SEO is an essential part of success for any website. It meshes with social media and content strategy to help you get better results from both. However, it can be complex…and it has certain mysteries, even for long time practitioners. These SEO challenges can be quite frustrating!
Let’s look at some of the biggest SEO challenges businesses run into:
1) Sudden Loss of Organic Search Traffic
Traffic fluctuation is normal – and even if you’ve been pursuing a long-term SEO strategy, your site’s rankings could change suddenly. In fact, it’s been noted that sites often appear to lose search position before a major increase in rank. If organic search traffic plummets to low levels, though, use the disavow backlinks tool to weed out any recent shady links.
2) New Pages Failing to Show Up in Search
If new site pages fail to show up in search results after about a month, odds are good they are not being indexed properly. Indexing should become faster as your site grows and attracts more traffic. To accelerate the process the Google way, submit an XML sitemap through your Search Console. This makes it easier for Google to find and crawl your pages.
3) Links Disappearing from Other Websites
Links from other websites are an essential part of SEO, but they are a capricious resource. If a link suddenly disappears from your link portfolio, the host either took it down or, in a worst case scenario, lost control of the domain entirely. While it’s not allowed to offer compensation for links, be sure you have a strong relationship with publishers so links survive longer.
4) Slow Overall Site Performance
4) Slow Overall Site PerformanceIf your site is slow, users will get frustrated. This will be reflected in your bounce rates and other traffic patterns, which can affect search placement. Downsize images on your site, removed unused plugins, and make sure scripts load asynchronously rather than slowing down your page headers. Most content management systems offer caching plugins to enhance speed, too.
There are some methods out there that bring you immediate traffic – PPC ads through AdWords, for example. SEO, on the other hand, is a marathon rather than a sprint. It may take months of work to see consistent results. However, once you have strong search engine placement, the momentum of “nearly free” traffic is on your side. Keep going and don’t give up!
To get the most from SEO, it’s crucial to stay informed. Make sure you’re using analytics –Google Analytics is a great way to get started. By pinpointing changes in your traffic over time, you can learn how users reach you and what content resonates with them.