Understanding when to adjust your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy can be crucial to maintaining a strong online presence and not wasting your marketing budget.
There are many reasons to adjust strategy, even when things are doing well.
Below is more of a list of red flags your SEO marketer should keep an eye on.
Your Organic Traffic is Actually Going Down
One sign that you may need to reconsider your SEO approach is if you notice a significant drop in organic traffic. While fluctuations are normal, if there’s a consistent downward trend over a period of time, it could indicate issues with your website.
Just the act of optimizing the sites keywords and consistent blogging should increase clicks and impressions from search. That increase may be very small, but at least it’s something. Going backwards indicates a deeper problem.
Your content might not be as relevant to your audience as it used to be, or it may not be ranking as well on search engines because of low dwell time or click through rates.
Monitor dwell time in Google Analytics, check your CTRs in Google Search Console, and use a tool like Moz or Semrush to see if you’ve lost backlinks.
You’re Targeting Keywords That Your Website Isn’t Strong Enough to Rank for
If you’re focusing on specific keywords but your website isn’t showing up in the top results, it might be time to reevaluate your keyword strategy.
It could be that the keywords you’re targeting are too competitive. To see the keyword difficulty scores of the phrases you’re targeting, you can create a free Moz account.
Another possibility is your keywords are simply not relevant to the services your provide, your products or your area of expertise. When that’s the case it makes sense that Google isn’t going to rank your site highly.
The Website’s User Experience is Really Bad
Yes, user experience is a big part of SEO.
If your bounce rate is high or the time spent on your site is low, it might mean that your website isn’t meeting visitors’ expectations. Perhaps the user interface is unappealing or difficult to navigate, or the content isn’t engaging enough.
A positive user experience is an important aspect of SEO, so any negative trends in these metrics may call for a strategy change.
Consider having friends, colleagues or peers visit the website and provide feedback on the navigation and CTAs. If you have the budget and are a larger company, pay for user testing to get a bigger sample size.
Your SEO Team Hasn’t Done Any Link Building
A fourth sign is when your backlink profile is weak. Backlinks are an essential part of SEO, and if your website isn’t getting linked to by reputable sources, it could adversely affect your site’s authority and rankings. In this case, you might need to put more effort into your link building strategy.
Each of these signs could point to different aspects of your SEO strategy that need improvement. Careful analysis and continuous optimization is the key to success in SEO.
If you think your SEO marketing is stuck in the mud, contact me for advice at cort@bayareaseosolutions.com.