Why is the number of organic visitors not going up?

Quite often when a business first starts up here in Cardiff they will have a bash at doing the SEO themselves.

After all, most start-ups want to keep costs down so this makes sense right?. Yet, what a lot of businesses quickly find is that they are working long hours to improve the websites SEO, yet all this effort does not seem to paying off.

That’s to say after countless cups of coffee, long nights plugging away at trying to improve the businesses seo, they sometimes find that Google Analytics still doesn’t show much improvement in terms of organic visitor numbers.

So this is when some businesses think well, search engine optimisation is not for them, when often if the work is done right, and by right we mean white hat and following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, then SEO can help a business, sometimes becoming the company’s sole of form of advertising the business here in Cardiff.

So why wouldn’t a business’s organic visitor numbers be improving?

That’s of course if the business was investing a lot of time into improving its organic SEO?

Well, there could be a number of reasons, but our SEO experts have come up with the following points to try and help you to figure out how to improve your businesses organic seo.

Yet, before we go any further in advising how a business may go about improving their SEO, its important to remember that all work should be “white hat”- and what do we mean by that?

Well, the work must be of a good quality-if its not, then the business could incur an algorithmic or manual penalty. You’ve probably already heard about Google Panda and Google Penguin penalties, well you most definitely do not want your business to incur such a penalty.

But also, the work must adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, if your business does not, lets say a business tries to cut corners by building low-quality backlinks, then the business is likely to be hit by a penalty.

A penalty can come in one of two forms, that’s an algorithmic penalty or a manual penalty.

An example of an algorithmic penalty would be a Google Penguin penalty- many businesses will have received a Google Penguin penalty- this is often for building low-quality backlinks, so we would strongly advise that all work is white hat.

And if you’re in a bit of a rush, so you just want a bullet pointed list of the things you should improve in order to improve your company’s SEO here in Cardiff, here’s a list of some of things you should improve in a white hat way:

·        Content marketing

·        Link building

·        Meta titles, meta descriptions

·        Alt tags

·        Improve the design of your website

·        Reduce the company’s bounce rate

·        Remove duplicated text

Okay, so there just some really quick recommendations of how businesses could improve their seo, however there’s often a lot of work that’s needed every month, so we will now explain in more detail some of the areas that we improve when we work for our clients here in Cardiff, South Wales.

Is your website what us SEO’s call “content thin”?

So many businesses tell their website design business that they want a “minimalistic website”.

That’s to say they don’t want a website that has loads of text, they want the web designer to design a simpler website. A website that uses a lot of white space for example.

Yet this could cause problems to the business’s SEO if the website is overly simplistic. So, let’s say your business is a furniture business, and you sell handcrafted tables and chairs mostly.

Okay, so your website has loads of pictures of the chairs and tables, and then just a brief sentence which states the name of the table and chairs such as “industrial looking table, made from reclaimed scaffolding boards” and then the website just mentions a price.

Well, that may look good in terms of keeping that page uncluttered, but it doesn’t really help the businesses SEO.

Googlebot which is what is used to index each page, that’s by crawling and indexing your company’s website will need to read some text, as otherwise how will it know that the page is about table and chairs?

So Googlebot is used to crawl and index the page, if the page is what SEO’s refer to as being “content thin”, which is often the case with a minimalist style website, then Googlebot may know what the page is about.

For example, a line of text to describe a product, then a picture of the product and a price is not much to go off.

Instead we would recommend the following:

·        A full product description as wordy as possible

·        Real customer reviews

·        Product specification

·        No duplicated text

As any good Cardiff seo company will tell you, a content thin page can mean it becomes very hard work in terms of improving the websites seo. Simply put Googlebot will have nothing to read, so a competitor’s business which offers much better information, more detail in terms of the products that the company sells, well that businesses SEO is likely to be a lot stronger.

So instead work needs to be done to improve the products description, and to also add onsite seo, so to add meta titles, meta descriptions, alt tags and internal links.

Here’s how we would improve the onsite seo for some businesses:

·        Add white hat content marketing

·        Add meta title

·        Add meta description

·        Make sure all work is white hat

·        Add alt tags

·        Add anchor text

·        Add blog posts

·        Redesign poorly designed websites, such as a one-page website

And your white hat seo agency should recommend ways that all product pages could be improved. If this is done right- and what we mean by right is using white hat methods, then your businesses organic seo could be improved.

You should then use a good SEO tool, such as Ahrefs or Google Analytics and Google Search Console, this is to track if your businesses organic seo is improving.

Backlinks

Ask any seo consultant that’s worth their salt what they think one of the most important parts of the SEO process is, and they are bound to say backlinks. That’s to say when various agencies are asked what is considered one of the most important ranking factors, backlinks are often considered as the most important ranking factor.

Then some agencies will say the second most important is the quality of the content marketing, and then the third most important some agencies will say is Google’s “RankBrain”- which uses AI.

Yet with that said, this is also where so many businesses start to build backlinks incorrectly. That’s to say the business may hire a really rubbish seo agency, that may build the wrong backlinks, and then the business may get a penalty. So make sure you hire the right marketing agency here in Cardiff, South Wales.

The problem with low-quality backlinks

If Googlebot spots that your business has low-quality backlinks, and the algorithm spots that the links are low-quality the business could incur an algorithmic penalty, which when it comes to backlinks will often result in a Google Penguin penalty.

Also the business may incur a manual penalty, as any good SEO consultant will tell you, if a business does incur a penalty, then this can mean that the business will see its rankings drop, so for example the business may move from page 1 to say page 10 of Google’s results.

Also because the business has had a penalty placed on the website, it may take a business a very long time to recover from the penalty. Often a specialist agency is needed, that’s to fix the problems with the company’s SEO.

This is why its crucial that whichever Cardiff SEO agency that you do choose, that you choose a business which builds links in the following way:

·        White hat

·        Follows Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

·        Must only build only quality backlinks

So, it’s absolutely crucial that all backlinks are built in a white hat way.

If you are in any doubt as to how to build backlinks in a white hat way, then, we would most definitely recommend that you speak to a respected seo agency- like us!

As most SEO consultants will tell you, there’s over 200 ranking signals which Google’s algorithm will take into account, that’s when working out how strong the company’s SEO is.

Although there are over 200 ranking signals, backlinks are still widely considered to be one of the most important.

This means if you run a business here in Cardiff, and your company website has a lot of really good quality backlinks that are built in a white hat way, then this is likely to significantly improve your company’s SEO.

However, signals such as let’s say a meta descriptions are considered by some to be much less important.

Penalty

Okay so we don’t want to alarm you too much! Yet as earlier mentioned in this article, if you’ve hired an seo company that doesn’t use white hat methods, well your website could incur a penalty.

Also, if you run a business, and you’ve decided to complete the work inhouse, then you have to make sure every aspect of the work is white hat.

A common mistake that a lot of businesses make here in Cardiff is to think that the business that is ranked at the top of Google can have their SEO replicated, for example if they have 2000 backlinks that is the number that the competing business should aim for.

However, it all boils down to one thing, and that is quality, the business may accrue 2000 backlinks,  

So, for example, if the seo company uses duplicated work, so let’s say they have copied product descriptions directly from the manufactures website, well this could trigger a penalty.

Such a penalty would be a Google Panda penalty, and this may well be the reason that the businesses number of organic visitors has dropped.

So, if the number of organic visitors has dropped all of sudden, well you do have to think about whether or not your website may have obtained a penalty.

Blog posts

A vast number of businesses add blog posts to their website to help attract more organic visitors.

Now to some business owners the idea of giving away information for free may seem like a waste of time, however it is often not.

And here’s why- let’s say you run a dental practice, and your dental practice has traditionally just focused on looking after the teeth of NHS patients, yet now you would like your dental practice to branch out into cosmetic dentistry.

So your website designer add some new pages to your website, one for teeth whitening and one for teeth straightening.

But you notice that you are not getting any calls for these new services, so you ask an seo agency for help.

Now an seo company may recommend adding blog posts about teeth whitening and teeth straightening to your website.

For example, there is likely to be common questions that people will have about teeth whitening for instance, so if you answer these questions via the use of blog posts, well, you are likely to be helping to increase the number of organic visitors that your business can get.

Can we help?

If your business would like more help to improve your organic seo, well why not call us?