Why Your SEO Is Not Returning Expected Results?

I have been offering best SEO services for more than a decade and now running a full service digital marketing agency. Often, I meet prospective clients that complain that they have tried many good SEO companies and SEO experts, but they never got required results. This kind of experiences takes off their trust on digital marketing and SEO practices. However, a thing you all must agree on is best SEO services always give returns. If you are not getting expected returns, there is something wrong and for that all you need to do is to identify what’s wrong and resolve it. However, you shouldn’t stop doing what is necessary: SEO.

In this article, I will share the top 10 reasons that can be a major roadblock in yielding expected results from the SEO. Also, I will share the solution for the same.

1. You are constantly influencing your SEO team
SEO is easy to understand as there is a lot of material available for free online, but learning the best practices of SEO is not that easy. It comes with a hardcore experience only. Many entrepreneurs and managers understand this fact still overlook or forget it sometimes. They keep on telling their SEO experts what to do and what not to do. When you hire SEO experts, let them do their job in their way because that’s what you are paying them for. Of course, you can ask them critically what and why they are doing, but the end decision of making an SEO strategy has to be of your SEO team. If you will keep on asking them what to do and what not to do even if as a suggestion, they will be forced to follow you out of courtesy / obligation. This will not give you expected results.

Solution
Simple, hire the best SEO Company or experts and let them create an SEO plan and follow it the way they want to.

2. You are not giving enough resources
To get something you have to give something. This is true in SEO as well. To run effective SEO campaigns your SEO specialist needs many things such as, content, graphics, development side changes, etc. If you are not giving all required resources, including required marketing budget, then it is near to impossible to achieve the set milestones.

I would like to share a proverb I often share with my clients and prospects:

“You can’t reach a moon immediately if you have set budget of a subway ticket.”

Solution
You have to provide all required resources and support to your SEO company or in-house team of SEO experts, so they can execute their master plan on time and effectively.

3. You are using cheap resources
Who doesn’t like to get maximum ROI? We all love it. As a business owner, a majority of us think of risking minimum and getting maximum. This mindset leads us to hunt cheap resources. Many of you might think SEO is SEO, everyone does the same thing; just some of them are overcharging. This is wrong. Let me share an easy to understand example, shoes are shoes, but the cost and quality of Reebok and Reebook are different. This is true with SEO services as well.

Solution
You don’t need to hire the most expensive SEO expert or agency in the world for sure, but you should also understand that good SEO services have its own cost. Thus, keep a fair budget for your SEO services.

4. You are changing your target too frequently
PPC Marketing starts giving results within an hour. Also, you can change targets as frequently as you want to. However, SEO is different. It takes time to give some results. You can compare SEO and digital marketing with regular exercise. You have to exercise daily to keep your body healthy and in shape.

Read Analogy on SEO and Exercising to understand digital marketing effectively and easily.

Solution
In SEO, you need to fix a target for at least 6 to 12 months to see great results. Of course, you can add more products to target, but then you should increase resources and budget.

5. You’re highly influenced from competitors
There are some people who spend 70% or more time on competitor research. They keep on spying on them and not only spying, they enforce their SEO experts to adopt the SEO strategies followed by them. It is good to do competitor research and make a competitive SEO plan, but it is stupidity to blindly follow them. They are doing something because they have planned it in that way. You can mimic what they do publically, but you can’t mimic their success or exact strategy.

Solution
Don’t be obsessed with competitors. Let your SEO team do what is best for you.

6. You’re keeping the same budget over the years
There are many businesses that expect their SEO company / team to double the leads without increasing budget. This is almost impossible until and unless your SEO company believes in charity. Even if you’re using an in-house team, you can’t expect a single SEO manager to double the leads. Let me explain it with an analogy. One labor is pulling a cart of 20 kg; he can pull 25-28kgs at max, but without increasing some kind of help, he wouldn’t be able to pull 40 kg or more.

Solution
You should increase budget, manpower, etc. if you want to increase revenues.

7. You’re not improving the product / service with time
With time, expectation of your clients and target audiences also increases. Thus, you need to improve your products and services as well. You should increase features, functionalities, etc. to retain customers as well as attracting new customers. Also, if your customers are asking for some additional features or services, then you should invest in that direction as well.

Solution
Understand the market demand and customers’ expectations and keep improving your products and services to increase lead generation and conversion.

8. You are expecting too much
Your SEO team can only generate a certain percentage of leads based on the demand in the market. If your product is not in demand, then it is impossible to generate hundreds of leads daily. You have to align your expectations with the reality.

Solution
You can have an open discussion with your SEO team or company about your expectations and market demand. You can also ask for the possible solutions to increase lead generation.

9. Your SEO strategy is wrong
It can be possible that your SEO team or company is running in the wrong direction. I am not saying they are not experts what I am saying is they might be unconsciously following the wrong strategy. For example, if your product is absolutely unique; nobody has ever heard before and if your SEO experts are following traditional digital marketing strategy to promote your product then you wouldn’t get expected results. In this kind of scenario, the SEO campaigns have to be aligned to generate awareness first and evoke interest of people.

Solution
Give required time and resource to your team to achieve results. Have faith in them. If you don’t get any visible results for 6 to 9 months, then you should sit with them and have an open discussion. The best solution is to hire an SEO consultant and ask her to review the SEO plan.

10. You have hired the wrong people
First of all I would say everyone is right at their own place, but they might not be right for you. The SEO experts that you have hired might have achieved great results in the past, but it can be possible that they don’t have the experience or expertise of your domain or business. That’s why they are wrong for you. You can easily judge this by listening to their claims. For example, companies guarantee the top 10 rankings are fake as it is impossible to give a guarantee; assurance can be given. Someone not able to explain why they are not getting results is someone might not know what’s wrong.

Read Tips to hire a reliable SEO company

Solution
As you must have assumed the only left solution is fire them and get the best SEO company or expert.

Conclusion
These are 10 major reasons you are not getting expected results and returns. You must work on the problem to get the expected results. If you can’t understand the problem and when you are clueless, you can always hire an SEO consultant to find what’s wrong and start your journey in the digital world.

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About Author: Ashvini Vyas

Ashvini (Ash) Vyas has 10+ years of practical experience in digital marketing and international business development. She has written 100s of articles on various topics to live her passion of helping people with her knowledge and expertise. In addition to directing Digital Marketers India, Ash also delivers keynote sessions and holds key positions in some international companies as a consultant, director of operations and mentor.

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