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Successful organic rankings are built on a solid SEO strategy and clear business goals. When your performance starts going awry and your strategy no longer seems up to scratch, it can feel like a waste of time and investment.

It is important to remember that search engines and the algorithms they use to decide who ranks where are constantly changing, therefore your strategy from years ago likely won’t be taking into account recent important ranking signals.

The main signs that your SEO strategy isn’t working are:

• Rankings are dropping
• Organic traffic is decreasing
• High bounce rate
• Low conversion rate
• Your strategy hasn’t evolved over time

One of the main goals of your SEO strategy should be increased visibility in the search results, which in turn should lead to increased organic traffic. If you are experiencing sudden drops in organic traffic than there may be algorithm updates occurring but if your traffic is slowly decreasing over time, it is likely that:

• Your content needs improving
• You do not have enough backlinks pointing to priority pages
• A new competitor has entered your space with better/more relevant content
• The search volume for keywords you are targeting has decreased and they are no longer worth targeting
• Your title tags and meta descriptions are unappealing compared to your competitors

If your title tags and meta descriptions are misleading you may be attracting the wrong audience to your pages. You are looking to target those in the buying stage of the sales funnel, so the keyword and marketing language you use in your content should reflect that. Analyse the keywords you are targeting and weed out any that don’t make sense for you to rank for as a seller rather than an informative resource.

For more information on optimising your website for SEO success, read our knowledge base