5 Warning Signs that Show You Are Doing SEO the Wrong Way.

At Small SEO Tools, we've developed a unique way of sharing pleasantries with our users and company partners.

We'd often say:

"Hey, how's your SEO going?"

That's synonymous with saying, "How's your day going?" or "How's business going?" or something like that. Please don't blame us; we are an SEO-specialized company, after all! 

Millions of people have used our SEO and content tools to achieve remarkable results in their online marketing, but we've also had people answer that question with responses like:

• "Not good."
• "I'm not getting as much love from Google as I'd like."
• "Hi SST. Thanks! Our organic traffic is dropping. What do you say?"

Of course, you can expect these kinds of answers because SEO is highly technical and requires practical efforts to pull through. For those struggling to get results, we've found that there are five stages of a failing SEO strategy (or some warning signs that indicate your SEO is going all wrong). 

We often describe these stages as the five negative milestones of a poor SEO strategy, which means that if you're experiencing any of these, your SEO strategy is at a critical negative measure based on the stage you're at on a scale of 1-5. 

The good thing is that these dead-end stages or warning signs are usually noticeable and avoidable as well. That means you can take steps to avert them and protect your SEO and business from completely petering off.

Today, we'll share those five stages with you and show you the possible causes and precisely what to do to bring your search presence out of the mess. Let's start:

1. Your Site is not Visible in the Search

(“Not even a page of my entire site is on Google”)

This is the worst stage of a failing SEO strategy and the most challenging situation anyone can encounter with their optimization.  Your website is not found on Google or any other search engine.

Possible Causes

The search is pretty technical. Here’s what may be preventing your site from showing up in search results:

• Search engines have not yet indexed your website. This is because your website is new and lacks inbound links.
• Your website has "no index" tags. The index value of an HTML robot's meta tag stops search bots from crawling and indexing your web pages.
• You told search engines not to index your site. For instance, WordPress comes with a built-in feature that allows you to instruct search engines not to index your site. This feature is automatically enabled when you launch a new WordPress website.
• Your website has been penalized and removed from Google's search results. Google can temporarily or permanently remove sites from its web index. This occurs if it believes it is obligated to do so by law, if the sites fail to meet Google’s quality guidelines, or for other reasons.

What To Do

• If your website is new, wait a little longer, and Google will automatically index it. Some newbies often attempt to submit their sites to Google manually, but this is no longer necessary in the new era of SEO, as search engines can find your site on their own. To expedite the process, begin building links. With links, Google is likely to find it sooner. Crawlers follow that link, and it leads them to your website.
• Use our Index checker to check for any 'no-index' tags that may be present on your site.
• If you are using WordPress, go to Settings > Reading > Search Engine Visibility and turn off the box that says 'Discourage search engines from crawling your site.'

If your site is blocked from Google’s index because it violates their quality guidelines, Google may alert you about this on Google Search Console. Whatever they tell you, the problem, work on resolving it. 

You can modify your site to meet their guidelines and then resubmit it for reconsideration. You can also run a sitewide SEO audit to identify any SEO issues.

2. Low Search Visibility for Industry Keywords

("Just a few of my pages are showing up on the engines")

 After resolving the issue of not being visible in search, the next stage you may likely encounter is not ranking for industry-specific keywords.

Possible Causes

• You're not optimizing your content for appropriate keywords.
• You've been sandboxed, which means your domain or page hasn't been deindexed or penalized, but the traffic you are getting from Google suddenly drops dramatically. This can be a result of a temporary or minor penalty on your site or unfavorable updates to the algorithm. If it's a penalty, it may be automatic through the Google algorithm or manually applied by a Google Quality Engineer.
• Your website isn't optimized for search crawling. If you've been running a website or blog without paying attention to search engine optimization within your site (that is, on-page SEO), this could be a problem.
• Poor off-page optimization. You might be doing SEO but not enough off-page optimization.

Your keyword market is very competitive. Typically, the presence of authoritative websites that dominate top keywords leaves little room for newcomers to rank for those keywords.

What To Do

• Conduct thorough keyword research and create content centered around the relevant keywords.
• Start configuring your website to rank by doing on-page optimization. This includes meta tags, URL Structure, body tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.),  keyword density, image SEO, internal linking, external linking, and more.
• Get your hands dirty with off-page SEO, including building backlinks, social sharing, etc. Remember to target your keywords in your off-page optimization efforts.

3. Poor Search Traffic to Your Website

("My pages are showing up, but I'm not getting the traffic I deserve")

At this stage, your content is visible on search engines, and you're searching for specific keywords. However, the click-through rate (CTR) isn't impressive.

Possible Causes

There's one key reason why your page may be getting a low CTR, even if it sits on page 1. And that is a non-persuasive title tag and meta description. 

In other words, even if your blog post is well-optimized with the right keywords and your content is super helpful, if the result has a title and description that is not optimized to attract visitors, then your content will lose out on clicks.

What To Do

Legendary copywriter "David Ogilvy" noted that the most potent part of any content is the headline, stating that far more people read headlines than read the entire content. 

This remains true today, and new research has found that 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, while only 2 out of 10 will click through.

The key to achieving a high CTR and, ultimately, high organic traffic is to create truly compelling titles and descriptions that persuade searchers to click through.

4. High Bounce Rates + Low Dwell Time

("I'm getting clicks, but visitors are not staying on my site")

If you've successfully optimized your title and description to garner enough clicks, that's great

But it may not be enough. You should learn to keep visitors engaged on your site for a more extended period.

If users keep bouncing off your site immediately after clicking on the result, Google may think they simply don't like your content. The result is usually Google "pogo-sticking" your pages.

Additionally, if your dwell time (the amount of time people spend on your site after clicking on your SERPs result) is high, then you can more easily engage users and start building relationships with them.

Possible Causes

A possible cause of high bounce rates and low dwell times is the presence of low-quality content. Suppose your headlines and content descriptions on Google promise users valuable information but fail to deliver it in the main content when they click. In that case, visitors will immediately click the back button. 

Therefore, you should prioritize creating high-quality and original content. Your content shouldn't contain any traces of plagiarism, as it can also annoy visitors. Hence, it's essential to check the originality of your content and remove any text that may be plagiarized to prevent negative consequences. 

Another possible cause is poor user experience, which can stem from factors such as slow page load times, an obnoxious layout, non-responsive design, or difficulty navigating the site.

What To Do

First, head over to Google Analytics and check your site's metrics to get an idea of where you stand. Then optimize your site to reduce bounce rates by doing the following:

• Add quality, relevant images to your content.
• Break up the block of text of your blog posts by leaving lots of whitespace for easy readership.
• Make the opening of your posts interesting to haul readers in.

Additionally, optimize your site's user experience by doing the following:

• Improve your page load time.
• Make your design responsive and mobile-friendly.
• Make it convenient for users to navigate your site and easily find what they are looking for.
• Make your content super-useful to keep readers.

5. Little or No Return/ Repeat Visits

("I get clicks, and they stay on my site a while but don't come back another day")

After getting your site indexed, optimizing to appear more often on search, driving organic traffic, and keeping users on your site for a long time, you still have another stage in the SEO journey to win. It's optimizing your site to produce return visits.

SEO does not end with people visiting your website once.

An effective SEO strategy should incorporate the "aftermath" of visitors' interaction with your website. You don't want people to visit your website once and never return.

You want to keep 'em. You want to ensure they return again and again to read your blog, building a solid relationship and reputation until they trust you and are willing to buy or use your product or service.

Possible Causes

 What leads to zero or low repeat visits?

Low-quality content. If your content does not offer value to readers, they won't think of coming back another day.

• Lack of strategies for getting first-time visitors to return another day.

 What To Do

Collect email addresses and send regular notifications to your subscribers about new blog updates.

• Optimize your blog posts mainly for keywords with long-term potential. Use Google Trends to determine the popularity of keywords and identify whether they're declining or rising in popularity.
• Build a strong social media following and regularly share new posts with your followers.
• Generally, create awesome content. Because when visitors sense that your content provides great value, they'll keep coming back for more.
• Understand that SEO is quite broad. So try to get it all working together with the right SEO tools.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is a great marketing strategy. It can help turn a small, unstable business into an established one. However, SEO is not all bed of roses. In most cases, the SEO issues that marketers and website owners face can all be categorized into the five stages discussed above.

To get your SEO to its prime, don't just stop at getting your site indexed. Work on getting your site to rank for expected keywords, getting enough organic traffic, getting people to stay long on your pages, and getting people to come back for more.

That's the full circle of a successful SEO strategy. Need more SEO tips? Check out the rest of our SEO blog posts or join us on the facebook page of  SmallSEOTools and visit our Twitter page for the latest SEO updates.