At Inbound we have helped many clients achieve higher rankings with our SEO Services. The scenario we see most often is a client being stuck on the bottom of page 1 or further down the list. After some analysis, we usually find that the problem is not just rankings, but overall visibility.
Your goal should be to rank well, but do not waste your time on thinking there are only a few terms you need to rank for. Instead, you want to have top of page 1 rankings for main keywords, and long tail keywords.
If you feel like your SEO is hopeless, and it’s no longer worth the investment, this page was written for you.
Having an unsuccessful SEO campaign can be due to many factors, but this scenario is often easily fixed with a new set of eyes. Instead of a lengthy case study or explanation, just run through the items below. If you are short on time, give us a call and request a free audit. It will be more thorough, and you will walk away with actionable SEO intel for FREE. Guaranteed!
Before you begin, I want you to realize it’s not about ranking for terms you think are great. Instead, think visibility. Your goal should be to rank for those terms, but hundreds and thousands of others. This ensures your SEO drives new business over the long term. Otherwise, expect constant up and downs in lead volume.
Organize Your Thoughts
SEO can be broken down by off-page and on-page. On-page is the obvious website usability, page insights scoring, technical SEO, content, internal link building, titles, meta descriptions and etc. Off page covers your backlinks, which covers citations, directories, social, anchor text links and any other link from an external domain. Lets start with On-page and cover some advanced ideas.
On-page Audit
A list of topics and questions you need to cover:
1. The Obvious
Before beginning, I am going to assume you have run an audit using tools like Semrush.com and Ahrefs. The culprit is often obvious.
- Technical SEO: Are there crawl errors, slow loading speeds, or indexing issues?
- Title Tags: Are you targeting the right search term or the same term on multiple title tags and pages?
- Sitemap: Is your website organized logically. Ensure you are not having multiple pages covering the same topic, and you are not having multiple directories deep content. Such as .com/Page3/page2/page1/page-name/
- Competitor Analysis: Compare yourself to the top 5 competitors for the term you are trying to rank for.
2. Review Your Content – Be Critical And Get Feedback
It’s easy to say your content is great, but does it actually engage your users? As of 2024 we now have proof that Google is using Chrome Data in their algorithms. If users do not engage, your website will not fair well over the long term. Website looks, feel and overall usability are important. This is not something that will cause you to rank right away, but you will benefit several months down the road.
- Get feedback from real people— content is clear, engaging, and valuable. If you have the budget, use a service to run heat maps and usability analysis.
- How can you make your page unique? This can be very helpful because your page will stand out to the algorithm, but also in how users engage. Hard, but doable if you dig in and focus.
- Intent: How is your page organized? You want users to find what they are looking for.
- How user-friendly is your content? Is it easy to scan, read, and navigate?
3. Run Through Your Website’s Content
Keyword cannibalization is a common issue for new clients who could not manage to catch page 1. This is where multiple pages compete for the same term, confusing Google about which to rank. Example: Often a company name will be part brand and part keyword. The SEO will add that company name to the end of every title tag, but it ends up causing all the pages of the website to target the same keyword. Simply fixing this can rocket you onto page 1. .
- Are multiple pages optimized for the same keyword? Not just your title tags, but check the actual content, H1, h2, and page names.
- Delete and merge similar content into one! There is no need to cover the same subject on multiple pages, unless it makes sense to. And if you are, make sure you have a good internal link building structure that is clear and easily accessible by users and the algorithm. Silo content is also very helpful when you need to have multiple pages for a service.
4. Are Your Internal Links Helping or Hurting Rankings?
Internal linking can boost rankings and kill rankings. Ask yourself:
- Do you have a great internal link structure? Like your sitemap, your internal links are a signal to Google and a usability factor.
- Are you pointing to one main page for a keyword, or splitting authority across multiple pages?
- Are you over doing your internal links creating too many holes in page juice.
- Are important pages linked from high-traffic pages? Are you wasting your internal link juice on pages that do not need rank?
- Do you have too many out of content links (footer, sidebar, main menu)?
- Do your internal links use descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text or are they too spammy?
5. Audit Your Backlink Profile – Do You Have Enough Authority or low quality?
Backlinks are a major ranking factor. Remember quality over quantity matter.
- What is the ratio of anchor text links to branded and www? Ideally, you want a realistic ratio versus competitors. .So take the top 5 guys and create a ratio, now see where you land.
- Are your backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites? Again, competitors will give a great hint. This is a no brainer, but often this can be overlooked?
- As of 2025, the disavow tool is no longer a feature unless you have been manually penalized. If you are having too many low quality / spammy links, your best bet is to use a service to try and get rid of them, but also adding more quality links to create a positive ratio as referenced above.
6. Is Your Page Optimized for Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
Google does track your CTR. If they are below the industry average, your rankings may never improve.
- Rewrite title tags & meta descriptions. No you do not have to stuff it with keywords.
- Try using numbers or other similar ideas to increase engagement. You can easily use Google to find ideas. Chatgpt is also a great tool as well.
- Test different variations and see what improves CTR.
7. Are You Providing the Best User Experience?
Google has been caught. It is true that they use user data to choose which websites have a better user experience than others.
- Page speed & mobile optimization – Is your site loading fast? Use page speed insights.
- Bounce rate & dwell time – Are users staying on your page or leaving immediately?
- Engagement factors – Do you have images, videos, or interactive elements?
- UI/UX: An entire book can be written on this subject. You need to dig deep into what your users want to see, read and skim. You need to give them what they want, in an easily digestible manner.
8. Schema Markup? I hope i don’t have to mention this to you.
Make the algorithms job easier and use schema. This can increase CTR and rankings. Implement:
- Business Scheme: Local SEO Anyone?
- Services Schema for the obvious
- Article schema to enhance content visibility.
- Review schema if applicable.
- Any other schema that is relevant to your websites content and information
- Use a plugin for WordPress
9. Are You Leveraging External Traffic Sources?
Google does use engagement and other signals from multiple sources.
- Share content on social media, LinkedIn, and Reddit.
- Answer relevant questions on Quora and forums to drive traffic. Don’t forget to first create a page that you can link to in order to backup your answers and questions.
- There are so many other signals like posting on GMB and etc.
My Final Thoughts
If you’re stuck and cannot figure out how to move up in rankings, you need to take a step out of your comfort zone. If you have an SEO company, and they cannot seem to get you out of this rut, contact Inbound and request a FREE audit. We will go through the site using a guide that is more advanced than the one you just read. You will walk away with actionable tasks to get you moving. These tactics take time, but you will often see an improvement within weeks of these changes.
Need expert help? Let our SEO experts analyze your website and create a custom strategy to help you turn this into a profitable investment.
