3 Signs Your SEO Isn't Working Even if You Think it is

I recently did something interesting. I asked my webinar attendees: What's your comfort level with SEO today?

• 3% said: I'm pretty sure I've got it figured out and it's working.
• 97% said they were either brand new or were trying to do it on their own and weren’t sure if it was done right.

I was curious about the 3% who were confident they had figured it out and that it was working. It wasn’t that I thought they were wrong; I was truly, genuinely curious. I reviewed the list of names that said they were doing great and visited a few of their websites. 

So I looked at their websites to see if they were doing SEO right, were there mistakes that could potentially hold them back? I was genuinely curious, even though it was a very small number of people who said they thought SEO was working well for them, I was curious to see if it really was done right. 

Were they actually doing SEO right? 

Of the 10 sites I reviewed, only one had everything in place and was executing SEO correctly, following all best practices. One out of 10 had it all correct. The other nine were sure that it was good, but when I looked at their sites, I immediately spotted issues, normally right on the homepage. 

This means that while SEO is probably working for them, it could work better if they understood the mistakes they'd made and fixed them. 

 

What type of SEO mistakes were they making?

One site had 3 H1 tags on the homepage. You’re only supposed to have one H1 tag. It tells Google what the main theme of the page is and is an important SEO element. However, header tags can also be used by designers to create different-sized text on a page. While using the same header tag can be good from a design perspective, it’s bad from an SEO perspective. Using more than one H1 tag on a page will confuse Google. Google looks at the header tags to understand what the page is about. You want to use your keywords in them. If your header tags are random or don’t include keywords, you’re limiting your SEO effectiveness.

 

Another site had a meta description that was 368 characters. The rule for SEO is to keep it under 160 so that it doesn’t truncate in the search results. While this might not actually be super damaging from an SEO perspective, it’s a miss from a click-through standpoint because their message isn’t displaying the most important information in the search results due to the length.

Another site wasn’t using the same keyword in the title tag as the other SEO elements. We want to use the same keyword in all SEO elements so that Google knows what the page is about.

One of the sites hadn’t had a new blog post added to it in three years. This is an issue, especially with AI-based search, because they want new content that’s helpful, relevant, and updated/refreshed at least once a year. Not creating any content for three years tells the search indexes that this site isn’t updated regularly anymore and thus might not be relevant. 

 

While they were only 3% of the people attending the free training classes, what’s sad is that they all thought their SEO was working well, and yet, they were making mistakes that I spotted within a minute when looking at their sites.

 

Why does learning SEO on your own sometimes cost you money?

This is the challenge with DIY SEO. You are doing the work, you’re seeing some results, so you think it’s working, and you don’t know that you’re limiting your potential reach because you don’t know that you’ve made mistakes.

 

Mistakes like this can be the difference between being on Page 1 and being at the top of Page 1 in the search results. And that difference of being at the top of the page can mean a lot more traffic, leads, and sales for your business.

 

I have a student who was trying to do SEO on her own (technically, I have a lot of them, but I’m only talking about one right now). She was getting results, she thought things were working pretty well, but she wasn’t sure, so she joined me in Simple SEO Content to figure out what was right, what was wrong, and how to make it work even better.

 

She had a few things wrong, including some of her keyword strategy (as most people who’ve done SEO on their own do). She found a new keyword she didn’t even know to use and added that to her site, and it made a huge difference for her business.

 

She wasn’t ranking for that word at all when she added that keyword to her homepage. She moved to Page 2 within the first week. Over the next six months, she moved to Page 1 and then ultimately into position #1 on Page 1 for a keyword that has over 4,000 searches a month, which is tied directly to her private coaching offer and has driven over $150,000 in revenue in the year that it was working its way up the page.

 

If she hadn’t taken Simple SEO Content, she wouldn’t have known to use that keyword, and her business wouldn’t have grown by $150,000 in revenue that year. That’s a lot of money potentially lost because of trying to save money by doing it on your own. That’s why I always recommend joining Simple SEO Content or working with me 1:1 so you can have help and guidance to make sure you’re doing your SEO the right way so you don’t miss out on opportunities like that which might exist for your business.

 

 

How to tell if your SEO isn’t working

You’re creating content, but getting no traffic 

 

If you’ve been creating content on a regular basis and you’re not getting traffic to it, it’s possible that your SEO isn’t working. When you create content that your ideal customer is searching for, choose keywords that your website has a really good chance of ranking for, and use them in the right places, you should get at least some traffic to that page.

It takes a while for SEO to work, so don’t expect instant results, but if you’ve created content for 6-12 months and you’re not seeing any organic traffic or your keyword rankings aren’t increasing, there’s likely an issue.

 

You rank for your business name and nothing else

When you Google yourself or your business name or even ask ChatGPT or another AI search engine about your business, you’ll likely show up in the search results. But, do you show up for keywords or phrases other than your business name?

 

If you are only able to be found when people search for your business name, you limit yourself to working with the people who already know you.

 

When you do SEO and start to rank for keywords that are related to your business, but aren’t your actual name, you start to expand your reach and be found by new people. This is the key to growing your online footprint, leads, and sales.

 

Finding the right keywords can be very challenging, but it’s also the most important part of doing SEO and having the right strategy. It’s the area where I see most people make mistakes.

 

 

You’re getting traffic but no leads

If you’re getting traffic but it’s not turning into leads, then something is broken. You want to look at your total SEO or organic traffic and see from there how many people became leads or paying customers.

Did your website visitors

• Download your opt-in or freebie?
• Book a consult call?
• Sent a contact form?
• Made a purchase?

If no one is doing these things, there’s a breakdown between your traffic and the content on your site. It’s possible that you’ve targeted the wrong keywords or it could be that you’re getting traffic to pages that aren’t going to help your business grow.

 

I saw this with a client’s website a few years ago. She was getting great traffic, but it wasn’t converting into revenue for her business, and she was confused. I did a review of the site and identified the pages that were driving traffic, and knew immediately what the issue was. She was ranking for keywords that weren’t going to drive leads or revenue for her business. The pages that would drive leads and revenue weren’t ranking. While she was getting traffic, it wasn’t going to turn into anything for her business. I see this a lot when someone says they get traffic, but they aren’t getting leads. It’s generally a combination of both content and SEO strategy issues that need to be cleaned up. The good news is that a site that’s getting traffic but not generating leads can generally get traffic and generate leads once we clean up the mistakes and get it ranking for the right keywords. Google already knows the site and likes it because it’s ranking high for other keywords.

 

Why do people think their SEO is working when it’s not?

Many people who are trying to learn SEO on their own don’t really know how to determine if what they’re doing is working or not. They haven’t learned how to track results. So, when they see signs of success, they’re excited (and they should be!) because it seems like their work is paying off.

 

If they are looking at analytics and start to see more SEO traffic coming in, they think, I’ve figured it out! But what they don’t realize is that getting traffic is only part of the equation. We need to make sure we’re getting the right people to the site. The right pages getting traffic are more important than just getting traffic.

 

The other thing people don’t always realize is that SEO isn’t a do it once, set it and forget it strategy. It’s something we should be doing on an ongoing basis. You want to refresh your content and make updates at least once a year. You don’t necessarily have to change out keywords or optimization, but it’s important to make sure your content is still relevant and is current. If things have changed in your industry since you last wrote a blog post, it’s time to refresh it and make sure any outdated information is removed and replaced with current information.

How to know if your SEO is working

If your SEO is working, you’ll get traffic to multiple pages on your website, not just your homepage, and that traffic will turn into leads and customers because you’re getting the right people to your site. If you’re tired of trying to do SEO on your own and want to learn how to do it the right way so that you know it’s working, join me in Simple SEO Content. I’ll help guide you.