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Effective search engine optimization (SEO) should result in tangible results for your business. If you feel that your rankings and traffic are stagnant or slowly slipping, it might be time to look closely at your SEO strategy. While SEO is not an instant solution, SEO campaigns should provide sustainable growth. But the SEO landscape is constantly changing, and what worked for you before may not work indefinitely. It’s crucial for businesses to monitor and analyze their SEO performance in order to make the necessary updates.
Related: I’m an SEO Expert — Here Are 6 Content Tips to Stand Out in Any Saturated Market
How to analyze SEO performance: Tools and metrics
To determine whether your SEO strategy really is the problem, you need to gather the right data. Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console can help you track your rankings and how users are interacting with your site. Here are five significant metrics you should monitor consistently:
- Conversion rates: Conversion rates indicate whether your investment in SEO is providing measurable results for your business. If you’re receiving high organic traffic without increased conversions, there may be an issue with your landing pages.
- Keyword rankings: SEO efforts should consistently improve and maintain keyword rankings. If your rankings are slipping or staying the same, there may be issues with your content or technical errors on your site that are affecting rankings.
- Organic traffic: One of the most crucial measurements of SEO is the organic traffic coming to your website since this indicates that your rankings are successfully attracting attention. If your organic search results are decreasing, either gradually or all at once, it’s time to update your SEO efforts.
- Click-through rates: Click-through rates indicate user engagement with your site and can help you identify technical errors or poorly structured landing pages.
- User behavior: Key user behaviors include bounce rates, which pages users engage with and for how long. High bounce rates indicate that once users reach your site, they leave quickly. This may be due to poor content, user experience issues or a confusing site structure.
Common SEO mistakes to watch for and how to fix them
While it may be easy to determine that your SEO strategy is no longer generating results, it can be hard to know what to do next. Instead of starting from scratch, evaluate your website and SEO efforts for these common errors.
Not checking whether content is indexed
If your content is not being indexed by search engine crawlers, you may be wasting content strategies and keyword optimization on pages that are being held back by technical issues. You can check for crawl errors using programs like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. At Outpace SEO, we use these tools to audit our clients’ sites for technical errors that may be negatively affecting indexability.
Not optimizing for mobile devices
Mobile optimization is a huge factor in rankings and also affects another primary factor: user experience. Pages that are not easy to access on mobile devices will not result in improved leads or conversions and may be ignored by search engines.
Related: 6 SEO Tips to Help You Rank in the New Era of Quality Content
Security issues
Security issues are a key factor in search engine rankings. For example, Google alerts users if they enter a site that it considers insecure. Adding an SSL certificate to your site and regularly auditing for security issues can help you avoid this issue.
Ignoring off-page SEO
While on-page SEO is crucial, it’s a mistake for businesses to not build their off-page profile as well. High-quality backlinks signal to search engines that your business is authoritative and credible. Backlink efforts can significantly increase your SEO traffic.
Neglecting local SEO
If your business is based in a specific area, you may need to include local SEO strategies. This should involve optimizing your GBP profile and researching location-specific keywords. This may provide more effective results, as it will put your content in front of local users looking for your service.
Lack of effective content strategy
Content volume is not enough; more than ever, quality content matters. If you are still keyword stuffing or not structuring your content to lead users to a conversion point, you may be wasting key space on landing pages. Instead, it may be more effective to implement clearly structured content with headers and subheaders based on long tail keywords. Successful SEO increasingly focuses on user intent, not just keyword volume. Using long-tail keywords and evaluating what questions your target audience is asking will bring in more organic traffic from users with higher transactional intent.
3xx and 4xx errors
Redirection errors confuse both users and search engines. If users can’t find the page they’re looking for quickly, your bounce rates will be high, with lower conversions. If search engines can’t crawl your website easily, pages may not be indexed and your rankings will drop. Optimizing site structure and eliminating redirection errors will improve user experience, as well as rankings.
Related: Here’s the SEO Combination You Need to Win Google’s Algorithm
Refresh your SEO strategy
Constantly monitoring the right metrics and adapting to search engine updates is the only way to stay on top of your SEO strategy. It’s normal to notice some fluctuation in your KPIs as search engines and user behavior change. But if you’re noticing ongoing stagnation or drops in traffic and conversions, the solution may be simpler than you realize. Auditing your website and your on-page and off-page strategy for these simple errors can help you revitalize your SEO strategies.
