7 Reasons SEO is Hard and How to Flip it for More Traffic

One of the boring things I hear so often is “SEO is hard” and for reasons we are about to discuss, I do not blame many who are of this school of thought.

SEO is basically everything you do to get traffic sent to your website by the search engines. It may be a serious nightmare to try to understand how these ‘digital animals’ work but is it also difficult to have them work for you?

Understanding how they work and getting them to work for you are two different things, right? We do not really have any need to worry about how they work technically. Let the code pros bother about that.

Online marketers should rather be concerned about how to get search engines to work for them - driving relevant traffic consistently increasingly. This is where our main problem lies as marketers. We have a somewhat twisted understanding, making us have the belief it’s hard.

But I think I can help you redefine your approach to SEO and step out of the crowd to start laying out principles that command Google and other search engines to work for you.

Yes. SEO is hard and here are the reasons and what you should do instead to make it easy:

1. How you started your SEO Marketing

You know that doing SEO for your online business is basically SEO Marketing. Many of those who think SEO is hard started off on the wrong foot. There are lots of free stuff out there on SEO but a huge section of it isn’t properly laid for beginners.

If you are not careful about what you read as a beginner, you may be like a toddler struggling to munch bones. Beginners should be properly introduced. The best approach is to hire a coach who walks you through to maturity.

You may also want to read stuff like this SEO for a beginners blog post I recently published on my blog. While this isn’t a bad idea, many of these ‘soft materials’ may not be the right stuff for you as a beginner.  The simple reason is that the author may not be there one-on-one to know exactly where to place you.

Recommended: How to Leverage Google Search Console for Maximum Traffic?

Proposed solution: Get a coach who should bring you back to the basics and construct a solid foundation so you don’t get bored and confused with what’s going on in the industry.

2. You are competing with the big guns

Competition is one of our biggest enemies when it comes to online marketing. It’s the main reason many believe SEO is hard.

But I have a serious problem here!

Are you obliged to compete with the well-established brands? Can’t you measure your strength and know who to face?

If you want to rank on Google page #1 for the keyword “SEO”, then brace up for a serious battle.

Proposed solution: I believe in every industry, there are still unexplored sub-markets. Carry out your research. Dig deeper to find the less competitive niches and build an authority presence within.

3. You want to please search engines

Writing for search engines is the worst approach ever. I’m shocked we still have some so-called SEO tutorials and courses teaching and misleading their subscribers to optimize for SEO.

Like seriously?

Because SEO means Search Engine Optimization does not mean we should optimize for the search spiders.

This is an old school approach. In those days, you were required to sprinkle keywords in your content so that Search engines would count the frequency and measure the value and relevance of your article. This is exactly how it was - optimizing for the engines.

Doing this will not work. The search engines of those days are dead.  Today, we have a completely revamped industry. Our Google of today doesn’t really care about keyword positioning and frequency anymore.

So what’s the new approach? What’s it all about?

Searchers’ satisfaction: 

Search engines today are looking for marketers who understand keyword intent.  This is actually being able to read the intention of a search action - What is the searcher actually looking for? Is what you published the exact thing the searcher is looking for?

You may have those keywords dropped all over your content (Writing for a search engine) but the searcher stumbles on it and clicks away in less than one second.

There you fail and Google is smart to know your work didn’t satisfy the searcher. That’s a red flag.

From writing to please Search Engines to writing to satisfy your readers.

What you should understand here is Google doesn’t care about your content in the first place. She cares about her users - searchers first. That’s why massive amount of content is being lowered away from search result pages.

If user behavior proves to Google that your content isn’t worth their attention, Google will gradually relegate your entry.

That’s why your website has to be built around satisfying and keeping your readers comfortable:

• Should load very fast
• Articles should be properly introduced and in-depth with semantic relevance.
• The overall design should be welcoming etc

4. You are addicted to free stuff

Each time I approach something that’s free online, the first thing that comes to my mind is ‘Average results’

People are stock to free stuff here and there yet they want million-dollar results.

Don’t be deceived. The free tools and free resources you rely on will not allow you to maximize your energy for excellent results. If all you have are free SEO tools, I understand why SEO is hard for you. 

Proposed solution: Upgrade to paid tools or versions

The real power and voice of any SEO tool are in the paid edition. Except you are comfortable with the average result, but if you want to have a leadership position in your industry, buy the premium versions of any tool you have and use it to its fullness. 

5. You focus only on Google 

There is no doubt Google is the giant and master in the search engine industry. According to this article on Businessinsider.com, Google in 2018 retained more than 90% of the market share.

But there is still a portion that’s mastered by other search engines including Yahoo and Bing. That means completely relying on Google may be problematic. 

Proposed solution: Create content and optimize for searchers coming from other search engines.

6. You are not current

In the SEO industry, change is constant!

This is important to know as it weighs heavily on our campaigns and these changes take place at various levels:

• Search engines change their ranking algorithms. 
• The topics you post about become outdated and irrelevant.
• Some plugins on your need update
• Some backlinks you built in the past have become broken or nofollow etc

You see all these changes affect your SEO exposure and may provoke an unprecedented nosedive of your traffic.

Proposed solution: Be awake and keep an eye on changes in the market and at the level of your SEO campaigns.

7. You are dabbling 

Driving natural traffic needs some mature level of concentration. However, if you are doing casual or passive SEO for your online business, you should expect corresponding results.

Proposed solution: Put in more time for your SEO or outsource it for more attention to generate required results

Conclusion:

Anything that’s hard is because we lack some understanding of how to handle it. If you give yourself to some studies and understand how to make search engines work for you, you will understand SEO isn’t hard.

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