We have seen hundreds (maybe a thousand) of failed SEO projects. During the initial conversation or app signup, we know if the project will fail or not.
These are common predictors that we see over and over again.
1.) Wrong expectations
When SEO is approached with a short-term mindset and a need for immediate results, the project will fail.
“I built my website. Now I do SEO for 1 month, if I don’t see results, I quit.”
Building a marketing channel takes time (especially an organic marketing channel like SEO). Building a business takes years.
In 99% of the cases, your growth will look like this.
SEO, as well as other organic marketing channels, takes time and constant iteration.
There are website owners who get lucky and grow super fast. Also, every week, some people win the lottery. It is safe to assume that your website will grow slowly and steadily, just like everyone else.
We have achieved SEO breakthrough success within 1 month - this is the exception. The company was a venture-backed startup that saw a drastic increase in clicks within 1 month.
They had multiple full-stack engineers (6-figure salary), a 4-figure link-building budget, and SEOCopilot on an agency retainer.
Even this company went bust. The growth was too fast, Google penalized the website, and the domain was damaged beyond repair.
SEO is a long-term channel. There are no shortcuts. Doing SEO for 3 months doesn’t work.
2.) “What’s my ROI?”
The honest answer is that there is probably no ROI after 3 months.
If you are in need of immediate results, you should use paid ads like Google Ads or Meta Ads.
You will get website views from your customers within a day (if you know what you’re doing). This is the right channel to test if customers are at all interested (as measured by willingness to buy) in your product.
The case for SEO is:
Is an ever-increasing CPC (cost per click) sustainable for your business?
Should you build out organic channels that help to reduce your marketing cost (because customers are already familiar with you)?
Should you build an asset that you own and that generates additional interactions with your user?
Conceptually and highly simplified, SEO (or organic marketing) works like this:
Invest a lot up front, see results after some time.
3.) You have never done marketing before
We like to compare SEO with social media marketing.
If today you start a new LinkedIn account and write a post, will you get hundreds of comments and upvotes?
No.
SEO works the same way.
Website owners need to build up the domain, content, and links with other websites.
In the LinkedIn world, you need to make your profile attractive, connect with other people, comment on other people’s posts, and write amazing content that other people find interesting.
Most first-time marketers start to question the effectiveness of a marketing channel if they don’t see results after 2 weeks.
Google Ads or Meta ads can work better if you need leads immediately.
4.) SEO means “free leads” for my business
SEO is not free.
While you’re building up your SEO presence, it might even look like the most expensive marketing channel since you’re not seeing any results yet.
Building up the backlink profile of a domain, writing content, and fixing technical aspects costs time and money.
When the SEO project has no budget, it will fail. Without a substantial budget, it’s hard to succeed.
5.) Limited SEO activity
Limited SEO activity is a sure predictor of SEO failure.
SEO projects that fail focus on one of the following:
They use an app/agency to build links and the agency/app is responsible for the SEO success.
They use an AI writer and the app is responsible for the SEO success.
They use a technical SEO plugin and the plugin is responsible for the SEO success.
They built 1,000+ pages that only differ by 1 word. Now (in their eyes) Google is obliged to rank them in position 1 for the target keyword.
Projects that succeed do it all. The projects are focused on providing value for their user through helpful content and they get most SEO aspects right.
SEO is not set and forget. SEO needs weekly activity.
6.) Not giving it enough time
We have seen it many times that people quit subscription plans on the app after 1-2 months.
Then they sign up with an agency for 5x the price.
Then they fire the agency
Then they use another app for 2 months.
Then they track another hack.
This cycle continues until they eventually start another business.
… and the marketing cycle continues.
All marketing channels take sustained effort and tweaking, and giving it your best for many months until you see good results. You will always start from 0 again, by jumping from one channel to the next channel.
Success cases:
After running SEOCopilot for more than 2 years, we can clearly see which users succeed and who fail (check out: https://www.seocopilot.com/seocopilot-success-cases).
There are many examples, but we limit it to two here:
What made these sites succeed?
The sites have worked on all SEO aspects:
Built foundational backlinks and done link exchanges
Writing helpful content
Index all pages
Fixing technical SEO and sitespeed
Fixed meta description
Fixed internal linking
Added rich content to all sites
In short, they care about the site and did their best to follow best practices.