‘There are times when no SEO technique will boost a website’s search results rating’, says John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate. He further explains that sometimes it’s not a technical issue, sometimes it’s not something you can fix by just “buying a bunch of links”, sometimes it’s just that the site strategy or the content is now obsolete.”
A thread raised by the site owner on Reddit alleged that their website has had no visits for nearly six years. In response to this, John Mueller suggested, given that the website in question hasn’t recovered its traffic in six years, he feels SEO is unlikely to help. This isn’t due to Google penalties or technological issues, as both of these types of issues can be solved with SEO. Largely, the technique or the content taken up by this website may be out-dated now. He further claimed that ‘SEO isn’t always the best way to improve a site’s ranking.’
“If I hire an SEO expert service would they be able to find out what’s wrong with my website and help me improve it?” The response to this is: not always because the website isn’t actively implementing any search engine optimization strategies, they are wondering if an SEO consultant could help them reclaim their visitors. Mueller feels that SEO cannot not help in every circumstance, which the site owner may not like to hear.
“One of the things to keep in mind is that it’s possible that there’s just no SEO solution. 6 years is a long time, and the web + Google News + everything around it has evolved quite a bit.” For a variety of reasons, including several that are beyond the site’s control, a website’s approach might become stale. Life changes substantially in six years and that is sufficient time for issues to become irrelevant and content topics to become obsolete. A website that gives material that people no longer care about or have interest in is not likely to benefit from any SEO help.
“You can have a fantastic website, make it super-fast, have “high authority & trustworthiness” (however you want to define that), but if you’re selling VHS cassettes, you’re going to have a bad time. It’s more obvious when there’s a physical product involved, but if content is your product, it applies just as well.”
Mueller’s response to the Reddit thread is notable since it’s unusual for Google employees to dissuade people from seeking SEO help. This is an important point to focus on:
If a site continues to lose traffic despite your best efforts, is it a problem with SEO or is the world moving on?
No amount of SEO will benefit a site that distributes content that people don’t think about very much or have no interest in right now. It doesn’t matter if a site follows every SEO best practice; it won’t matter if no one is looking for you!
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