SEO Can Fail. Here's Proof:

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Time for serious SEO myth-busting, savvy folks!

Just because others succeed with their SEO doesn’t mean you will, too.

Why?

SEO can 100%  fail–and when it does, it can be:

❗️Costly

❗️Time-consuming

❗️Damaging to your brand

Yikes! Not the kind of results you want.

Why Not All SEO Works

The assumption that any SEO is good SEO stems from: 

• A lack of understanding of what effective SEO entails

• Wanting results now

Neither of these works because good SEO:

• Is comprehensive: It touches every aspect of your online presence and requires expertise in all four pillars of SEO.

👉🏻 Unfamiliar with the four pillars of SEO? I tackle those and more in my SEO course, The SEO System. Learn the exact SEO system I used to go from zero to $12M in ARR.

• Takes time: SEO is a long-term strategy that establishes credibility and authority. It’s not a quick fix.

• Prioritizes quality over quantity: Volume without meaningful impact doesn’t contribute to your goals. It can even harm your reputation.

Wonder what poor SEO looks like? Let me show you…

Top 5 Ways SEO Can Fail

And how you can avoid each so your SEO can succeed.

1. Ranking for Irrelevant Keywords

Picture this: You’re ranking for hundreds of keywords, but none of your traffic is converting 🤦🏻‍♂️

Why is this happening?

• You’re targeting the wrong keywords: This means you’re also reaching the wrong audience. You’re out there, but the market that matters doesn’t notice.

• You’re focusing on volume instead of search intent: You don’t understand your audience and buyer journey well enough to answer the why behind their queries. 

  The result? Lots of high-ranking but irrelevant content.

To avoid this:

• Use keyword research tools: Utilize tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to reveal user intent and identify relevant keywords.

• Go straight for BOFU keywords: Target users with the highest readiness to convert. 

• Validate keywords: Before choosing a keyword, analyze SERPs to review who’s ranking, what content types they’re using, and how you can add unique value.

2. SEO Tactics, No Strategy

Can’t figure out what your SEO is supposed to do? 

Short-sighted reporting (such as focusing on rankings, instead of how SEO efforts impact revenue)?

These are signs you have a set of tactics and zero direction. 

👉🏻 Does this look like your SEO? My team of SEO experts at TrioSEO can help you build an SEO strategy that converts visits into sales.

Why is this hurting your SEO?

• Losing momentum with inconsistent efforts: Occasional efforts, like a random blog post or occasional site updates, keep you from gaining traction. SEO needs direction and consistency.

• Misalignment with business goals: Building an SEO strategy is crucial for ensuring all your efforts contribute to your business goals, not just marketing metrics.

How to avoid this:

• Identify your business goals: Define how SEO can achieve them. 

  For example, if you need more sales, you might want to boost qualified traffic to generate more leads.

• Build a cohesive strategy: Create a roadmap around your target audience–who they are and what they need–to capture them at every level of the marketing funnel. 

• Track results: Identify the metrics that matter, measure performance, and adjust based on how well your SEO meets your business objectives.

3. Low-Quality Content

Content is your most important tool for ranking. But you need quality content to rank well.

That means you’re hurting your rankings if you’re publishing without giving thought to:

• Depth: How well does your content cover the subject matter?

• Structural quality: Is it well-written?

• Relevance: Is your audience interested?

What does poor quality content look like?

• AI-first: Written for search engine bots. Usually reads unnaturally and gets ignored.

• Stuffed with too many keywords: Instead of boosting your rankings, keyword stuffing signals poor quality, resulting in low rankings.

• Shallow or outdated: These get devalued by Google.

How to avoid this:

• Write for humans: Write for your audience (humans) first, optimize second. Not the other way around. 

  It keeps your audience engaged longer, signaling to Google that you’re credible and trustworthy. 

• Provide answers and solutions: Demonstrate expertise and authoritativeness by answering questions in-depth and offering real solutions. 

• Run regular content audits: Update and fix underperforming pages.

👉🏻 Need help with your content? Build an ROI-focused content strategy with my team at TrioSEO.

4. Overlooking Technical SEO

Ever visited a clonky website? Load times were way too long, links were broken, and site structure was confusing. 

Here’s the problem: Poor technical SEO.

Nobody likes that. Not even Google bots.

But why does this happen?

💡 People forget that what happens behind the scenes (technical SEO) is just as important as what people see (on-page SEO).

How does this impact your SEO?

• People can’t find you: Search engines can’t crawl or index your pages properly (or can’t crawl them at all!). As a result, your audience can’t see your content. Your SEO doesn’t even stand a chance.

• Weak topical authority: Poor site structure and messy internal linking prevent search engines from effectively interpreting your content. Which means you’ll struggle to rank for high-intent keywords.

5. Bad Backlink Profile

Backlinks are a vote of confidence from other trustworthy websites. They tell your audience and Google that you’re a credible resource.

But backlinks are hard-earned

And to earn them, you need to:

• Build and nurture relationships

• Consistently provide value to your network

• Create link-worthy content

That’s why lots of people take the “quick-and-easy” route, which ends up in wasted time and money:

• Spammy tactics: Such as mass templated emails, automated link-building, or comment blasts, which get flagged and provide no SEO value.

• Buying links: Big no-no, as it violates Google’s policies and will get penalized.

• Excessive link exchanges: Some reciprocity is fine, as long as there is real value to the exchange. The red flag is when it’s done too much and with irrelevant websites.

Your SEO Doesn’t Have to Fail

Here’s the bottom line: Without the right approach, your SEO will fail. 

💡 SEO is strategy. Strategy takes expertise. 

You need the right people building your SEO if you want real results.

My team at TrioSEO has been crushing SEO for 10+ years. Watch them scale your traffic and sales.

Up Next: The 4 Pillars of SEO

Whew, that was a lot to unpack!

But there’s more to come 🙌🏻

Next week, I’m talking about the 4 pillars of SEO to build a killer strategy. 

See ya there,

Connor

Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. My SEO Course: “The SEO System” teaches the exact daily, weekly, and monthly SEO processes I’ve used to scale multiple companies to 6, 7, & 8 figures in sales. Available for pre-sale now!

2. TrioSEO: Hire me & my team to create SEO content for your business. We’ll create a comprehensive SEO plan, execute, & keep you updated so your business gains more traffic, leads, & sales. Get a Free SEO Audit.

3. Promote yourself to 100,000+ SEOs, marketers, & entrepreneurs by sponsoring this newsletter and my social channels. (Booked out 1 month). Email me for info.

Connor Gillivan has been building six, seven, and eight-figure businesses for the past 10 years with SEO. It’s my personal mission to create a community and services that help you grow your business by finding more people who would benefit from what you. When I started out, I wanted to make the community an inclusive, welcoming table where everyone can come to get help using high-end SEO strategies to take their businesses to the next level. After several years, and over 3000 combined followers across Facebook and LinkedIn, I will always aim to get better at what I do every single day. In addition, my primary focus is on my relationship with you. This way every time you interact with me, you end up getting ideas that take your project to the next level. I particularly appreciate when my following provides feedback via testimonials, reviews, and comments left on my site or social media accounts. Because with that feedback, I can use it to make your next experience even better than the last. Since I put so much effort into my relationship with you, I hope that any investment in me is exactly the way you hoped it would be. Because by choosing to utilize my services, it’s my promise that I will provide an experience that you will love over and over again. Now, as much as I care about making the world a better and more efficient place for businesses like yours, I also care about your privacy. I’m committed to the right to your privacy and strive to provide a safe and secure user experience. My Privacy Policy, to which you can find a link at the bottom of my website homepage, explains how I collect, store and use personal information, provided by you on my website. It also explains important information that ensures I won’t abuse the information that you provide to me in good faith. By accessing and using my website, you can trust that what you want to be kept private, will be kept private. If at any time you would like to read the Privacy Policy and get a better understanding of your rights and liabilities under the law, feel free to visit my site, find the privacy policy in the footer, and read it. If there is something you are concerned about or wish to get more clarity on, please let me know by replying to this email. The Privacy Policy also informs you of how to notify me to stop using your personal information. If you wish to view my official policies, please visit my official website.

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