4 Reasons Your SEO Strategy Isn’t Working (And What To Do About It)

Whether you’re running a business or managing a personal blog, you want to ensure that your website is always visible to your target audience. Without significant traffic flowing through your site, all your efforts will be in vain, and everything will be a waste of time.

If you want to drive traffic to your site, there’s one thing you should think about—SEO. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s the most important aspect of running a website. So, what is it, anyway?

Search engine optimization, popularly known as SEO, is the practice of optimizing web pages and content to improve website visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). With an SEO-optimized website, organic (unpaid) traffic will flood your platform, leading to sales.

If you already have an SEO strategy in place, see if it produces the results you want. If not, that means your plans and tactics are not working. This has to be addressed as soon as possible to avoid wasting your resources. But why isn’t it working?

To answer that question, check out the common reasons why SEO strategies fail (and the things you need to do when you encounter them).

Not Optimizing Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ Feature

Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) is a SERP feature that provides a wide range of answers and solutions related to the intent of the users based on their first query. PAA will give you an idea of what people have been searching for these past few days.

For example, if you ask Google ‘what is the carb content of brown rice,’ the search engine will provide a series of questions with corresponding answers. Some of which may include:

Can brown rice burn fat?
Is brown rice a healthy substitute for white rice?
What are the side effects of eating brown rice?

PAA boxes also come with clickable links below each question and answer. Users may click these links if they want to know more about a particular topic they read. To learn more, this site explains everything you need to know about the PAA feature.

If you don’t see your site featured in any PAA box, then that’s bad news. To fix that, here are some tips you can do to optimize your PAA entry:

Take a look at the keywords that trigger PAA boxes and use them to feature your site as an answer to some questions.
Optimize your on-page content. Be sure to use different headings (h1, h2, h3) whenever necessary to not confuse Google.
Check out the most popular questions today and create optimized content about them.

Poor Loading Speed

If your SEO isn’t working, your website might have poor loading speed, pushing traffic away from your site. If your site requires more than three seconds to load, users will look for other platforms instead. This will increase your site’s bounce rate and damage your SEO ranking.

So, what should you do? Below are some tips to consider when improving the speed of your website.

Look for a hosting solution that prioritizes performance. This will help ensure that your website will function optimally.
Compress your images to reduce their sizes. This is because using large and ultra-high-quality visuals often delays the loading process.
Reduce your site’s redirects. When your site redirects, the HTTP request, as well as the response time, will be longer than usual.
Cache all your pages. In this way, the server will be able to generate a webpage efficiently with only a few resources to use.
Minify your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. This is the process of removing unnecessary elements to reduce the size of a particular document, such as commas, spaces, etc.

Not Optimizing Site For Local Search Queries

If your website caters to the local community, city, or region (e.g., a website of a local bakeshop), it’s important to take advantage of the local searches. Usually, search engines manage keywords differently for global sites. So, if you want to please your local area, optimize your local SEO first.

If you’re wondering how, here are some tips that may help you improve your local SEO:

Create a Google My Business account and optimize it using the right information about your local business.
Get reviews from your customers whether they’re satisfied or not.
Optimize your site for voice search by using long-tail keywords. This is because people often use lengthy questions when asking search engines through voice commands.
Produce content related to local stories and news. This will give your website time to shine on local search queries.
Make your website mobile-friendly. People ask search engines about businesses using their phones. So, optimize your site for mobile devices to attract local users.
Use localized keywords (e.g., a service provider in Pasadena or plumbing services in Ohio).
Make your About pages location-specific by adding the address of your business.

Not Optimizing Anchor Text For Internal Links

Are you familiar with the phrases ‘click here,’ ‘check this out,’ or ‘this content shows?’ If so, you’ve probably seen them wandering around the body of particular content.

When it comes to SEO, these generic anchor texts are lousy and don’t make sense. Although they’re able to drive traffic, they also take the opportunity of creating personalized anchor text from you.

Personalized anchor texts are essential to SEO. They use relevant keywords to ensure that the content will also remain relevant in the eyes of both search engines and users.

Here are some helpful tips for creating a result-driven anchor text:

Focus on creating long-tail keywords. Your anchor text must contain at least three words to make your content specific—perfect for specific search queries.
Don’t forget to add calls to action to encourage searchers to visit your website.

Here are some examples of an SEO-optimized anchor text you can use for your internal links:

‘Click this link to discover more of our products and services
‘Click here to see the best steak recipes
‘This post shows how you can fix your gutters in five simple steps

Final Words

Search engine optimization is the most important element of a successful website. It helps boost visibility, allowing more and more people to know about your site. However, it’s not as easy as it seems. Above are the most common reasons SEO strategy fails. Use the tips provided to prevent or address them whenever necessary.