Owning and managing a business these days has been quite different if you compare it to a few decades ago. Though a lot of methodologies remain the same, many strategies and techniques have been introduced over the years especially with the involvement of technology.
The way you promote your brand may not be exactly the same as how you would do it a few years or even decades ago. Technology has dramatically changed the promotional landscape and gave new innovative ways that are smarter, more creative, and even faster in sending out your brand’s message to your target audience and niche market.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the leading strategies in digital marketing that can be effective in promoting your brand online and strategically placing you on top of search engine results. SEO allows your website to crawl to results when a customer places an inquiry or do searches. But if you have been doing SEO for a while now and you fail to see positive results, then maybe there is a loophole in your strategy. You can always revisit your tactic to identify your weakness and eventually turn it into your strengths.
So, how can you identify your SEO weaknesses? Here are some ways to determine where you need to strengthen your SEO strategies.
How To Identify Your Weaknesses in SEO
- Check on your internal and externals links
Your links in SEO namely internal and external links are two of the most strong aspect in your SEO campaign. When used properly, it ultimately helps in improving your visibility and make your rank in search engines higher.
Aside from understanding the difference between the two links, where internal links are hyperlinks that direct readers to a specific page on your website while external links are links that direct readers on a different website, it important that your links will work for your advantage. Check if your links are directing your customers away from your site instead of being beneficial in your end. Links that you use especially externals should be from the trustworthy site and not perceived as spam-like websites as it may also affect your reputation and how you will be perceived by your audience.
Check your pages that have more outgoing links instead of incoming links. Trim your external links and make sure that you put important pages for your internal link that can help in your crawl.
- Identify “Thin” Contents
The way you create content for your SEO can determine how your effective and successful your strategy will be. Thus, it is safe to say that content and SEO makes up a very good relationship to elevate your search engine rankings. Content is all about value. It should be able to contain lots of rich information that have relevant keywords.
However, a number of companies, marketers, and business owners experience draught in their SEO campaign because of well. Why? Because their content has no value and considered thin.
Thin contents are contents that are duplicate or perceived to be duplicate, copy-pasted materials from another website, with little re-arrangement or rewriting, invaluable link pages, and auto-generated content. Google’s algorithms can determine if your using thin content and could penalize you. More than that, your users can also determine if you are having thin content.
Having thin content on your website will hinder you to meet your objectives and will lower down your engagement with your visitors and potential clients. You will not get hold of your visitors on your site and you will not convince them to make any action. Not only your website traffic and engagement will fall flat but your marketing objectives as well.
- Visit your Click Depth
While having links on your website is considered one of the best strategies in your SEO tactics, you must constantly check your click depth or how many clicks a visitor has to make before reaching a homepage. If your reader or user has to take many clicks before reaching a certain page you want them to reach or bringing them to a homepage may be taking forever, your page is having a too high click-depth.
It is also noteworthy to know that Google takes note of sites that have a high page depth and does not allow it to craw in its search engine. When this happens, your page will not be able to rank or gain traffic. So you must always check your site for the depth of your clicks as it affects the organic traffic of your site.
How to check for your click depth? You can utilize different click depth checking tools on the market these days that will allow you to check the average depth of your page. In this way, you will know which of your contents needs to trim down with links.
- Spy on Your Competitor
Whether you believe it or not but your competitor can be your biggest ally when it comes to improving your brand, different marketing campaign and of course your SEO strategies.
Though, it is not good to directly copy what your competitor has been doing or to steal your competitors’ ideas, plan, or methods, you can always leverage on them to asses if you have been doing the right thing or if your SEO needs improvement.
Determine if you are falling behind the competition or if you have been stuck in the competitive pit. Check on what areas your competitors are sailing and what areas you have been struggling with. It is important as well to know what your competitors can do better than you and what makes them stronger than you. Competitor analysis tools are readily available these days which can help you create a comprehensive analysis.
Having these pieces of information can help you be on your toes and level up your game. It prevents complacency which forces you to do better in your campaigns and encourages you to innovate your practices.
Final Thoughts
Your website acts as your online ambassador. With the help of your SEO campaign strategies it can reach its maximum potential and help you achieve your marketing objectives. However, it is more than just a having a functioning website, creating content, publishing articles, or using keywords to rank high in search engines. It would require your time and effort to constantly check if you are doing the right thing in your campaign. Looking for weaknesses in your SEO helps you troubleshoot the loopholes and turn it into your strength.