10 Reasons Your Business Website Rankings Have Become Stagnant and How To Get Them Moving Again!

The brick-and-mortar model of business is slowly fading to give room to digital giants that offer increased convenience to buyers. Having an online presence is no longer a luxury but a necessity. With so many competitors vying for the customers’ attention, placing high on search engine rankings is a prerequisite to success. Even for businesses at the very top, attaining stability is near-impossible without sound knowledge of best SEO services and practices.

A significant drop in web traffic and organic search rankings results in decreased revenue. In this post, we’ll go over 10 reasons why your business website rankings have become stagnant and how to get them moving again!

Offering Poor User Experience (UX)

The science behind SEO is complex and involves more than just inbound links and onsite tricks. Google heavily rewards websites that garner the most public attention and revisits. If your rankings are stagnant despite your best efforts, the issue might be related to poor user experience.

One way of gauging this is by determining the user dwell time. If the average customer spends 5 minutes on the website, Google will rank it higher than a competitor with an average dwell time of 10-20 seconds. Improve the UX by increasing the website load speed. Retail giants such as Amazon lose out on $1.6 billion for every extra second it takes to load!

Overly Focused on Keywords

There used to be a time when you could use specific long-tail keywords to rank high in no time even against big brands. In 2019, however, that strategy is sure to set you back even if customers end up searching for the same keywords.

That’s because Google’s gotten a lot smarter and pushed up websites that produce quality, up-to-date content while building strong bonds with their customers.

Not Understanding the Target Audience

You could employ the most effective SEO strategies, but without a solid understanding of your target audience, attaining better results in SERPs just isn’t going to happen. Knowing your ideal customers is necessary for selecting the right keywords and SEO techniques required to bring about the desired results.

Not Using Social Media

As time goes by, Google’s ranking algorithms are placing increasing importance on relative user authority and social media shares. Even if you put Google aside, according to Statista, Bing controls around 24% of all search traffic and lists social media as a direct ranking factor.

Ignoring Goal and Analytics Tracking

Goal and analytics tracking capabilities provide website owners with a wealth of information that helps them determine the effectiveness of their strategies. Not leveraging website analytics is similar to shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the target.

Begin by setting up Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Once that is done, start tracking elements such as the bounce rate, page views, value per visit, exit pages, lead generation costs, sources of incoming traffic, and interactions per visit in Google Analytics.

Featuring Low-Quality Guest Posts

Another proven method of increasing Google rankings is by featuring guest posts on your website that are relevant, useful, and original. If the posts do not meet the set criteria, it’s best not to publish at all. Routinely publishing new content is an established SEO practice but is never worth featuring sub-par content on your website in exchange for links. This is why good organic link building services focus on quality more than quantity.

You can also read: How Stories and Images can help boost your site SEO

Not Paying Attention to Lost Links

Lost links are another reason for hampering SEO efforts. Websites like COGNITIVESEO offer a free backlink checker that provides real-time information. If you notice a large number of lost links, you’ll need to go deeper and into the specifics and ask questions such as:

• Are the lost links found on the page that’s experiencing reduced rankings?
• Is there a decrease in inbound links to the pages with decreased rankings?
• Does the link drop happen on every page?

If the inbound links are found to be lost or broken, you’ll need to find out why and must then choose to replace, retain, or remove them altogether.

Related content: SEO strategy

Using Outdated SEO Tactics

Google keeps changing and updating its algorithm. According to MOZ, it carries out an average of 9 updates per day and 3,234 each year. So, if you feel like your SEO tactics aren’t working like they used to, it might be because they’re outdated.

For instance, constantly pushing out low-quality blogs and articles simply doesn’t work anymore. If you’re unable to address your clients’ concerns, don’t expect to see your name high in the SERPs. Another outdated strategy is to stuff your content with the same keyword by mentioning it repeatedly. Not only does this ruin originality, but Google might even penalize you for it.

Finally, it’s important to understand that links can’t simply be bought. They must come from an authoritative source.

Choosing a Bad Hosting Provider

Choosing or switching to an incompetent hosting company that doesn’t offer ideal data location centers increases page loading times. This leads the search engine to rank a competitor higher than your website even if you’re offering superior content. To ensure that your visitors have a fast experience, choose a hosting company that’s located near your customers.

This may require you to spend extra money but it’s worth it especially if your search engine rankings are on the line.

Not Having Enough Patience

Most people expect SEO practices to produce results overnight. You could work tirelessly to improve your ranking for weeks or even months without seeing significant change. There’s no way to determine when your SEO activities will pay off. Just stick to the best practices because you’ll see the results sooner or later.

Author Bio: Joseph Dyson is a digital marketing and small business SEO expert at Search Berg, an award-winning digital marketing firm that provides SEO services and organic link building services. He specializes in on-page SEO, link building and small business digital marketing solutions.

You may also read:

• Keyword Research Reimagined: Using Reddit, Wikipedia, Seed Keywords, and Creating Your Own for SEO Success
• How factors for UX affects SEO
• 7 Easy Ways to gather Backlinks and Improve Your SEO
• Understanding SEO as a Blogger