Reasons Why Most SEO Campaigns Fail To Deliver Results

Most of the SEO campaigns lose sight and crumble just because they are aligned with unrealistic expectations, budget constraints and strategic ambiguities. Being an individual I usually explore a search engine when I want to compare the price of latest cell phone or look forward to get an information important to me. Decisions taken on assumptions and misinterpretation of customer needs also lead to campaign death. The post explains Why Most SEO Campaigns Fail to deliver sometimes.

In a number of seminars on Internet Marketing and SEO I have already stated that if SEO is done without prior strategies, you won't get the results you are expecting. There are a good number of newbie webmasters who miss the basic points of web usability and user experience in the race of competition and lose their business even at the beginning. Expounded below are some of the very basic and pertinent points that webmasters fail to address during the website promotion.

Why Most SEO Campaigns Fail To Deliver Results?

You may say it's my habit but in recent years it has become a reality the millions of users across the globe. The growing relevance of search engines has pushed the need for effective search engine optimization strategies to turn the websites more visible and user friendly.

Decisions taken on assumptions and misinterpretation of customer needs also lead to campaign death. Whether you hire an SEO Firm to lead your campaign or manage it your self, there are ways to determine if a campaign is on the right track.

1. Started with Unrealistic Goals

Success is a time taking process and takes time realize into the goals. It's crucial to trigger a campaign around some realistic aspirations. Realistic objectives always lead into the right directions. If you're running an e-commerce portal ranges in hundred of products, desiring top rankings for all the products at one go is something daunting. Rather expecting top ranking for everything you offer, optimize your portal for one product / service. Once you successfully achieve ranking for that product move onto the next product or service.

2. Didn't Set Time & Budget

Be ready for the major setbacks if you kicked off your campaign without setting its budget and time frame. Most of the business owners want results immediately without pouring enough budget into it. An SEO professional would be the right person with whom you can discuss budget an time frame for your campaign. If you're doing business in a relatively competitive industry, you need to invest more money and set extended time frame to taste success. SEO professionals need necessary time to test and make adjustments needed for a successful long-term SEO campaign.

3. Optimized Campaign for Wrong Keywords

Most of the campings fail to take off as they are optimized using wrong or irrelevant keywords. If you're running your campaign by your own, research your target keywords carefully. Get help from some good and tested keyword research tools to find the best keywords suitable for your campaign. You may also visit your competitors website to explore their keywords that are ranking well in the search engines.

4. Targeted the Wrong Audience

Failing to target right keywords leads to traffic influx that doesn't serve your purpose. It might be in form of no traffic or not the right traffic you're looking for. If your website's bounce rate for organic traffic is high, it suggests what they're searching for is not consistent with what they're finding there. Use Google analytics tool sort the bounce rate for organic visitors from other visitor types such as direct visits and referral visits, etc. If the bounce rate is more than normal, this means you may have a larger issue to address.

5. Website was Outdated

Most businesses measure campaign's success with the conversion they achieve through their websites. Ideally, a professional website engages visitors on their arrival and crucial to a campaign's success. A dull and badly designed website discredits your brand and reduces engagement and conversions.

Promoting a website using SEO strategies isn't everything but offering users a website worth visiting is also important. I feel amused when I find that several webmasters still have a notion that user experience doesn't matter if a website enjoys a good ranking in search engines. Even Google sent a clear message with a Panda update that a website with a poor user experience will be subject to severe penalty in term of ranking. So, it is better to test your user interface by taking reviews from the end users and ask them the most stipulated points they love to see on your website.

6. Content Was Stale and Unengaging

The website content isn't merely an element to be typed and pasted over. A good content delivers value and bind customers. Writing only to appeal search engines is just a waste of time and resource. Content that fails to answer prospective customers' questions results in lack of conversions. It's important to put in place a strong content that answers questions and addresses your customers' issues. Your readers will appreciate this and will become your paying customers.
Every website is developed across a motive offer a set of precise and value-load information to the users who visit there. In a crowd where millions of the websites are contending to get a smooth winning edge, content has become the most prominent entity ever.

Search engines have started scrutinizing and evaluating the web pages on the basis of content relevancy posted on the website. Nowadays search algorithms are evaluating a page on its efficiency to solve a particular problem. If a page doesn't accomplish the user's motives, it is useless. When you develop a content page, identify the problem areas and then illustrate the solution in an order. Make sure that it solves that problem in the way a user wants.

7. Slow Loading Web Pages

I may have an internet connection with 2MBPS speed but my neighbor next door is not as lucky as I am. Slow website loading time is a big time turn-offer the users. Although a website contains vital information, a user leaves it instantly if taking time in loading. To escape the inconvenience, you must avoid designing the user interfaces using Flash, heavy images and animations. In case of mobile website where internet connection speed is much slower, this mistake may cost you direly. I am not suggesting you to say adieu to multimedia but if it is there it shouldn't abate the load time.

8. Targeted Search Engines and Not Users

When I post a page on my website, I equip with it a Title, Description, Keywords, Snippet and Headers etc. All these exertions are meant to make the page search engine friendly and keyword rich. But the Google has now changed its mindset completely.

Spam keywords and anchor text to increase the frequency of the articles in the search results is now a bad tactic. I won't say it is taking its last breath but definitely Google is taking strong objection to this practice. Google will only be convinced if it finds that users revisit your page for their own purposes. This scenario establishes that your content piece is effective enough to captivate the users and not deliberately written to appease the search engines.

9. Didn’t Utilize Social Media

I am not talking about Google alone but almost every search engine has changed its algorithm with social media as a crucial part. These signals are gradually becoming the symbol of trust. It again requires the placement of the fantastic and fascinating content on the web pages so that users and readers may share and interact with it using social sharing buttons.

10. Hired a Wrong Agency

Another major miscalculation I usually see with an SEO campaign that most of these are carried out by an inexperienced SEO agency. While hiring an SEO Company, establish that the very firm has a perfect contingency plan in case they fail to deliver results.

Check whether the firm is like any other agency or has a business USP for the client. Ask its business credentials, experience in the domain and testimonials from the existing customers. My articulation here is that search optimization is a diligently changing vertical and only a forward-thinking agency can deliver you the results that you expect from the campaign.

Govind Singh

is head of search marketing division Brainpulse. He covers core search marketing topics that matter the most for online businesses. With over 10 years of his experience in the vertical, he successfully manages marketing strategies for clients.