Common Reasons Why Your SEO Is Not Working & Solutions

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1. You Have Chosen a Wrong SEO Company

SEO is anyone’s game, but not everyone can win. Never settle for an SEO company that claims to offer services at the cheapest rates. Instead, join hands with a reputable company that has a great track record.
Never work with a company that guarantees ‘No:1’ ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). None in the SEO world knows the exact recipe for that.
Another telltale sign of a bad SEO company is bad links. Stay off a company that offers a hell of a lot of links at dirt cheap rates.
Some companies do claim that they have a ‘relationship’ with Google.
Yes! Such companies do exist.
You should never, ever, under any circumstances, work with such companies. A company that stuffs keywords into bad content is not going to help boost your business.
Beware of companies that have clients with spammy links. These links are often from pages that are full of broken and terrible English.

Solution:

• Referrals from friends and family are a great way to select a good SEO company.
• Talk to an SEO company’s past clients and look for online reviews. You can find genuine reviews on the Google My Business page and the G2 website.
  
• Meet the SEO company’s representatives in person and tell them your SEO goals.
• Talk about your budget in advance.
• Tell them you have zero tolerance towards Black Hat SEO practices.

2. Your Website is Not Optimized for Mobiles

Times have changed. If you are not optimizing your website for mobile phones, you are losing the game. This factor is important, as more than 80% uses cellphones and tablets for browsing.
Of those, a whopping 27% uses only mobile phones. In contrast, only 14% uses computers for surfing. Your website should run flawlessly on different devices.
Your Website’s Mobile Page Speed Is One of the Key Metrics for Google to Rank Your Site.
Google tweaked its algorithms in 2016 to give priority to mobile-optimized websites. If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you will lose a large amount of traffic.
Do not worry if you are unsure whether your site is mobile-friendly.
Use Google’s free online tool. It will tell you how mobile-friendly your site is.
So what is the solution if your website is not mobile-friendly?
Below is the answer.

Solution:

• Always go for a responsive design. According to Google, a responsive web design sends the same HTML code to all devices. Whatever the device may be, CSS will alter the page rendering.
• Do not opt for pop-ups on mobile sites. They are annoying on small screens, honestly.
• Compress your images and CSS to achieve page speed. Ditch Flash player; it is archaic now. Keep everything simple and clean.
• Use the screen judiciously and put out the most important information first.

3. Google Has Not Indexed Your Website

So your website is up and running but not showing up on Google?
You might have blocked Google from crawling your site.
Revoke this, and you will see your website in Google search results. Maybe Google has not indexed your site yet.
If your site is brand new, give it some time for Google to index it.
To know whether your site is on the list, do a google search on the following.
type site:yourdomainname.com
For example, searching for site:wikepedia.com will show you Wikipedia pages. If your website and its pages show up at the top of search results, your site is in Google’s index. For instance, my site is New york’s world resort; I can check if it’s indexed using “site: https://www.rwnewyork.com/.
Let us see how you can make Google index your site.

Solution:

• Add your website to Google Search Console and give Google your sitemap. You can generate Sitemap for your website to add it in the backend to send string signals about your business to Google search engines.
  
• Ensure that your Google Search Console settings are correct. Your website’s code should not stop Google’s crawling bots.

Note that Google Search Console was earlier called Webmaster Tools.

4. Your Site Suffers from Duplicate Content Issues

A piece of content that appears on multiple websites/pages on the Internet is Duplicate content. Duplicate content occurs because of URL variations, printer-friendly content, and scraped information.
Duplicate content is a result of unintentional actions during website management. Such content makes Google hard to decide which version is appropriate for a search query.
A content piece that appears in many places causes rank and traffic loss for websites. Because search engines do not show all the versions of a content piece, rather, it will choose the one that it thinks relevant to the query.

Solution:

There are three main ways to deal with Duplicate Content.

• Deploying a 301 status code to redirect the search engines to the right URL is the first way.
• Using a Canonical Tag to inform the search engines that a particular URL is the ‘Master Copy’ is the second one. For Moz’s content marketing guide they have used a canonical tag to avoid duplicate content issues.
  
• Thirdly, you can add Meta Robots tag to the HTML head of pages you want to exclude from the search engine’s index.

5. You’re Not Patient Enough

SEO is a slow game. The slow game has its own rules, and you have to play by the rules. Expecting dramatic results to happen overnight will disappoint you.
Many factors need to function in harmony for a successful SEO campaign. Right keywords, optimized content, load speed, and crawlability are crucial.
There are more than 200 factors that decide the ranking of your site. For these reasons, SEO professionals do not commit to the timing for results.
Learn the Basics of SEO, and Don’t Be a Clueless Site Owner.
Expecting unrealistic results is another mistake that site owners make. Making your site appear No:1 on Google search results should not be your only goal.
Building site authority, creating quality content, and building quality links are important too.
Creating scores of spammy backlinks in a short period may boost your visibility in Google. But it is going to affect your site’s ranking in the long run.

Solution:

• Discuss your goals as a company with your SEO agency.
• Be clear about what you need.
• Certain businesses need quality leads but not tonnes of raw traffic.
• Established companies use SEO to increase brand awareness and manage their reputation.
• Find where your company falls on and devise your strategy.

6. You are Giving a Skip to Long-tail Keywords

Nearly 70% of all web searches have long-tail keywords.
Let’s assume that Andrew from New York wants to buy a specific type of black boots.
He searches for ‘black boots’ on Google. This is a short-tail keyword search.
Now Google throws at him countless results that have ‘black boots.’ The overwhelming responses confuse him. He closes the browser and goes back to work.
The next day, he comes prepared and searches for ‘knee-high matte black boots for men.’
Google now curates a list of websites that strictly have the keywords Andrew used.
So why does this example matter?
Go back and read the first sentence of this paragraph.
While using generic keywords such as ‘white hat,’ you are locking horns with many. Hundreds and thousands of sites have the same keywords already.

Solution:

• To complement the generic keywords, find relevant long-tail keywords. There are various free SEO tools that help you find long-tail keywords for free for different locations.
  
• Make sure you use them in your SEO campaign.
• By doing this, you will get high-quality prospects such as Andrew, who has strong buyer intent.

7. Your SEO Company Implements Outdated Practices

SEO is an ever-changing game. So, SEO companies need to update themselves almost daily. There is no room for the one-size-fits-all approach here.
If your SEO company did not tailor the strategies for you, it might not be the right one. The reality is that some SEO firms still practice strategies like keyword stuffing. These are obsolete methods and do not work anymore.
Google’s Algorithm Has Evolved a Lot over the Years.
Some of the major Google algorithm updates released are Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, etc.
Today, more than keywords, user experience, quality content, and other factors matter. Some SEO companies generate links to a site from spammy sites. This tactic is unnatural and will affect a site’s ranking.
Google recognizes sites that get links from low-quality sites and penalizes them.

Solution:

• Look for an SEO company that is ready to run personalized campaigns for you.
• Don’t go for a company that does not give priority to mobile optimization.
• A good SEO company will often introspect and adapt to changes.
• It will not keep you in the dark about its practices.
• They will provide you with periodical reports about your site’s performance.

8. You Have Opted for a Cheap SEO Package

A cheap SEO package is alluring, but not its results are. Keep your expectations low if you opt for a cheap SEO package.
Companies that offer cheap SEO services rely on outsourced content. Such pieces of content are generic and mass-produced. But Google gives preference to sites that have semantically rich content.
If your site is full of low-value content, you are not going to win the SEO game.
Cheap SEO companies care less about technical SEO. They forsake factors such as site structure, health, crawl errors, and broken links. Another issue with cheap SEO companies is spammy backlinks.
Earning backlinks from quality websites takes time. Communication and relationship should be on point for earning relevant backlinks.
Cheap SEO companies often assign inexperienced staff for acquiring backlinks. As a result, your site will only get links from spammy websites. It is going to affect your site’s ranking.

Relevant : 15 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Cheap SEO Services

Solution:

• If you have limited resources, find an affordable-yet-good SEO company.
• A good and affordable SEO company will not oblige you to sign up for a ready-made package. Rather, it will be ready to customize the strategies to help you reach your goals.
• Look for online reviews and testimonials before finalizing an SEO company.

9. Your UX Does Not Complement SEO

User Experience, aka UX, is a critical element when it comes to a successful SEO campaign.
If your site is hard to navigate and has annoying pop-ups, visitors are going to exit soon. It will send bad signals to Google. The search engine will assess and rank your site based on how visitors interact with it.
If a user stays long on your site, it means that the person is getting something out of it.
If he/she moves on to another search result, Google will assume that your site does not provide enough value.

Solution:

• A clutter-free layout and fluid transitions are mandatory for a good UX. Sometimes designers overdo UX design and end up making the design pop out.
• A good design is akin to an underdog. It is not supposed to grab the eyeballs.
• Design your site in a way it does not distract or frustrate the visitors.
• Optimize your site for mobile devices and modern browsers.
• Keep the information precise and straightforward.
• Use simple language.
• Give actional information to the searchers.
• Create authentic and easy-to-digest content.

10. Your Are Yet To Register With Google My Business

If your business is local and has not registered it with Google My Business, we feel sorry for you. Google My Business is an important factor for your site to get noticed locally.
When people search for local businesses, Google will throw local results first. According to Google, a whopping 46% of all searches have local intent.
If you are a local business, signing up for a GMB listing will prove beneficial.
The best part is that your business will show up in the results, even above the organic results. But, your business has to be a part of 3-Pack.
As the name suggests, 3-Pack is a pack of three local search results; Google finds the most relevant. Data says businesses that are part of 3-Pack get 700% more clicks than those that are not.
This is why every business’s first goal should be to create a GMB page as soon as their website goes live.

Solution:

• Visit business.google.com and sign in to your Google account.
• Sign up using your Business email domain. You will have to add your business name and mark your business’s location on the map.
• Make sure you add your business’s phone number, working hours, and site photos.
• Verify and claim your business.

11. You Have Not Optimized Your Meta Tags

Meta tags are the tellers of your site and its content to search engines and visitors. Each page of your site will have a unique set of optimizable meta tags.
One can check these tags via each page’s source code. Some important meta tags are:

• Title tag,
• Meta description,
• Meta description attribute
• Canonical tag
• Social media meta tag.

Title tag gains significance as it is the second most vital on-page factor for SEO after your page’s content. Though most of the meta tags lost their relevance, these tags still matter.
Meta description attribute is another useful meta tag. It explains to your visitors and Google what your site is all about. It appears beneath your site link in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Businesses can leverage it by adding attractive descriptions with pivotal keywords to increase CTR and have a potential audience.

Though meta description will not affect your rank, it will encourage users to visit your site. When the click-through rate increases, your business will flourish. If you have not optimized your meta tags, below is the solution.

Solution:

• Check all pages of your site whether they have title tags and meta descriptions.
• Add ‘alt text’ to your images. ‘Alt Text’ will describe the images to the visitors who can’t see them.
• Make use of Canonical tags and identify the duplicate content in your site.
• Deploy robot meta tags to tell Google how it should access your site.

12. You Don’t Create Long-form Content

A lot of site owners make this mistake. When it comes to SEO content writing, both quality and quantity matter.
Statistics say content pieces that have more than 2,000 words rank better. Long-form articles convert better than thin ones.
For example, both eHow and Wikipedia do the same job. While Wikipedia prefers long-form articles, eHow loves to do short ‘how to do’ type articles. But Wikipedia gets more traffic than eHow owing to its long-form articles.
This is because Wikipedia not only gives a lot of information (without flowery content) but also ensures that it’s right and accurate, which Google AI can understand.
The ranking is depending on indexing. Web Crawler Googlebot indexes every site.
When the bot reads a site, it analyses every word, page title, alt tags, and the like.
These page elements decide the indexing. When a page has more content, it will perform well in search results. Data also says that long-form articles usually attract more backlinks.

Solution:

Add value to your content if it is simple in nature.
For example, if your content title is:
‘Why do we love junk food?’
Don’t just talk about the marketing trick behind it.
Talk about the evolutionary instinct (too) that drives us to gorge on high-calorie food.

13. Your Content is Hard To Digest

The ultimate goal of an article is to communicate but not to prove your command over the language.
If your article has tonnes of jargon & nominalizations, readers are not going to engage. Since Google reads people’s engagement with your site, you have to make them stay longer on your site.
If your writing is for a niche audience who know what they read, use jargon. But if it is for everyone, avoid jargon at any cost. When people have a tough time understanding what they read, they will move on from your site.

Solution:

• Write in everyday English.
• Be punchy with your language.
• Be concise and write in an active voice.
• Keep your sentences between 15-20 words.
• According to SEO experts and search engines, users love to read content with short and sweet lines. It makes them understand it easily. Having content with long sentences (as in the image on the IT management niche) will confuse and annoy the leader to bounce off the page.
  
• Always go for short words.
• Do not be afraid to use a word twice in a sentence. Your sentences can indeed start with conjunctions.
• Use simple alternatives for complicated phrases.

Both the word ‘if’ and the phrase ‘In the event of’ deliver the same meaning.

14. You Don’t Generate Content Regularly

Think of your content as the fuel for your website. The more often you fill fuel, the more distance you can cover. It is an indisputable fact in the SEO world that ‘Content is King’.
Search engines like Google not just look at your content but at the consistency too. If your site’s last blog post was in August 2020, Google might think your blog is dead.
Websites that publish posts more than five times a month witness incredible traffic.
The bonus you get for creating content is content.
Yes, content creates content. When readers leave comments, they are adding more value to your site.

Solution:

• Post at least two times a week.
• Rope in SEO writers and create a content calendar.
• There are scheduling tools out there which will make your life easier.
• Make use of them and schedule your blog posts.
• Engage when your readers are active in your blog’s comments section.

15. Your Site Has Spammy & Low-quality Backlinks

Companies that offer SEO packages at dirt cheap rates follow Black Hat SEO. And earning bad backlinks is one of the tricks they use.
Some SEO agencies portray that they build numerous links at low prices, but they build low quality and PBN links bought from social or blackhat SEO groups.
As the name suggests, backlinks are links to your site from others. Not all links are good. Links that come from sites that are in no way connected to your business are bad.
When it comes to links, quality matters more than quantity.

• Links from banned web pages and low-quality sites are also going to land you in trouble.
• Links from high-quality sites signal Google that your site provides value.

Traffic from irrelevant sites is not going to boost your business. The reason is that visitors from shady sites are not prospects but bystanders.

Solution:

There are tools to identify and remove bad backlinks.

• Tools like SEMRush identify links that come from porn, gambling, and irrelevant sites.
• These tools will allow you to download the data as CSV files.
• Use Google’s ‘Disavow Links’ tool to tell Google which links it should avoid.

16. Your Site Suffers from Over-optimization

Over-optimization happens when you take optimization too seriously. Over-optimized websites look manipulative.
There was a time when over-optimization did pay off. But, Google started identifying sites that underwent optimization beyond limits.
Keyword stuffing is one of the most common over-optimization mistakes site owners make.
Google panda and Hummingbird update, focus on penalizing sites with keyword stuffing. It’s believed that two to four percent of keywords in the content are considered good.
Next comes the spammy links. When link-building becomes a numbers game, your site’s ranking will go south.
Many H1s and irrelevant keywords too fall under over-optimization. Every page must have only one H1 tag, period.

Solution:

• Work with an SEO company that only practices White Hat SEO strategies.
• If their link-building campaign is target-based, do not work with them.
• Say a ‘Strict No’ to ‘Article Spinning and Scraping.’
• Do not let the anchor text in your internal links go beyond a limit.

17. You Are Not Exploiting Social Media

A lot of site owners make this mistake. They create great content with the right keywords but fail to increase visibility.
Social media contributes to your ranking indirectly. The links you share on your social media pages increase your company’s exposure. Also, it improves your content’s longevity.
Whenever people share a piece of content, its lifespan increases, and they do not mind sharing articles if they provide them with value.
Likes, shares, and comments are good social signals. These signals play an important role in driving traffic to your site.
Assume that an article titled ‘How I got 1.3 Mn views using Pinterest’ has many comments on your social media page. Such a level of engagement signals high value to those who see the post.

Solution:

• Create shareable content pieces.
• Add social share options on your web pages to make it easy for users to share your content with just a click.
  
• Blog posts, infographics, how-to type articles, podcasts garner a lot of attention.
• Maintain uniformity across all your social media channels.
• Make sure you optimize your content for social sharing.

18. Maybe Your Site is in Google’s Penalty List

This a costly mistake site owners can make. Many strategies can lead you towards Google’s Penalty List. If your site is out of the ranking, it means that you are on the list.
Below are some of the mistakes that will put you on the penalty list.

• If your site receives loads of traffic from shady websites.
• If your site sends unnatural outbound links.
• If your blog has spam comments.
• If your site is in the hands of hackers.
• If your site has manipulative images.
• If your site has too many keywords.
• If your has sneaky redirects

Solution:

Tip 1 : Never buy links. It is a sure-shot way to get a place in Google’s Penalty list.

Tip 2 : Do not involve in link schemes such as ‘Link Farms’ and ‘Link Exchanges. You know links from quality and high DA sites push your website on top of SERPs. So, most SEOs are involved in direct link exchanges to acquire links quickly, which is really lethal.

Tip 3 : Abide by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

19. You Didn’t Do Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is crucial for a successful SEO campaign. Understanding the links, keywords, and other elements of your competitors’ sites will help.
With free tools like Thehoth or any other paid tools, you can perform competitor analysis.
Knowing what your competitors’ strategies are will help you devise yours. You can concentrate on things that they failed to do. It will give you a clear edge in the business.
Competitor analysis is as necessary as link building and keyword mapping. But, many companies still give a skip to it.
By analyzing competitors, you may find keywords that perform better than the ones you use. It will also tell you where your SEO company stands when compared to its competitors.

Solution:

There are tools available to find common keywords between two different domains. Using these, you can do Keyword Gap, Top Content, Link Gap, and Google SERP Analysis.

20. Your Website Takes Forever to Load

People are not going to wait if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Let that sink in. Done?
Online searchers have become restless over the years. Their average attention span too reduced significantly.
For Google, a site’s speed is a signal to rank pages. Experts say Google may consider the time your site takes to load the content to decide its rank.
When your site’s pages take more time to load the content, users will feel frustrated.
As a result, they will move on to the next site that addresses their queries. When the dwell time, the time a user spends on your site, is low, Google will rank you lower.

Solution:

• Start with evaluating your page speed. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
• Make sure that your website loads within 3 seconds for both desktop and mobile devices. It’s one of the technical signals that impact your CTR and thus the SERP ranks.
  
• To compress the size of your script files, use software pieces such as Gzip.
• Removing redirects and render-blocking JavaScript also help improve your page speed.

21. Your Site’s Structure is Poor

A good site structure will streamline the search process of a user. It will make crawling a breeze for search engines like Google.
Your URL structure is an important aspect of your site structure. Your site’s poor ranking may be a result of URLs with complex content. Your site’s security also comes under the structure.
HTTPS is the most-preferred protocol by websites to improve the site structure. More than 50% of the websites rely on HTTPS.
Out of the sites shown below, you can understand which site the users will trust more.
Internal linking is another factor that strengthens your site structure. Fix this issue and see how your page depth decreases.
The reason users are not spending more time on your site is because of fewer internal links. If you let them hit a dead end, it is a bad experience for them.

Solution:

• Create categories and subcategories for your site.
• Don’t create more than 5-6 categories.
• Rely on HTML and CSS to create your site navigation. When your site grows, it is very natural for it to become disorganized.
• Do periodical review and implement content hierarchy.

22. You Have Not Chosen Your Hosting Provider Wisely

Some website owners tend to go with the cheapest web hosting provider. They assume that web hosting does not affect a site’s SEO.
The quality of a web host determines the loading time and stability of a website. There is no beating around the bush here.
You must need a top-notch hosting company.

• The main issue you will face with a poor hosting company is server downtime.
• Downtime heavily affects your ranking in SERPs.
• A good hosting company will not let down the websites and make sure they load faster.
• Choosing a poor hosting company will also hurt you badly in the event of data loss.

In such a situation, site owners have to start everything from scratch. It will badly affect your SEO.

Solution:

Always go for a web hosting company that provides at least 99.9% uptime. Some players do offer 99.999% uptime. It is advisable not to pick a ‘Shared Hosting’ plan.
Many hosting providers offer outstanding uptime rates, such as Hostgator, hosting nearly 10 million domains now.
Google says there is no correlation between shared hosting and SEO performance. But experts doubt this claim.

23. You Don’t Pay Attention To ROI

Websites make money through various channels. If it is an eCommerce website, online sale is the only channel through which it makes money. Hence, tracking its sales and Return on Investment (ROI) source is easy for an eCommerce company.
By doing this, websites can decide the course of their SEO campaigns. But, companies other than eCommerce stores get business through multiple channels.
They get inquiries through phone, email, and online contact forms. But, very few businesses take time to analyze which channel gives them the best ROI. Hence, they are clueless about the success rate of their SEO campaigns.

Solution:

Find which of the channels get the most business inquiries.

• If the inquiries come through email, improve your email marketing game. SEO email marketing helps your site rank better.
• If the contact form does not bring in many inquiries, ditch the SEO campaigns that drive traffic to the form.

24. You Are Not Using Schema Markup

One of the rarely used features in SEO is Schema Markup. It is a form of microdata that enhances your site’s description in SERPs. It can give context to ambiguous webpages.
So how does it improve SEO?
The enhanced description, aka rich snippets, encourages searchers to visit your website. When rich snippets appear in a site’s description, the site’s visibility will be high.
For example, a resto-bar can display its events beneath its link in SERPs using rich snippets. The improved visibility will translate into more click-through rates.

Solution:

Schema markup is important for a range of businesses. Service providers, restaurants, cinemas, and event organizers can make use of this feature.
Start using Schema Markup by visiting Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.

25. You Pay Too Much Attention to Vanity Metrics

There are so many metrics that help you decide where your business stands. But some metrics do not serve any value. They just look good on paper.
In the real world scenario, it does not help you take action.
For example, the number of impressions your Pinterest pin gets is a vanity metric. But the number of clicks your pin gets is an actionable metric.
Similarly, your Instagram follower count is a vanity metric, but your Instagram page’s engagement rate is an actionable metric.
Average Keyword Rank and Total Organic Keywords are two misleading vanity metrics. The reason you should not rely on these metrics is ‘Branded Keywords.’
These metrics do not include branded search terms. As a result, reports will trick you into thinking that you are performing better.

Solution:

Pay attention to engagement and actionable metrics. These metrics are bounce rate, conversion rates, dwell time, unique visitors, and more.