SEO isn’t working for your business?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. It’s a common issue between most businesses and SEOs these days.

Google is constantly introducing new algorithm updates, and the competition is getting tougher day by day.

And because of this, many SEOs and businesses are finding it hard to rank on the first page of Google even after putting in hours of work and money.

If you’re also one of them and SEO isn’t working for your business the way you expected, then this piece of content is specifically written for you.

In this post, we’re going to share with you the 9 most common reasons why SEO isn’t working for you.

So ready to dive in? Let’s go.

9 Reasons Why SEO Isn’t Working For You

1. Approaching SEO As a Sprint, Not As a Marathon

One of the biggest mistakes that the majority of the people make in SEO is they approach it as a sprint, not as a marathon.

Besides this, many people also have a huge misconception that they can win over SEO really quickly.

But the truth is: SEO is a long-term game, and there’s no way you can succeed in this game if you have a short-term mindset.

It takes months, if not years, to see a significant result with search engine optimization, especially if you’re just starting out with SEO or have a brand new website.

However, if you keep patience and keep working on it, it can also turn out to be the most profitable and high-converting traffic source for you.

So the point here is: If you’re not getting results with SEO as of now, you might have to wait for a bit.

Take small steps and keep improving with time.

2. Not Focusing on The Quality of The Content

Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google with a big vision in mind that is to provide valuable and relevant information to users in just a fraction of a second.

And it still stays the primary goal of Google.

However, many people forget about this fact and think they can rank on Google without creating quality content.

But the truth is entirely different from what these so-called SEO’s believe.

Google is constantly improving its algorithm in an effort to deliver useful and relevant information to searchers.

And today, it’s almost impossible to rank on the first page of Google without creating a valuable piece of content.

It doesn’t really matter how many backlinks you create, how fast your website is, and how well you’ve optimized your on-page SEO.

If you’re content sucks….nothing is going to work for you.

In short:

No matter what SEO strategies you use, you have to give your content the topmost priority.

And not just us, even Google recommends it too.

Google recommends quaity content
That’s being said, a lot of people have a huge confusion about the term “quality content”.

There’s no way you can measure the quality of any content before you make it public.

But whenever you start creating your content, make sure it’s:

  • Providing the correct information to the user
  • Far better than what’s already out there on the web
  • Unique and specific
  • Engaging

3. Your Website Loads Teribbely Slow

The third reason why SEO isn’t working for you might be because your website loads extremely slow.

Website loading speed is a crucial Google ranking factor, and Google had even rolled out a speed update in 2018 that aimed to provide a faster and better user experience to mobile users.

Google speed update

On top of that, Google is coming up with a new algorithm update called “core web vitals” that is going to impact Google search results directly.

Core web vitals

Besides that, having a slow-loading website also increases the bounce rate and badly impacts the user experience of your website.

And not to forget, bounce rate and user experience also plays an indirect role in search engine ranking.

So if you want your website to rank on the first page of search results, you have to make sure that your website is loading fast enough for the users.

You can use tools like Google page speed insights to measure out the current loading speed of your website.

Page speed insights

Note: Google page insights doesn’t show the exact loading time of your page. Instead, it shows a performance score ranging between 0 – 100.

And then try optimizing your site for better performance.

Here are the following tactics you can use to optimize your site for faster performance:

  • Compress your images
  • Use clean code
  • Eliminate unnecessary resources and plugins from your website
  • Use a CDN (Content delivery network)
  • Choose a robust hosting provider

4. You’re Not Tracking Your Progress

Tracking is not only an essential aspect of business strategy, but it’s also crucial for SEO as well.

If you want your website to be on the top of Google search results, you have to track and measure the performance of your keywords and SEO strategy on a regular basis.

There’s a saying in business: “if you can’t measure, you can’t improve”.

The same thing applies to SEO as well.

SEO is a long-term process, and it takes time and effort to see results with SEO.

And tracking your keywords helps you measure the performance of your SEO strategy and opens up plenty of opportunities to improve.

On the flip side, if you don’t track your keywords, you won’t have any idea about the growth and progress of your SEO campaigns.

So in short:

Tracking your keywords and SEO progress is always a plus point.

But the main problem is: how you’ll track your keywords?

There are basically two options available for that.

Either you do it manually or use rank tracking software.

Doing it manually will take a hell of a lot of time, and it might mess up as well because humans are bound to make errors.

While on the other side, if you use rank tracking software, you’ll not only save your time but will also give you more organized and accurate data.

You can use a rank tracking tool like Zutrix, that will cover all your SEO tracking needs, such as accurate tracking of your keyword ranking, real-time notification, geo-based tracking, and reporting.

Zutrix rank tracker

5. Contents Are Not Aligning With The Search Intent

Search intent is the particular goal a user has while searching any query on search engines.

It’s simply the backbone of SEO.

Because if you don’t pay any attention to it, you might not be able to rank for any keywords even after using all the major SEO tactics like backlink building, quality content creation, page optimization, and so on…

Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches every single day, and most of the time, the user gets what they actually want.

And that became possible because Google pays very close attention to the search intent of the user and the content.

In simple words:

If you want Google to show up your website on top of Google search results, the first thing you have to do is align your content piece with the search intent of the keyword.

Let me show an example.

If you search for the keyword “best landing page builder”, you’ll see almost all of the contents ranking on the first page are list roundup posts where they have mentioned different landing page builders.

Search intent example

While on the other hand, if you just search for the keyword “landing page builder” and eliminate the word “best”, you’ll see the majority of the pages ranking on the first page are just landing pages of brands.

Search intent example

You can clearly see how it affected the whole search result just by eliminating a single word (“best”) from the keyword.

And that’s why it’s super important to make sure that whatever content you’re creating aligns with the search intent of the keyword you’re targeting.

6. You Are Probably Running After High Competitive Keywords

Many people have a misconception that going after high competitive keywords will bring them truckloads of traffic and revenue for their business.

But the reality is completely different.

When you’re just starting out and have a pretty low authority website, it’s almost impossible to rank for any high-competitive keywords where already industry-leading websites are rankings.

Even if you create 10x better content than the existing ranking pages, still the probability of ranking your website would be very low because of a thing called “trust”.

Industry-leading websites already have huge trust in the eyes of their audience and as well as Google. Thus it gives them an extra push on the search result.

However, whenever you’re just starting out your journey, you might not have a lot of trust in the market.

And for that, it’s become quite tough to compete with high authority websites.

So what’s the solution?

The best solution for this problem would be ignoring those high-competitive keywords at the beginning.

At the starting stage of your journey, try to focus on the less competitive and long-tail keywords that would be easier to rank for.

Start slow and try to achieve small gains.

And once you start getting results, you can try going after mid or high-competitive keywords if that keyword is important for your business.

7. Still Following The Old-School SEO Techniques That Don’t Work Anymore

Gone are the days when people used to rank on Google building some spammy backlinks with tribble content.

To be honest, SEO used to be like a cakewalk those days.

But now, the scenario is completely different.

Forget about ranking, now you’ll probably get penalized by Google if you use those tactics.

Still, many people are following those same old-school techniques like spammy backlinks, keyword density, and whatnot.

And if you’re also doing the same, you have to stop ASAP.

It will not only stop your website from ranking on the first page of search results but also hurt your website’s SEO.

So it’s better you should stay updated with what’s happening in the SEO space and take your decisions based on that.

8. Focusing More On The Quantity Of The Backlink Than The Quality of The Link

If you’re focusing more on the backlink quantity than the quality of the links, you’re making a big mistake.

Many people have a big misconception about backlinks.

That is: more backlinks = higher rankings.

But that’s not true at all.

The number of backlinks you acquire doesn’t really matter. What matters is the quality and relevance of the backlinks that you’re getting.

In short:

One backlink from high authority and relevant website is way more valuable than 100s of low-quality links.

In fact, building too many backlinks from low-authority and irrelevant websites can even harm your SEO and search engine rankings.

But the question is: how can you determine the quality of backlinks?

To be honest, there’s no formula or any tool available to do that accurately.

But you can mainly look at these three important metrics of websites for evaluating the quality of any backlinks:

  • Domain authority of the website
  • Relevance
  • Trust or authority of the site

If the website’s domain authority is more than 50+, the site is relevant to your niche, and the website has a good brand value and trust, that’s a sign of a quality backlink.

9. Not Using The Power of Internal Links

The last reason why SEO is probably not working for you could be because you’re not totally utilizing the power of Internal linking.

If you’re sorely depending upon external backlinks for ranking your pages, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity and wasting a lot of your precious time.

Internal links do not only help Google to find and index your pages more quickly, but it also distributes the existing link juice of your pages.

If used correctly, internal links can work as a double-edged sword for SEO, and it can even rank your pages on top of search result even if it doesn’t have any external backlinks.

But to get the most out of it, you have to use your keyword or related keywords in your anchor texts.

Internal links

Besides that, you also have to ensure that you’re not putting too many internal links on a single page because it might look spammy and can affect your site’s user experience.

Final Words

So these are the 9 most common reasons why SEO isn’t working for your business.

Now you have to identify the particular reasons that might be causing issues in your SEO strategy.

And once you find out those reasons, start working on it ASAP.

Most people fail to recognize the reason that’s holding them back, which is why they fail.

I hope you found this content useful. And if you think this content can bring value to other’s life then don’t forget to share it with your friends and colleagues.