Did you know that organic search trumps paid search and social as the primary driver of traffic? It drives 51% of visitors to B2B and B2C websites, with paid search accounting for 10% and social for 5% of all traffic.
What does this tell you? It means SEO is all the more important for online businesses. If you do it right, it can bring you the right traffic to drive your conversions and sales.
However, how do you know you’re using the right strategies for SEO? Keep on reading to learn if you’re doing it right or wrong.
You’re Not Ranking on the SERP
The number one goal of SEO is to rank high on the SERP. If you’re not achieving this, then what’s your strategy doing?
However, you can’t expect results overnight. It takes a lot of waiting and effort to see the results of your SEO strategy.
Still, you should get some results after a while. Your website should appear now and then on the SERP, even if you’re not number one.
If you’re not ranking, you’re not getting enough organic traffic. This means you will also suffer from low conversions and such.
You’re Not Getting Local Traffic
Local businesses, like restaurants, barbershops, and such, only need to advertise to their local community. They don’t need to reach a national or global audience as they won’t bring business, after all.
You should be targeting your potential customers with a good local SEO strategy. It focuses on different things and gives you different results.
You Have a High Bounce Rate
Are your customers coming to your site but leaving right away? It’s bad for your rankings as Google will think they don’t like what they see on your site.
There are many reasons why your visitors could be leaving your site without interacting with it further. It could be the clickbait title, low-quality content, slow loading time, unfriendly layout, and many more. Whatever it is, it boils down to having a poor SEO strategy.
A good strategy addresses all of these things to avoid high bounce rates and increase your ranking as a result. Start by assessing your site, finding the possible causes, and then fixing it with a new working strategy.
You Don’t Know Whether It’s Working or Not
How do you know your strategy is working? You should check the analytics, check your metrics, and look at all the other numbers. In other words, you have to keep investing time in it to see the results.
If you don’t know how it’s doing, then you’re not doing SEO right. Even if you’ve hired an SEO company to do it for you, you still have to be in the know about the results. You have to know if you’re reaching your goals or not.
SEO isn’t a one-time thing; it’s not something you can do once and then leave to its devices while expecting good results. It needs adjusting and patience. It may well take a year to see the results, but not without continuous effort.
Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid
If the signs above are familiar to you, then you’re likely making a few mistakes. However, how do you know which mistake you’re making? Take a look at some of the most common mistakes below.
Focusing Too Much on Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of all strategies for SEO. However, it’s not good to focus too much on it.
If you rely only on increasing your rankings, you’ll miss out on other important parts of your strategy. The whole user experience is important, as well, as evidenced by low bounce rates. Even if you’re successful in ranking for a certain keyword, you’ll get high bounce rates if the visitor doesn’t like their experience on your website.
Ignoring Mobile Responsiveness
Did you know that as much as 92.8% of internet users use mobile devices? You should keep that in mind when designing your website.
If you don’t have a mobile-responsive website yet, you should adopt that as a part of your SEO strategy. This type of design ensures that your website displays correctly no matter what device the visitor is using. Your site adjusts automatically to the size of the screen.
Not Keeping up With the Trends
The most important goal for Google is to provide the best experience for its users. That’s why it’s releasing regular updates to its algorithm. It aims to continue serving the most relevant results.
This means that a winning strategy from four years ago would not work today. Even a strategy from last year would not be as effective today. You should learn how to come up with an SEO strategy that considers all the recent updates.
You should keep your eye out for the changing trends of SEO. Otherwise, you’d be running on an outdated tactic. In the worst-case scenario, you might even get a penalty from Google.
Choosing the Wrong SEO Company
SEO is a commitment that requires a lot of effort and time. That’s why many companies prefer to outsource it to a team of experts instead.
If this is your choice, you must be careful in choosing the right team. A professional SEO company should have a good track record of producing results, and they must be transparent with you at all times. They know the signs of a good marketing strategy and a bad one, as well.
Many companies will guarantee you a top spot in the SERP. Stay clear of these companies as not even Google can give guarantees like this.
Avoid super cheap deals as well. Good SEO is expensive, so prepare a chunk of your marketing budget for a good team.
Review Different Strategies for SEO
There are many approaches to SEO. The key is finding the right strategy that will work for you. As such, you must look for different strategies for SEO to see which one best fits your needs and goals.
Read more marketing tips and keep learning. Check out our other guides today for more information.
