You know that feeling you get when you spend a ton of time on an SEO campaign only to have it not produce the results you expected — or any results at all?
You were sure this campaign was going to provide unmatched traffic. Instead, it completely failed. What happened?
I’ve been in the digital marketing industry long enough to see this happen time and time again. But there are steps you can take to ensure that it doesn’t keep happening to you!
Let’s talk about some of the biggest marketing mistakes I see in SEO campaigns. Then I’ll share some tips on how you can fix them so you can start seeing the results you’re looking for.
What is an SEO Campaign?
An SEO campaign is the work you do when you try to tweak certain aspects of your website to help it rank higher with Google and other search engines. The higher your ranking, the more traffic you will receive on your site.
SEO is still your best bet when it comes to increasing traffic and getting the most out of your website. However, the rules change so often that it can be difficult to keep up. Tips and tricks that worked a few years ago could be obsolete today.
Why Do Some SEO Campaigns Fail?
There could be a variety of reasons why your campaign isn’t performing as well as you expected it to.
Let’s look at the top 3.
Reasons Why SEO Campaigns Fail
Reason #1: You Don’t Know How to Prioritize
When it comes to SEO, there is a lot to play with and a lot of places you can work on. It can be a bit distracting, especially to someone who is new to SEO work. To make the most out of your time, be sure to focus on the tips and tricks that are most likely to improve your ranking.
A big marketing mistake I see often is when marketers spend too much time on things like alt tags and schema. While important, there are easier and quicker ways to make a big improvement in your SEO campaign.
Example of Schema
The same goes for focusing on pages that aren’t already getting much traffic or dead links that aren’t sending traffic your way. It’s a good idea to clean these things up later when you have more time. If you want your SEO campaign to take off quickly, focus on other SEO tasks and table these ones for later.
Reason #2: You’re Focusing on Something That Doesn’t Work
Sometimes, while you’re working on your SEO campaign, you’ll come across URLs that you want to change. Don’t! When you make the wrong update to a URL, you could set yourself back 3-6 months.
Even if these URLs are not currently converting, be sure to check their history. Look to see when they did convert and if there were any redirects associated with them.
Avoid a major setback and do your research into the history of the URL before making any changes.
URL Example
Another big marketing mistake a lot of people make is going into this work thinking that any content is good content. This could not be further from the truth. The days of keyword stuffing your website are long gone.
When you add content to your pages for the sake of adding it, you run the risk of being marked as spam by Google. If Google doesn’t understand how your content fits in the page or if it registers it as duplicated content from elsewhere on your site, it will do more harm than good to your SEO campaign.
If you’re going to add content to any of your pages, be sure that it is quality, original content that is relevant to your site.
Reason #3: Your Site is Technically Flawed From The Beginning
If your site is configured incorrectly from the beginning, you’re fighting a losing battle.
Be sure to check what Javascript you may be running. Do this within the first 3 months of your SEO campaign. If anything seems to be negatively impacting your results, fix it.
The same goes for your page speed.
Google wants to send its users to quality sites. If your site has a slow page speed, Google will disregard it as spam and won’t rank it high on the search results page. If your site isn’t ranking, it isn’t converting.
Lastly, check your Core Web Vitals. You can do this by going into your Google Search Console and making sure that everything looks good on that end. If your Core Web Vitals are bad, Google will rank your page poorly, or maybe even not at all. The biggest SEO campaign in the world won’t help a page with poor Core Web Vitals.
Core Web Vitals
How to Produce an SEO Campaign that Works
In addition to avoiding the above marketing mistakes, here are some things you can do proactively to increase your search engine ranking.
Tip #1: Ensure Your Site is Technically Correct Right Out of the Gate
Any SEO campaign should start with a full deep-dive audit of the site.
Take a look at the backend of your Google console. Be sure that there aren’t a bunch of scammy backlinks targeting your site. Handle any manual action items that might be assigned to your site. Both of these things will have a huge negative impact on your ranking.
You can also use a tool like SEMRush to look at all the Google algorithm updates over the past 3-4 years. Have any of these algorithms affected your site? If so, how?
Tip #2: Focus on Your Money Pages
There are probably 10-15 pages that are driving 90% of the revenue for your site. If you don’t already know which pages are your “money pages,” you can determine it by checking Google Analytics to see which pages are performing the best.
When you start your SEO campaign, start with these pages. You know they are already receiving decent traffic so consider ways to increase it. Build them up in a way that Google will be more drawn to them.
Understanding your money pages is an important part of the puzzle to understanding the keywords that are driving traffic to your site. Having this knowledge will help you know that you’re focusing your SEO efforts on the right pages.
How to Find Your Money Pages in Google Analytics
Tip #3: Utilize a Multi-Channel Approach
SEO remains the #1 channel for driving conversions. A lot of people are using Google every day and that means there are a lot of opportunities to draw traffic to your site.
And, while this is very important, it’s not the only way to build your audience. You should explore how to use a multi-channel approach.
Don’t ignore other channels like social media, marketing lists, and e-mail captures. Create a cohesive strategy where all of these channels work together. This is a great way to re-target your traffic and utilize them again and again.
Tip #4: Understand Your User’s Intent
Knowing and understanding what your user is looking for when they find your site is one of the most important steps of an SEO campaign.
When you know why traffic is landing on your site, you can use that information to capitalize on those users. Build your pages to resonate with them and their intended purpose. When your pages answer a question or solve a problem for a user, they are more likely to return.
User Intent
Wrapping Up With SEO Campaigns
In the last few years, there has been an explosion of growth of social media channels and other marketing platforms. However, SEO is still the greatest way to drive traffic to your site.
But, like everything in the virtual space, the best practices of SEO campaigns are constantly changing and growing.
The tips and tricks you used to use might not work anymore. Be sure to review your work for any major marketing mistakes you may have made in the past. To combat any negative effects this may have on your ranking, adjust your SEO work accordingly.
Once you’re sure that your site is properly optimized, you can sit back and enjoy the traffic flowing in. But not for too long! The digital marketing space is constantly evolving and you should be, too.
