Signs your SEO strategy is not working anymore

Are you frustrated with your SEO strategy? Do you feel like it is not working anymore and don’t know what to do about it? You are not alone. Many businesses have found themselves in the same situation as they try different tactics and strategies only to be left feeling helpless and confused. This blog post will help guide you through 12 signs that your SEO strategy may need a change so that you can better understand how to fix your problem.

Your organic rankings are decreasing: The primary objective of any SEO strategy is to improve organic rankings. If your rankings are falling, it is a red flag that something may be wrong with your strategy.

Your content quality has decreased: Most SEO strategies revolve around creating high-quality and engaging content for users to read. If you find yourself struggling to make new content or don’t care about the writing process anymore, chances are, this too will affect your organic rankings and user experience on-site.

You have few backlinks: This ties into the point above; if you no longer value link building in general, it could lead to fewer links pointing towards your website. This ultimately decreases overall traffic and impacts search results.

Your site speed is poor: Google’s algorithm factors site load times into its ranking formula, which means having an unacceptably slow website can negatively affect organic traffic. For example, if you run WordPress, several plugins are available, such as WP Rocket (this one does both caching and minification) or WPSmush (which only focuses on speeding up page loading) to help you with this. Combined, these two popular solutions should solve your problem and eliminate any loading time issues keeping your website from performing at its best.

You do not see any new opportunities: If you aren’t finding anything new through research, don’t be afraid to try something different like a link-building campaign (or similar) to get your site noticed again. Sometimes all it takes is one good opportunity to kickstart the whole process into motion again and help improve organic rankings once more.

You have an unacceptably high bounce rate: Bounce rates indicate how many people leave after viewing only one page on your site without looking around or reading other content, while time spent shows just the opposite. Both metrics should ideally be as close together as possible. If they start moving further apart, this could signify that something on your website is not working well and turning people off.

Your site has been penalized: Google penalties can occur for several reasons, but the result is always the same; organic traffic plummets. If you have any suspicion that this may be happening to your website, it is best to investigate sooner rather than later, as the damage could already be done by then.

You are targeting the wrong keywords: This one should come as no surprise; if you are targeting keywords that nobody is searching for, or worse yet, trying to game the system by using black hat tactics, your results will almost certainly be fruitless. Always do keyword research before beginning any SEO strategy to focus on the correct terms.

Your website is not mobile-friendly: More and more people are using their smartphones and tablets to search for information online, which means your website needs to be optimized for these devices if you want to stay ahead of the competition. A responsive design is a must in today’s market and can go a long way in helping improve organic rankings.

You have duplicate content: Duplicate content can occur for several reasons, but one of the most common is when multiple pages on your site target the exact keywords. This will confuse Google’s algorithm and could lead to lower page rankings as a result.

The overall quality of your website is poor: This one is a little harder to quantify, but if you feel like the overall quality of your website (design, layout, user experience, etc.) is not up to par, then this will definitely be noticed by Google and could negatively affect page rankings as a result. Always strive to create the best user experience possible to keep people engaged and coming back for more.

Using too many keywords: While it is essential to include your target keywords throughout your website, using too many of them can have the opposite effect and cause Google’s algorithm to penalize you. A good rule of thumb is to use keyword densities of around 0.75-0.85% for the best results.

Your website is not updated often enough: This one may seem like a no-brainer, but if you are not regularly updating your website with fresh content, people will quickly lose interest and move on. Not only does this help keep people engaged, but it also provides SEO value in the form of new content that can be crawled and indexed by Google’s algorithm.

If you are experiencing any of the above issues, it may be time to reevaluate your SEO strategy and make some changes. Remember that SEO is a constantly evolving field, so what worked well for you in the past may not work anymore. Always be willing to adapt and experiment with new techniques to stay ahead of the competition. Contact Outpace SEO for quality SEO services.

Posted in SEO