How does link building help in the long term?

The above techniques are the best SEO fix to sustain in the long term. Because every website author/owner wants as many as backlinks for their website and no one will deny this amazing offer. The other thing you can try is by giving your users a discount or free product/services to help you to get backlinks from different websites.

How can you diversify your digital marketing strategy?

Adapt, evolve, and never put all your marketing eggs in one SEO basket. As far back as 2003, I helped companies that had lost traffic due to sudden shifts in search engine algorithms. This continued through the webspam years with Panda and Penguin as many companies played SEO cops and robbers trying to cheat their way to search engine exposure. Long-term this is a strategy that always backfires. The more reliant you are on any single source of traffic, be that organic search, organic social media, or anything else, the more at risk you are from this single point of failure in your marketing strategy. We have seen businesses relying on a handful of organic keywords which is great if they work but also utterly terrifying as this is such a risk should anything change.

What can you do to avoid Google penalties?

What you can do is to update your website’s poor content and make it longer and more informational. For spam links, you can disavow these by using <a href="https://paragpallavsingh.com/2020/06/06/google-search-console-guide/">Google Search Console</a>. One decent SEO fixation was to let the article sit and wait while the update 'fermented'. For most of the affected articles, this was fine, and they eventually recovered to their pre-update metrics. However, for one article, in particular, it never seemed to recover and is currently undergoing a rework.

17 Ways to Overcome the Biggest SEO Challenges in Digital Marketing

Last updated on June 16th, 2024 at 11:58 am

I asked three questions to the SEO professionals. They were asked to know the common problems going on in SEO Marketing recently. So here I came up with the most challenging problems in the field of SEO and their long-lasting solutions.

These SEO issues are not just mine. I almost got 100+ responses and I have selected the most common problems that the SEO professionals have shared with me. The questions were:

What is the biggest SEO challenge you faced?
How did you handle the problem?
Is the solution sustainable in long term?

They came up with a lot of things. The SEO challenges are as small as fixing a theme for WordPress which many had faced. And as big as losing keyword ranking heavily. The interesting part is that they all came up with either corrective or totally innovative measures.

I have tried to mention the solution to big SEO challenges in an easy-to-understand manner. Let’s see how it gets.

Table of Contents

SEO Challenge #1: How to get a position for a well-positioned keyword?

~ Miguel González, Digital marketing executive at Dealers League

The biggest SEO problems from my point of view appear when your client wants to position for a keyword(s) that are being used by a very big or well-positioned company.

I am not talking about broad or generic terms, it happens sometimes with long-tail keywords, and when it happens, it’s a pain. The only way to compete on well-positioned keywords is to build a great strategy and still, the odds are not always with you.

Rank Tracking and Keyword Metrics

Using the best SEO tools like Rank Tracker by Ahrefs helps us monitor the progress of the keywords we use in the content on our website. Measuring keyword metrics helps you define if the created content is helping you rank higher on search engine results pages(SERPs). This is based on the organic traffic they drive to our site.

With the data from keyword metrics, you can identify which on-page SEO strategies are working and which need to be optimized. This makes keyword metrics an excellent way for A/B testing.

Is Keyword Reporting a long-term way to manage SEO Marketing for business?

Yes. We can trust proper data analytics of the keywords. We also study the SERP position history of our competitors and the popular keywords for which they rank.

If they start outranking us for a specific keyword, we know we need to implement a more aggressive keyword strategy by publishing more content or running a social media campaign.

SEO Challenge #2: Why should you take care of your technical SEO?

~ Richard Lubicky, founder of RealPeopleSearch

Technical SEO is the biggest challenge for small businesses and organizations. It is relatively easier to focus on on-page and off-page SEO than focus on the technicals. We were facing similar SEO issues and decided to review the technicals of our website.

Does Technical SEO provide a sustainable solution?

It is a sustainable digital marketing strategy because the technical SEO won’t receive any updates in the next years. Also, it lays the foundation of your SEO strategy and nothing else will work unless you got it right.

SEO Challenge #3: How to do better Reporting and Calculation of enterprise SEO?

~ Daniel Foley, SEO Manager at Snow Pads

I’ve worked with a lot of agencies that brag about their wins by pointing to keywords that have risen in the rankings or sites they’ve worked on that have risen in the search results.

Within a huge firm, the most difficult SEO issue is reporting. This is a very common SEO issue. The majority of enterprise organizations anticipate a revenue impact from search engine optimization. While changes in rankings and traffic are wonderful, the bottom line is how much money the company makes.

Understanding Business Needs for SEO Reporting

It’s nearly tough to link keywords to revenue. Calculating can be a sophisticated estimation based on algorithms, with an understanding of which sites appeared for which keyword searches, a count of keywords to that page, and a proportion of Google traffic from organic traffic subtracted from how much income that page made.

What is the best way to report the SEO performance of a client?

It’s a formula that isn’t always applicable to every firm, especially when numerous pages appear in search results for the same phrase. Understanding what is vital for the business is the greatest way to track SEO’s effectiveness.

Some firms are content with free signups, which may or may not have a monetary worth. Some businesses calculate income per user or estimate the worth of a button click or an email open.

You should simultaneously track the performance of different social media channels. Social Media contributes to a large chunk of website visitors. So you should not leave that behind while making SEO performance reports.

SEO Challenge #4: Chasing high-volume keywords

~ Anatolii Ulitovskyi, founder of SEOtools

My biggest challenge is to find the right strategy for high-volume keywords because most clients are chasing high-volume keywords. These topics are overwhelming and overpriced. Almost all their direct and indirect competitors try to rank high-volume.

That’s why paid keyword research tools help a lot to find topics with low competition and a lack of quality content.

It takes time to explain why we don’t need to copy big authoritative websites. I usually create a content plan and choose priorities. Less but quality.

How can you target high-volume keywords for your client?

If my clients are feeling that they can’t create something much better, then we jump to other topics.

After choosing priorities, we don’t create two pages at one time. It’s better to create the best possible content with our resources and then cover the second page.

Link builders start doing their jobs immediately after creating. In most cases, it’s guest posting. Because of covering topics with low competition, we don’t need to create a hundred links. A few links are enough. Interlinking also helps to get SEO weight.

SEO Challenge #5: Right Assistance budget for SEO

~ Julian Goldie, CEO of Goldie Agency

Getting support and budget to engage help (agencies, consultants, or staff) and the tools needed to handle massively complicated systems has been one of the most challenging Search Engine Optimization issues I’ve experienced as an SEO expert.

Also, worked for several enterprise firms. Hiring SEO services with the technical knowledge, experience, and understanding of what it takes to handle SEO for large organizations is difficult and expensive.

The best way to handle this is for the existing staff to speak out and tell their co-workers when they are weak in an aspect of SEO.

What is the right approach to fix the SEO budget issue?

Most businesses will respect this and support the appointment of a specialist agency or consultant to fill in the gaps.

If technical improvements and mitigation have resulted in SEO gains, hiring an expert or agency to help create a content roadmap with a growth strategy makes sense.

The trick is to demonstrate to stakeholders that one area of Seach Engine Optimization can be successful while others have room for improvement. Everyone will benefit in the end, I believe.

SEO Challenge #6: Finding a balance between quality content and feeding algorithms

~ Lance Wilkins, Founder at Call Outdoors

The biggest problem I’ve faced in SEO with my blog is finding the balance between the organic feel of my content and creating content that gets results with SEO.

The way that SEO works have made leaps and bounds from where it started, but it’s still imperfect. It certainly doesn’t rank unrefined, conversational content as highly as SEO-focused content.

There is still a huge gap between automated-generated content vs human-written one. The gap between AI automation and human content writers is a long way to fill.

How did you handle the problem of balanced content automation in blogging?

I didn’t want my blog to lose its authenticity, so I began looking for other means of building my SEO. I used HARO, link/ content exchange, and a few paid methods.

I also employed an editor that specializes in SEO, to improve my content’s SEO performance while keeping authenticity top of mind.

Is that way of content publishing sustainable in the long term? How?

I believe that it’s possible to find the balance between SEO and quality of content if you’re willing to explore all avenues and put in the work.

One thing that should never be lost is your passion for the content that you produce. Quality comes from originality and the value that you provide your viewers.

So as long as you keep that at the forefront of your focus, your SEO practices should be sustainable!

SEO Challenge #7: How to handle Local SEO Challenges?

~ Ryan Dalal, CEO at Merge PDF

SEOs used to create different landing pages for each area a few years ago. This necessitated a large number of location-specific pages, a high keyword density, and extensive interlinking. Google, on the other hand, referred to such pages as ‘doorway pages,’ and labeled them as spam.

What is the best approach to optimize local landing pages?

Because the majority of our clients want to remove local SEO challenges, we designed our technique that adheres to Google’s requirements while achieving the desired results.

If the location in question receives a large number of searches and is a large location, we design and optimize a landing page for it. However, for smaller areas, such as counties or towns, we use blogs to optimize.

SEO Challenge #8: Adopting Poor SEO practices and facing Google Penalties

~ Hamna Amjad, Content Manager @ Efani

One of the biggest problems faced in SEO is using poor SEO practices, resulting in Google penalties. Black hat SEO techniques might get you the instant traffic boost you want.

However, it goes against all ethical guidelines and can damage your reputation in the long run. It can result in penalties and even blacklisting of your website.

What are the best ways to avoid Google Penalties?

1. Follow white hat SEO techniques and build your site properly from the very beginning.
2. Conduct regular full site audits to catch any anomalies.
3. Avoid overstuffing your content with keywords.
4. Create high-quality and useful content keeping user intent in mind.
5. Disavow spammy, low-quality backlinks. Put in the effort to build more high-quality backlinks.
6. Refrain from posting duplicate content.

SEO Challenge #9: Choosing the best theme for your blog/website

~ Scott Winstead, Founder of MyElearningWorld.com

The biggest SEO problem I have faced was a technical SEO issue – my site speed was terrible. And no matter how hard I tried to tweak things, Google Page Speed Insights gave me horrible scores.

I knew that Google increasingly factors page speed into rankings, so I worked tirelessly to fix it. I installed WP Rocket, began using a CDN, and more. However, none of those things did the trick.

Eventually, it occurred to me that the WordPress theme I was using was too bloated. If I continued with the theme, I would never get the site speed scores I wanted.

So after a lot of research, I selected a new theme: GeneratePress. This lightweight theme is blazing fast and extremely customizable.

What is the sustainability of choosing the right WordPress theme?

After switching themes, my speed scores have improved dramatically and my rankings continue to improve as well.

It’s a great theme that is constantly updated. The only issue I’d say is I do want to redesign my homepage, as I find it pretty basic.

But that basic look helps keep things lean and fast. So I’m working on learning how I can spruce things up while maintaining speed.

SEO Challenge #10: Sustainable Link Building

~ Joe Smith, iCrowdNewswire

One of the biggest SEO challenges that I have faced during my SEO job is link building. It is a tough job for every SEO link-building person due to paid-level guest posting and link insertion.

During the link-building issue, I just start researching new link-building techniques that include the following techniques that I’m currently using for my company.

What are the best ways you found for link building?

1. Asking different authors to insert our link in their blog posts/content related to our Niche by exchanging links.
2. Offer free services to blog authors that we are offering or give them a discount on our services and products if they insert our link in their blog post/content.
3. Publishing our services or products on different review sites that will help us to get a backlink for our website/blog plus also help us to generate business.
4. Start Submitting HARO Pitches. HARO platform helps us a lot to get free backlinks from High Authority and traffic websites/blog this platform are free and I recommend different SEO experts to start using this platform.
5. HARO pitches are used worldwide because many journalists and content writers grab content by using the HARO platform.

How does link building help in the long term?

The above techniques are the best SEO fix to sustain in the long term. Because every website author/owner wants as many as backlinks for their website and no one will deny this amazing offer.

The other thing you can try is by giving your users a discount or free product/services to help you to get backlinks from different websites.

SEO Challenge #11: Finding Quality Content Writers with good SEO skills

~ Paul Lewin, SEO @ Home Water Research

For me, the biggest problem is finding writers who understand SEO, understand the subject matter that I’m working on, and can write quality ‘fluff-free content.

What’s worked for me is increasing the quality of my training materials for writers, and by hiring and testing out multiple writers at the same time.

How can you find the best content writers with appreciative SEO knowledge?

Using Slab, which is like a private company wiki, for my Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) has been a game-changer for me.

It’s super easy to create training documents with embedded images and videos. I also used it to create checklists that my writers must follow, checking off each item before they submit their assignments.

When I first started in SEO, I’d just hire a single writer at a time. If it didn’t work out, which often it doesn’t, I was back to square one.

Now I use Facebook groups like ‘The Cult of Copy’ to hire several writers at a time. I give them test assignments, and try to hire two or three at a time. That way, I’m not stuck if writers don’t deliver or they move on to other projects.

What is the sustainability of this process in long term? How?

Yes, I think so. By training my writers well from the start, I get exactly the writing that I am looking for.

I’ve now started to offer performance bonuses based on meeting word count targets, and consistently completing all points on my checklists.

In the long run, this should mean I’m doing less hiring and keeping my best writers for longer.

SEO Challenge #12: Poor usage experience for mobile users

~ CJ Xia, VP of Marketing & Sales at Boster Biological Technology

The poor mobile experience is one of the biggest SEO challenges I have ever faced in my marketing career.

We get the most traffic from mobile, and if it’s slow to load on mobile devices, the bounce rate will increase. It’s important to have a mobile-friendly site, and it should load quickly.

What is the best way to provide the best mobile experience as per SEO?

Our team decided to make a responsive website design to solve this SEO problem. We designed a responsive website design that displays automatically for both mobile and desktop devices.

We have noticed a significant drop in bounce rate because mobile users spent time on our website.

How does a good mobile experience help in long term?

The solution is sustainable in the long term because the responsive design provides an experience customized to the device with the same content for all users.

It also improves secondary signals that Google considers for search ranking, including time spent on the website, number of visitors, bounce rate and visit duration, etc.

SEO Challenge #13:Lack of Diversity in Digital Marketing Strategy

~ Marcus Miller, SEO & Digital Marketing at the UK Agency Bowler Hat.

I have worked with 1000s of companies over the year and SEO is eternally challenging due to the ever-evolving search landscape.

The biggest challenge that most businesses face is the continued dominance of paid listings on search engine results pages and how this impacts once furtive organic traffic.

It can be difficult for businesses to even really conceptually understand what SEO is, and even more so when it comes to defining what type of SEO they need.

diversify digital marketing | all eggs in one basket SEO, social media

Add more eggs to the basket. Avoid SEO Risks for Long

How can you diversify your digital marketing strategy?

Adapt, evolve, and never put all your marketing eggs in one SEO basket. As far back as 2003, I helped companies that had lost traffic due to sudden shifts in search engine algorithms.

This continued through the webspam years with Panda and Penguin as many companies played SEO cops and robbers trying to cheat their way to search engine exposure.

Long-term this is a strategy that always backfires. The more reliant you are on any single source of traffic, be that organic search, organic social media, or anything else, the more at risk you are from this single point of failure in your marketing strategy.

We have seen businesses relying on a handful of organic keywords which is great if they work but also utterly terrifying as this is such a risk should anything change.

Is the solution sustainable in long term? How?

The solution here is to have a diverse digital marketing approach that is not 100% reliant upon a single platform.

1. Organic
2. Paid
3. Search
4. Social
5. Email

The specifics will always depend upon your business but diversity is key to a rich and sustainable digital marketing strategy.

Diversity, in marketing, as in life, is the most sustainable approach. Work on SEO.

Work hard at SEO as it can be the best channel that you have in your digital marketing mix. But never rely on this alone as the foundation that your business is built upon.

SEO Challenge #14:Proper Training of team members in SEO Team

~ Aaron Traub

SEO consists of many different activities that if not put in a systemized process it can get quite overwhelming.

Teaching team members so they could take over the process of fulfilling client work has been a large SEO challenge our company has faced.

It’s taken me years of hard work and perfectionism to feel comfortable delegating, and it’s still not easy for me today.

But as soon as I started letting go of all that time spent making everything perfect and thinking that there was no way. Someone else could do it just as good or better than I did, things got a lot easier.

What should one SEO agency do to manage the SEO training of the team members?

Our company handled this problem by investing in expensive and high-level SEO training that immediately transformed our SEO systems and processes.

Utilizing the systems and processes, we were able to develop a full procedure for all new and existing SEO clients to deliver consistent results every time.

This has allowed us to scale our SEO systems and ability to take on more projects with the confidence to get the results.

SEO Challenge #15: Keyword Cannibalization

~ Nick White, Director of Search @ Lure Creative, Inc.

The biggest SEO challenge I have faced over the years is keyword cannibalization, or two or more pages competing for the same keywords. A close second would be over-optimization.

How to handle the problem of Keyword Cannibalization in long term?

We solved this problem by proactively de-optimizing one of the pages so that the preferred page will rank for the target keyword.

This includes removing the keyword from the Meta Title and all page headers to help alleviate it competing with your preferred ranking page.

As long as Google’s algorithm treats keyword cannibalization issues essentially the same.

By making sure you only have one page attempting to rank for a target keyword a specific searcher intent, you give that page a chance to rank higher and make it easier for Google to index and rank your website’s pages.

SEO Challenge #16: Unexpected Google Updates

~ Ryan Gamilla, SEO Specialist, Growth Rocket

Biggest Challenge faced while working on SEO: For me, the biggest challenge you will face in SEO is the unexpected Google updates. You’ll never know if these kinds of updates will affect your website.

Two major Google updates are called Panda and Penguin: Google Panda update focuses on the website’s thin and poor content. Google Penguin update targets manipulative link-building practices or what we called “black hat.”

Keep yourself updated through online SEO forums and discussion groups

You can monitor this Penguin (combination of Panda and Penguin) by monitoring if there are any sudden changes in your organic traffic and you can also be updated by joining helpful SEO forums and communities.

Lately, Google released another update that directly affects Page Titles in SERP. Many SEOs began noticing their respective titles being completely rewritten.

What can you do to avoid Google penalties?

What you can do is to update your website’s poor content and make it longer and more informational. For spam links, you can disavow these by using Google Search Console.

One decent SEO fixation was to let the article sit and wait while the update ‘fermented’. For most of the affected articles, this was fine, and they eventually recovered to their pre-update metrics.

However, for one article, in particular, it never seemed to recover and is currently undergoing a rework.

SEO Challenge #17: Unexpected Ranking Drop on Targeted Keywords

~ Eden Cheng, CoFounder at PeopleFinderFree

One of the biggest challenges I have often faced when dealing with SEO is how sometimes the rankings tend to drop beyond expectations, even though we have managed the campaign efficiently and done much to increase the traffic.

And in most cases, this sporadic behavior is often caused by thousands of changes that are often being made in Google’s search engine algorithm. As a result, we often have to remain on alert and find ways to identify the problems and changes, to rescue the rankings drop.

Avoid Fearing too much. Focus on Quality

What should you do to manage drastic ranking drops in Google SERP?

It is pretty much impossible to control what Google does. However, we often try to control how we respond to the changes. In this regard, we make it a habit to consistently research and keep an eye out for any potential changes.

We also avoid reacting too quickly even when our rankings drop. Whenever Google rolls out new changes, sometimes the rankings fluctuate for a short period of a few days and then come back up.

This happens because there are times when Google tries out a new change that did not work as expected and ends up reverting to before their update.

What is the reliability of the provided solution?

Most people often see Google making algorithm changes as a way to punish websites. However, algorithms are designed to reward websites for providing a good user experience and relevant quality content.

The problem is that Google tends to be notoriously inconspicuous when it comes to announcing any new changes to its search algorithms. As such, it often pays off in the long term to keep an eye on search traffic using tools like Mozcast.

Also follow accounts like @searchliason on Twitter, as they consistently share content and news related to upcoming updates.

Conclusion

Now you have seen many types of big and small SEO problems. And I am sure you have got yourself loaded with many quick and effective SEO fixes. Now is the time to make your business skyrocket through these strategies.

Also please fetch time to appreciate the contributors for their value addition to the blog.

There are many things that are left behind to cover. If you have anything new, I am happy to read that too. Please share this blog with people who require any kind of SEO help. If you need you can also contact Parag Pallav Talks or simply drop a comment below.