3 reasons your SEO isn’t working anymore (and how to fix it)

Stop us if this sounds familiar: you’ve tried everything when it comes to SEO, Googled it more times than you can count, and you’re still not getting the results you want. If this story does sound familiar, don’t worry – SEO in 2019 is a whole different animal compared to just a few years back.

Here are 3 reasons why your SEO efforts might be failing – and how to fix them.

1. You’re still doing this the old-fashioned way

Back in the early days of SEO, things were quite easy; good SEO simply meant including as many keywords as possible and optimising a few metatags. The lack of competition back then, and still-developing search engine tech, meant that these small measures could net big results. But now, keyword-stuffing and other such ‘grey hat’ SEO techniques are frowned-upon, and can even get you penalised by Google. The answer is simple: only use keywords where they’re relevant and organic – never artificially stuff them for the sake of SEO.

2. You’re not leveraging the power of content marketing

Did you know that Google has a specific algorithm which checks how long a user stays on your site before bouncing back to the search results? It’s true – and it means that if your content isn’t up to scratch, your rankings will take a hit. To combat this, it’s an excellent idea to implement a content marketing strategy. Fresh content regularly posted to your site in the form of blog posts will ensure that Google sees your site as active – but the important part is that your content appeals to your visitors and makes them want to stick around. This is also a great way to cultivate oraganic backlinks from other sites, which contribute to a boost in your SEO rankings.

3. You’re focusing too much on the search engines

A lot of SEO specialists will spend a lot of their time tweaking on-page SEO so that everything is aligned to what they think search engine bots want to see. This means endlessly adjusting titles, stuffing keywords, editing headers and sub-headers, and so on. But, in reality, the sites that now do the best in search results are those that are targeting towards the human and not the bot. Just as we discussed with content, making sure that your site design appeals to human visitors will make them more likely to stay – and Google notices this stuff.

Want to know more about SEO strategies in 2019? Get in touch with Excalibur Digital today and we’ll help you get started.