Search Engine Optimisation is a big part of marketing strategies these days, but it can feel like you are throwing your money away, so I thought I’d outline some of the reasons your SEO might not be giving the results you want.
No one actually searches on Google for what you do
Although ‘Googling’ is a very popular way to find products and services these days not every business is going to find their customers trawling through search engines for them. This is especially true of some ‘consultancy’ type businesses, particularly when you are servicing a local area. These clients are much more likely to come by referral and you are better off investing your marketing budget in referral marketing than SEO.
You are optimising the wrong keywords
This is something I often come across when talking to new clients about their existing SEO. Do you know exactly the keywords your SEO efforts are optimising? And do you know how many people search for those keywords each month? If you don’t you may very well be spending money optimising keywords no one is searching for. Even relatively small changes can make a real difference. A recent search I did for a clients turned up that ‘antenatal class bournemouth’ has 10 searches per month, but ‘antenatal classes bournemouth’ has 100 searches! That’s a big different in potential clients all for adding ‘es’
You haven’t got your meta data right
So you have done your research and you know people are definitely search for what you do and you know the exact words they are searching for, but did that information get accurately translated into your website content. It is essential that your keywords appear in your website content – both the front end stuff that real people read and also the meta data that search engines read….if you don’t get this right you won’t be appearing.
Your website isn’t converting visitors into customers
Unfortunately being ranked in search engines is not the end of the SEO journey, now your website has to be good enough to actually convince these hard earned visitors into people who actually want to buy from you. There are a large number of factors to consider here, but the two most important are
- Does your website give them all the information they need
- Is it your website clear and easy to use
You aren’t spending enough to beat the competition
This one is a bit of a shame, because it may be that people DO search for what you do, but there is already huge competition out there spending a fortune on SEO and you just don’t have the budget to compete. Once again this is something you can find out right at the start when you do the all important keyword research and if you don’t have the budget to compete then find another marketing method that you can afford.
Of course it could be a combination of all of these factors. If you’d like some bespoke feedback and advice on your SEO contact me for a chat.