Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Marketing Agency Business Plan (344-slide PowerPoint presentation). Curated by McKinsey-trained Executives Unleash Your Digital Marketing Agency's Potential with Our Comprehensive Business Plan Toolkit Are you ready to launch your own digital marketing agency but unsure where to begin? Look no further than our complete **Digital Marketing Agency [read more]
Major SEO Obstacles: Recognizing and Addressing for a Winning SEO Strategy
Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Digital Transformation, take a look at Flevy's Digital Transformation Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.
* * * *
It can be difficult to start your company’s online adventure, especially if you’ve chosen to handle search engine optimization alone. It might be discouraging to see your hard work go unnoticed, especially if SEO efforts do not provide results in a day or even a week. You are not, however, alone in this, we can assure you of that.
A variety of different approaches are used in search engine optimization in an effort to raise a website’s SERP rankings. In order for more potential customers to see your website, it is important to increase search engine exposure. To see measurable effects from SEO, one must have patience.
But occasionally, results simply do not show. It can be upsetting to receive none given how long individuals wait to see SEO results.
Knowing that SEO is a field that is always changing will help you grasp it. You would be shocked at how many new SEO techniques would emerge if you skipped a few months. Major algorithm updates are what present the most challenges.
Would you like to know more about the SEO obstacles that may be preventing your website from being successful? Continue reading.
We will quickly review search engine website ranking in this article. Next, we’ll talk about some typical SEO obstacles and address their solutions. Therefore, without further ado, let’s begin.
How Does a Website Rank on Google?
When ranking a webpage, the Google algorithm takes more than 200 criteria into account. All of a website’s pages are initially scanned and indexed by Google’s web crawlers. Google then looks at a variety of factors on each page.
The next step of Google’s algorithm is to assess the website’s overall user-friendliness. It creates an opinion on the legitimacy of the website and assigns it a rating in accordance.
Given the variety of elements it considers, this ranking method may be oversimplified, however going into more detail would be outside the purview of this article. Having stated that, SEO can be really helpful in making a website fulfill several requirements. In conclusion, SEO has the ability to greatly increase your visibility on Google if done correctly.
It’s important to understand how SEO strategies must be tailored to comply with specific industry regulations. For instance, the advertising rules for lawyers stipulate clear guidelines on how they can promote their services online, ensuring that their SEO tactics do not compromise legal ethics. This adherence not only helps in maintaining professional integrity but also boosts the trustworthiness of the website in Google’s eyes.
One of the primary reasons SEO is a field that is continuously changing is Google’s propensity to tweak its ranking algorithm frequently. In order to maintain your top ranking, your SEO strategy must alter and develop.
Why Are the Results of Organic Search So Important?
The organic search rankings might have an impact on how customers find your company online. Every time potential clients use search engines like Google to do relevant business-related searches, organic search assists in reaching them. If your plan is sound, you may find gold in the shape of more recent, high-quality leads for your company.
As we’ve previously discussed, how successfully you implement a sound SEO strategy for your company website will determine how successful your organic search efforts are.
Let’s now take a closer look at these SEO difficulties that you can encounter in order to achieve the appropriate visibility and ranking levels.
Some Common SEO Obstacles Addressed
Your SEO results may have stagnated as a result of the following typical SEO issues:
Not Using the Correct Keywords in Your Content
Keywords are unquestionably one of the most important organic search and SEO factors. The significance of your content to people’ search queries is communicated to search engines using keywords. If you use too much industry jargon in your content and don’t target the correct keywords, your chances of connecting with your target audience are limited.
Users are assumed to conduct more straightforward inquiries when conducting searches. It might occasionally be expensive for your entire SEO strategy to lack long-tailed keywords. Google will have a difficult time determining the answers if your website is filled with unrelated terms. The ranks of your website will inevitably decline in such a situation.
Keyword stuffing is another problem with keywords that might hurt your SEO approach. If Google’s algorithms see an uneven keyword density in the content of your website, they will lower your ranking on the SERP.
What can you do in this regard?
Starting with fundamental keyword research is the easiest strategy to steer clear of various keyword difficulties on your website. You can accomplish this by using one of the several effective and cost-free keyword tools available online. The best keywords should be listed and divided into primary and secondary categories. Long-tail keywords should definitely be incorporated into your online copy.
Consider your intended audience’s point of view while you look for keywords. This will improve the effectiveness of your keyword approach. The keywords you find during your search should serve as the foundation of your content strategy.
Additionally, you need to use keywords in your text very carefully. It’s important to intelligently put your keywords to avoid keyword stuffing. Avoid trying to trick search engine algorithms because there can be such a thing as having too many keywords.
Having a Non-Responsive Website
If a user is using a mobile device, a responsive website will adjust its layout and design components. The frequency and reliance on mobile devices have increased, which has given responsiveness a boost.
Most internet users today utilize mobile devices to access the internet. Google now emphasizes mobile responsiveness as a crucial ranking criterion in light of the growth of this phenomena.
In this situation, if your website is just optimized for desktop users, you are leaving out a significant portion of your core market.
What can you do in this regard?
It is strongly encouraged that you see a web developer if your website is not mobile-responsive. Once your website is responsive, you will see a change in your SEO results.
Lack of Trust-Building with Your Target Audience
The trust a company earns from its target market is the primary driver of its success. Consumer trust, regardless of your business, is a common factor that might mean the difference between success and failure.
You must now work to earn your audience’s trust when you take your business online and build a website. If your website’s material overwhelms or displeases a visitor, it may undermine their trust in you. A few probable reasons for this are as follows:
- You have weak, poorly sourced information on your website.
- When you choose keywords that do not match your content, visitors feel misled.
- A potential customer loses faith in your website if it is overly sales-focused. It could happen as a result of putting more emphasis on making sales than on giving them useful information and helpful assistance.
What can you do in this regard?
Thinking from the perspective of your audience should be your first priority when creating content for your website. You need to make sure that visitors’ requirements are addressed as soon as they arrive on your website.
Never go out of your way to boast about your company and its accomplishments. Being modest is preferable to trying to oversell your company. Second, do extensive research before creating content, and include links to reliable, reputable sources of information. Providing the visitors with the most educational content is the goal. Be sure to optimize your blogs and posts for search engines.
Creating the content for your website with the aid of a digital content marketing agency is another option. You can dramatically increase the efficacy of your SEO efforts by dealing with content concerns.
Keyword Cannibalization
One of the most pressing matters that could impede your SEO efforts is undoubtedly keyword cannibalization. First off, what exactly is keyword cannibalization?
When your website’s pages, articles, and blogs are all optimized for the same keywords, this is known as keyword cannibalization. When this occurs, different pages on your website begin to compete for the same user searches. Additionally, it logically follows that competing with your own content is bad for your website’s SEO.
Because of keyword cannibalization, your web pages’ chances of ranking drastically decline when they compete with one another. Furthermore, your backlink profile and CTR (click-through rate) both suffer.
What Can You Do in This Regard?
Following these methods will help you identify and address keyword cannibalization on your website:
Content Review
First and foremost, you must carefully review the content on each page of your website. The keyword mapping for each page should be the main focus of the content audit. Making a list will enable you to locate the web pages that have been optimized for related or identical keywords or phrases.
Performance Monitoring for Content
It’s time to assess these pages’ SERP performance after you’ve discovered the ones that may be affected by cannibalization.
How to Decide What to Keep
You can determine which pages are crucial and perform better than other impacted pages based on the findings of your performance analysis.
Removing/Merging Others
You must select the ultimate course of action in the last phase. The pages that may not give value to the better-performing ones can be either removed or several afflicted pages might be combined.
You Aren’t Putting Important SEO Best Practices into Practice
Making your site and its content speak to search engine crawlers is a crucial objective of any SEO campaign. When it comes to your website’s overall strength and how Google perceives it, on-page SEO encompasses a variety of fundamental best practices.
You may not be using these on-page SEO fundamentals, which include the following:
Meta Descriptions and Titles
Google’s search engines mark your website as having a problem when your web pages lack titles and meta descriptions. The meta titles, tags, and descriptions that you create should be interesting and pertinent.
Suitable Headers
To help search engine crawlers understand the material on your website, use header tags. Your SEO suffers, and your content is harder to read, if header tags are missing.
SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate functions as a kind of security seal for a particular website. Users attempt to avoid your website when it lacks an SSL certificate because they see it as not being a secure link. As a result, fewer prospects interact with you.
What can you do in this regard?
Every page of your website needs to have the proper titles and meta descriptions added. Additionally, your website needs to be secured with an SSL certificate. Both visitors and search engines favor websites that are safe.
For web spiders to navigate and comprehend your content more simply, you should also add header tags in your web copy. You may make your website easier to read by using header tags.
Sluggish Page Speed
The average person’s attention span has substantially decreased in the digital age. Customers must not be forced to wait inordinately long to access the data they require from their search queries. Their patience begins to wane after waiting for more than three to four seconds.
The amount of time it takes for a web page to fully load on a device is referred to as page speed. The likelihood of people leaving your website is greatly increased if any of the pages on it take a long time to load. Your website has low engagement rates if it has a greater bounce rate.
The engagement measurements used by Google’s search engines are highly valued. You cannot, therefore, experiment with slow page loading times. Google penalizes your SEO and page ranks if your pages take a long time to load.
What can you do in this regard?
You must first assess the loading times of each page on your website individually. One of the numerous free tools available online, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, can be used to your advantage.
The following procedures will help you increase the speed of your website once you’ve determined which pages need to be improved:
- Compressing and lowering the size of data can help make larger files, such photos, smaller.
- Wherever feasible, limit the amount of videos and pictures.
- lowering the overall HTTP request volume for your website.
Ineffective Linking Strategy
For improved rankings, some off-site SEO strategies, including link building, are essential. An important factor in raising the authority of your website is higher quality links. It is common knowledge that authoritative websites perform better in search engine results.
You miss out on increasing the authority of your website when your backlink building plan is poor in both quality and vision. You won’t be able to outrank your competitors if your backlinks don’t come from reliable, trustworthy sources.
You risk being penalized by Google if the majority of your connections come from websites that are only dedicated to link exchanges. If you concentrate on a large number of low-quality backlinks rather than a small number of high-quality ones, your SEO strategy will suffer greatly.
What can you do in this regard?
Find low-quality links on your website by using free online resources like Google Search Console. Make sure that all of the websites from which you receive backlinks have content that is connected to your niche. Additionally, you should constantly consider whether a particular link will benefit your company.
Your backlinks shouldn’t originate from spammy websites, so you should make sure of that. A website’s validity can be determined by looking at sections like the Privacy Policy, About Us, and Terms & Conditions.
Your website should be free of all bad links. By doing this, you can begin to restore your website’s reputation and authority.
Bad Website Navigation
Its navigational design has an impact on your on-page SEO. The navigation of the content on your website is made simple or difficult by its structure.
The likelihood of people leaving your website is bigger than ever if it has a disorganized and tiresome layout. A larger bounce rate, as we’ve previously indicated, has a detrimental effect on your engagement rate.
What can you do in this regard?
Giving a clear navigation menu will help you overcome the navigation issue on your website. Additionally, you should make clear sitemaps to make it easier for search engine crawlers to move between pages.
You might also provide your users with some tools for self-configuration. With the help of these tools, consumers can personalize their website navigation and feel in charge. The last thing to do is to make sure that the menu’s categories and labels are simple to read.
Conclusion
We’ve talked about a number of issues that could hinder your SEO efforts. Keep an eye out for these difficulties and take steps to reduce them as soon as you notice them. Additionally, be informed about the most recent trends and algorithm updates.
Want to Achieve Excellence in Digital Transformation?
Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Digital Transformation. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.
Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations of all sizes across most industries. In the Digital Age today, technology creates new opportunities and fundamentally transforms businesses in all aspects—operations, business models, strategies. It not only enables the business, but also drives its growth and can be a source of Competitive Advantage.
For many industries, COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline for Digital Transformation Programs by multiple years. Digital Transformation has become a necessity. Now, to survive in the Low Touch Economy—characterized by social distancing and a minimization of in-person activities—organizations must go digital. This includes offering digital solutions for both employees (e.g. Remote Work, Virtual Teams, Enterprise Cloud, etc.) and customers (e.g. E-commerce, Social Media, Mobile Apps, etc.).
Learn about our Digital Transformation Best Practice Frameworks here.
Readers of This Article Are Interested in These Resources
|
78-page PDF document
|
|
17-slide PowerPoint presentation
| |||
About Vaibhav Kakkar
Vaibhav Kakkar is the Founder and CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing services and development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building systems over services, and has helped scale up agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.Top 10 Recommended Documents on Social Media Strategy
» View more resources Social Media Strategy here.
» View the Top 100 Best Practices on Flevy.