Owning a website means you will never be done with its online promotion campaigns. Online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns will be the norm – right up until the day your site goes offline. But, you probably already knew that, right?

What you might not be entirely sure about is whether or not your website needs an SEO boost right now. How do you know you need to step up your optimization game? Well, let’s have a look at the signs:

You can’t find your website in search results

This holds especially true if you have been online for over a year. Most search engines will have a low opinion about websites that have less than a year’s lifetime. But, if you have been online for longer than that and you still haven’t been able to find the links to your posts, content, or even homepage on search engine results pages (SERPs), then you must be doing something wrong.

Your pages aren’t ranking for keywords

A little time over the two-year mark and your website should be appearing in searches for any of the keywords you have been trying to rank for. If things have been going right, then you should be able to have your website identify with a set of keywords.

If you can’t find a link to your pages – even if you have gone down several pages – then you know you need to boost your SEO efforts.

You aren’t getting any traffic

A well-maintained website should see a constant growth in the number of visitors it gets. As your website ages, you should see an upward trend in the number of footfalls on your website. If you are stuck on a plateau or, even worse, you see a fall in visitor numbers, you will need to put more effort into your SEO campaigns.

People don’t stay long

One thing you should never forget is that simply having a large number of visitors won’t mean anything if they leave right away. Google monitors bounce-rates and if that is what the visitors are doing, you won’t see any improvement in your rankings.

In this case, you will need to have to take a look at your landing pages and find out why the visitors aren’t staying. Could it be because they can’t immediately find what they are looking for? Are you not offering the information or service that you promised? Or, is it perhaps a broken link that leads to nowhere?

Your page-loading times are terrible

Search engines don’t like slow-loading pages and, Google, in particular, could ignore your website over it. Also, another factor that could see your site getting negative ranking is due to the people who leave your website simply because they don’t have the time for your slow-loading pages. This leads to an increase in bounce-rates and, as we have seen above, that is not good news.

Your business isn’t making any sales

If at the end of the day you aren’t making any sales, you should see if the misfortune is being caused by a weak or non-existent SEO strategy.

Have a look at the keywords that describe your products and services to see if they are as ideal and descriptive as they should be. Perhaps, after all the work you have put into attracting potential customers you are losing them because of bugs on your website like your check-out process not completing the sales.

Your website keeps going offline

One sure way to get on the bad side of search engines like Google is to have poor uptime statistics. Although it is true that this could be caused by a poor web hosting package, it also means that you should always choose a good web hosting provider.

But, before you jump ship have a chat with your current hosting provider to see if they can perhaps move you to a server with a good uptime track record, offer you more bandwidth, and give you a little extra space.

The competition is garnering the market

If you see your competition’s website suddenly become popular or they have a surge in online growth it might be because you are neglecting your SEO. The best way to increase your brand’s online reach is to constantly push it into the sight of a new pair of eyes. Your competitors are doing exactly that and slowly gobbling up what could have been your share of the market.

A good SEO strategy will continue to improve your online presence. Overlook this fact and you will see your competitors storm ahead of you.

Invest in your SEO

We have just seen how important your SEO campaign is to your website. If you really want to get the best out of your online presence, you should start taking it seriously and invest as much time, money, and effort in your online promotion strategy… starting right now!