Why Aren’t Your SEO Efforts Bearing Fruit?
If you are looking to increase sales and profits for your company, it is a good idea to market its products and services online. However, there are many different things that you have to do well for SEO or other types of online marketing campaigns to succeed. Let’s take a look at some of the different reasons why you aren’t seeing the results that you want from your latest SEO efforts.
Did You Give It Long Enough?
You won’t see any tangible results from an SEO campaign for at least four to six months. In most cases, it will take almost a full year or longer before you notice a significant and consistent increase in sales. For the first few weeks and months of your SEO overhaul, focus more on getting your social media profiles or blog posts on the first page of search results. In the first few weeks or months of your marketing reboot, you should also be concentrating more on increasing your brand’s reach and recognition. By focusing on those things, you lay the foundation for higher conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs in the future.
Are You Targeting the Right People?
How you approach brand recognition and marketing will largely depend upon what your product is and where you sell. If you’re a local business but not focusing on local SEO ranking factors, then, of course, your sales won’t move much. It may also be a good idea to become more active in social media outreach to local businesses or local business leaders. On the other hand, if your company is seeking to become a national brand, you will want to develop relationships with other national brands or those who have an extensive reach.
Are You Targeting the Right Keywords?
It is important for you to target keywords and phrases that are relevant to your geographic location or industry. You may also want to target words and phrases related to the goods or services that your company provides. You should spend some time using keyword ranking tools and other resources prior to determining what you want to target. Ideally, you’ll look to incorporate long-tail keywords that aren’t competitive into blog or social media content. Doing so gives you better odds of landing on the first page of the search results.
Is Your Content Good Enough?
Regardless of how good you are at directing people to your blog posts or social media pages, it won’t matter if the content isn’t good enough. Ideally, blog posts will range from 300 to 500 words at a minimum, but if you can, make them 1000 to 2000 words so you can get more engagement. It is important that everything you publish online is free of spelling and grammar errors. Otherwise, your readers may get the impression that your brand doesn’t care about quality. This could result in fewer people choosing to buy your goods or services, and it could also result in people going out of their way to tell others not to do business with your company.
Is Your Content New Enough?
Search engines tend to favor sites that have fresh content over those that have stale content. Therefore, it is important that you add new blog posts or social media content on a regular basis. The good news is that search engines tend to view updates or edits to existing content as new. This means that you may be able to get away with updating stories written in the past month or year as opposed to writing about a fresh topic each week.
Does Your Site Look Good on Mobile Devices?
Sites that don’t work well on mobile devices are not going to be featured on search engine results. The good news is that most site builders allow you to preview your site in both desktop and mobile modes before you publish it. Ultimately, you will have the ability to work out any problems that may exist before your site goes live. In addition to a website that displays properly on a smartphone or tablet, it can also be a good idea to develop an app that connects your company directly to your target audience.
How Fast Does Your Site Load?
You’ll want every customer’s visit to be a convenient experience. If your site doesn’t load in a timely manner, you could be losing potential customers. This is because no one is going to want to buy products from a website that takes seconds or minutes to transition from one page to the next. Furthermore, sites can be pushed down in the search results or not indexed at all if they don’t load fast enough. If you are building a site on your own from scratch, be sure that you do a speed test before publishing it for the first time. Speed tests should also be done periodically to ensure that there aren’t any bugs or other issues that could be keeping customers away.
Have You Done Any A/B Testing?
Conducting A/B tests allows you to determine which variables may be making your site less attractive or harder to use. These can also show you if there are pages or portions of pages that customers aren’t visiting or spending a lot of time on. In some cases, putting content that features keywords higher on the page can make it more visible to search engines. Changing fonts, colors or other elements on a page could make it more appealing. These subtle alterations could also make a site easier to read on a mobile device or allow it to load faster. You can choose to conduct A/B tests internally or have an SEO professional conduct them on your company’s behalf.
There are many key details that you need to be aware of when creating and executing an SEO campaign. An effective one can require considerable effort. You’ll need to be patient and flexible to ensure it succeeds. If you’re truly lost as to why you’re not seeing the results you expected, it may also be necessary to call in an SEO professional for guidance.