doing proper keywords research
- Underestimating best SEO practices
- You should also try to analyze your competition to see what keywords are they going for and you should always, always do
regular SEO audit of your website. And remember, if you are not growing, you are basically dying. You can also hire SEO professionals for this job. But doing regular audits is extremely crucial from SEO stand-point. - You have very little Conversion Rate
The next sign that you need to look for is the Conversion rate. If you have low conversion rate then you definitely need to take a closer look at your SEO strategy. If you are an online business owner then it doesn’t matter if you are getting more visitors to your website if you can’t get them to make purchases. So, if your visitors are not converting to buyers or leads then it is clear sign that you need to make changes in your SEO strategy.
Here are the common reasons why people don’t make purchases from your forum
- You have a bad landing page
- You are targeting wring queries
- You haven’t researched your target audience
- Your website is difficult to navigate
You also need to keep track of the Bounce Rate of your website. Higher bounce rate is a killer. You need to keep it as little as possible. Are people going back from your website by just visiting a single page? This is not good for your search engine optimization. The bottom line is, if your conversion rate is going down then it’s about time you reanalyze your SEO strategy.
Search-Engine-First vs User-First Approach
Are you focusing too much on using the search engine friendly keywords? Are you spending most of your time finding ways to impress the search engines? Is your content all about the web crawlers? If your answer to these questions is yes then unfortunately you have fallen into the trap of Search-Engine-First Approach. There is nothing wrong with it, if it was like 10 years ago but now things have changed. Search Engines are much more intelligent now so old tricks have no use.
Instead, you should always go for the User-First Approach. What we mean by this is, find out what your target audience wants and then give them exactly that. Create content that actually addresses the core audience issues. Create a blog with a pure purpose of engaging your audience. Always put your audience first and see the magic for yourself.
Your have no Content Marketing Plan
One of the biggest mistakes that beginners do is, they don’t have a concrete Marketing Plan for their content. One of the matrices for measuring this is simply having an Editorial Calendar. If you don’t have it then your SEO strategy is basically incomplete. An editorial colander is a must have because it shows that you have done proper research regarding your content and you know what keyword you are going to target on which week.
When you are creating content, try to put yourself in your visitor’s shows. Ask yourself questions like
- Whether it adds value to the reader?
- Whether it addresses a user problem?
- Does it look appealing?
Having a solid content marketing plan is really important. You might have to spend a lot of time during this time but if you get this right, you’ll see that it is definitely worth it.
You don’t have Clear, Well-Defined Goals
There is a saying that goes,” You can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it is.” This is where most people fall behind because they don’t know anything about their outcome. You need to be extremely clear about the results that you are after. One of the most commonly used strategies while defining your goals and strategies is to visualize and go into the future and see exactly what you want. Then figuring out what steps you need to take to get there. Basically, the thing that you do is, you backtrack your steps from the outcome to the actual steps that you need to take to get to that outcome. This is gives you a roadmap to your destination.
Most common question that you should ask yourself is whether you want:
- More Traffic?
- More Purchases?
- More Advertisement?
- Improving brand positioning?
- Adding value to the reader via content?
Final Thoughts:
These are the most prominent factors collected by the SEOMagnifier team that negatively affect your SEO strategy. And finally, whatever you plan on doing, just know that there is always room for improvement. The key with SEO is to remain as flexible as you can because you never know when you have to reevaluate your plan of action.