How to Address Genuine SEO Problems

My SEO agency manages some of the top brands internationally. After thousands of audits, these 5 traffic-killers show up across every niche. Here’s how to fix them for quick ranking gains: 1. Broken or Flat Site Structures • Rebuild your main navigation with logical page groupings • Add subcategories based on real search behavior and tags • Create individual landing pages for each core service or product • Add breadcrumb trails to help both users and crawlers • Keep footer links focused and minimal to reduce crawl dilution 2. Strengthen Internal Linking to Avoid Orphan Pages • Map out all your URLs and find pages with zero internal links • Link from high-traffic blog posts to pages you want to rank • Add contextual links within paragraphs, not just footers or menus • Merge duplicate pages that dilute link equity across similar topics • Use descriptive anchor text that includes keywords naturally 3. Refresh Thin or Spammy Pages with Specific Content Additions • Use custom fields to add product specs, how-tos, or comparison points • Replace short service blurbs with expanded answers to buyer questions • Add FAQs, CTAs, and visuals like icons and tables for clarity • Prune outdated or AI-written content that adds no value • Schedule quarterly audits to review and update old posts 4. Improve Metadata and Sitemap Accuracy • Rewrite title tags to match search intent while encouraging clicks • Group blog content into categories and reflect this in your sitemap • Switch to a dynamic sitemap that updates when pages are added • Submit your sitemap in GSC and cross-reference it with robots.txt • Remove broken or spammy URLs that waste crawl budget 5. EEAT Pages and Signals That Actually Move the Needle • Publish a detailed About page that tells your brand’s story • Add a dedicated Reviews page with real testimonials and UGC • Link out to relevant authority sources to build trust • Show author credentials and publishing dates on blog posts • Create branded social profiles and link them on the site

SEO depreciation is real. Traffic fades when content, intent, and SERPs drift apart. That decay is a signal to maintain your assets. What it looks like • Rankings and traffic slip on once strong pages • Clicks fall while impressions hold • Time on page drops after new competitors arrive • Crawl issues and slower pages show up Why it happens • Outdated stats and advice • Better intent match from competitors • SERP features that steal clicks • Technical debt: Core Web Vitals, broken links, crawl blocks, thin/duplicate pages (improve for UX and indexing). • Backlink quality drop: lost links, spammy patterns, or linking sites losing authority How to slow it ☑ Refresh top pages with new data and clearer intent ☑ Consolidate overlaps and fix cannibalisation ☑ Reclaim lost links and strengthen internal links; disavow only if you have a manual action or clear spam history. ☑ Improve performance and indexation: speed, canonicals, 404s, redirects, sitemaps ☑ Add FAQ and schema to help AI search understand and surface your answers ☑ Optimise for search journeys, not single keywords Simple workflow 1. Find pages losing traffic 2. Check intent and SERP 3. Fix technical and links 4. Refresh and consolidate 5. Republish and interlink 6. Track and repeat quarterly Treat content like a product. Maintain it and it compounds. Ignore it and it depreciates. Have you seen this kind of SEO depreciation on your site? 

I stopped one of our clients' link-building campaigns immediately... They were burning resources. The links they were building? Pretty solid. ↳ Strong DA/DR websites ↳ Relevant niche ↳ Content that fits seamlessly But the results? Decent traffic boost. Zero ranking improvements. The problem was not the links. It was what came before. Their website was the real issue: ↓ Poor on-page SEO ↓Thin content with no value ↓ A site structure that confused search engines and users alike So, I hit pause on the link-building campaign and redirected the focus to fixing the foundation. We made three critical changes: ✔️ Optimized the on-page SEO with proper keywords and internal links ✔️ Revamped the content to make it E-E-A-T compliant ✔️ Simplified the site structure for better crawlability and user experience Then we restarted the link-building efforts. The difference? ↑ Rankings improved significantly ↑ Organic traffic soared ↑ The links finally delivered real ROI What did the client learn? Building great links can get you attention. But having a great website ensures that attention turns into success.

From ZERO traction, flat rankings, organic traffic not moving at all → to real IMPACT. Being found. Relevance. When Felix Norton audited a client’s site (an event hiring marketplace) one thing immediately stood out: there were no internal links. And the few that did exist lacked keyword-rich anchor text and pointed nowhere strategically important. This client had been with Felix’s agency for 3 months. His team had been producing high-quality blog content consistently, targeting relevant topics with strong on-page optimization. Then it became clear: All that great content was living in isolation. There were no links connecting related blog posts. No links pointing to the product and service pages: the real revenue drivers. No internal structure to help Google understand what mattered most on the site. So Felix made a key change: He implemented a strategic internal linking framework. Every new blog post linked to relevant service pages using descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text. Older posts were updated to connect with newer content, creating topical clusters. High-authority pages were used to distribute link equity to lower-performing but important pages. The impact was immediate. Google could now crawl the site more efficiently, understand content relationships, and identify priority pages. Within weeks, the site started gaining visibility and driving meaningful traffic. Internal linking isn’t just a technical detail, it’s one of the most powerful tools in SEO. It boosts crawlability, distributes authority, and signals relevance without writing a single new word. If your content isn’t delivering results, check your internal links. It could be the simplest fix with the biggest payoff.

🤔 Struggling with “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed” in Google Search Console? You’re not alone. I’ve encountered this status countless times and often get questions about why Google crawls a page but doesn’t index it. Here’s the bottom line: “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed” means Google has visited your page but decided not to include it in search results—at least for now. Sometimes the page gets indexed later; other times it stays out of the index. Either way, don’t panic. Here’s what you need to know: 1) Confirm the Problem → Use the URL Inspection Tool to see when Google last crawled the page. If the date is old, the report might be lagging. → Do a quick site: search in Google (e.g., site:yourdomain.com/page-url). If your page shows up, it’s already indexed. 2) Decide If the Page Should Be Indexed → Some pages—such as search results pages, low-value tag pages, or duplicates—are fine staying unindexed. → If you find important pages under “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed,” that’s when you should take action. 3) Look for Common Causes → Thin, duplicate, or spammy content can hold you back. → Large sites might not get all pages crawled and indexed quickly. → Pages buried deep in your site structure might get overlooked. → JavaScript-heavy pages or broken code can stop Google from fully understanding your content. → Google won’t index what it deems harmful or irrelevant. 4) Apply the Right Fix → Provide unique, valuable information that meets user needs. → Merge or redirect duplicate pages. → Make pages easier to crawl. Link to them from authoritative pages. → Fix rendering issues and optimize page speed. → Clean up spammy pages and lock down your site. 5) Be Patient—or Take Action Sometimes Google simply takes time. If the page is new or part of a large batch of content, Google might be delaying indexing. If you suspect a genuine blockage, you can manually request indexing in Search Console. If you’ve tried these steps but still see crucial pages stuck in “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed,” dig deeper. Look for patterns across multiple URLs or investigate possible technical barriers. Understanding why Google passes on indexing certain pages can help you address core problems, refine your content strategy, and strengthen your entire site. I’ve written a full article where I detail everything from quick checks to advanced fixes: https://lnkd.in/dhkxw2BM If you’re still stuck, feel free to reach out. I love solving Google's riddles!

Your rankings dropped last December. Not because of bad keywords. Because Google no longer trusts your website the same way it trusted it six months ago. 👇 That's the finding from SEO consultant Marie Haynes after analyzing dozens of sites affected by Google's December 2025 core update. The sites that recovered had one thing in common. They weren't just better optimized. They were more trustworthy businesses with better digital footprints. 🔍 What Google's AI systems are evaluating now → Customer complaints and satisfaction signals across the web, not just your site → Review patterns and response rates on Google, Yelp, and industry-specific platforms → Whether your on-site content reflects what homeowners actually experience 🛠️ Four things that drove recovery → 🔒 Trust signals fixed: one eCommerce site recovered after resolving logistics complaints that AI models were flagging → ✍️ Original content: sites with genuine first-person accounts and proprietary data outperformed AI-generated summaries → 👁️ Skimmable structure: content restructured for human readers, not just search bots → 📸 Visual proof of work: companies that added original photos and videos of actual jobs in progress saw ranking improvements 📝 The hard truth If your site is full of generic descriptions that AI summarizes without losing value, Google has no reason to rank you. You need to provide something a large language model cannot replicate. 📍 At Makarios, we audit client content against this exact framework. The businesses recovering fastest are treating SEO the way they'd treat their BBB profile: prove you're a real, trustworthy operation. If Google AI ran a review of your business today based on publicly available information, what would it find? Comment honestly. 💬

Ever wonder why enterprise SEO stalls even with seven figure budgets? Here is the part no one talks about. Most enterprise teams think their biggest problem is technical debt. It is not. Their real obstacle is organizational debt. When SEO depends on five teams, three systems, and a release calendar that ships twice a quarter, rankings are determined by politics more than algorithms. If you want enterprise SEO to scale, start here: - Shorten the release cycle by 30 percent. - Centralize the SEO backlog in product, not marketing. - Define governance rules for redirects, metadata, schema, and site architecture. - Measure technical debt as an actual KPI and report it monthly. - Build a crawl budget model tied to real server logs, not guesses. The companies winning search are not the ones writing more content. They are the ones removing friction. What part of your SEO operation slows you down the most?

Your SEO strategy isn’t broken because your site takes 2.3 seconds to load. It’s broken because you’re focused on the wrong things 👇🏽 Last week, I spoke with a healthcare company building a horizontal business across therapies. Smart team, solid resources. But they weren’t seeing results. Why? Because their internal SEO champion was fixated on technical SEO. - Javascript rendering - Site speed (with a fast site already) - Fancy dashboards with glowing green scores Were these things important? Sure. But they weren’t the bottleneck. Their real problem? The fundamentals. Things like: - Relevant, high-quality content - prioritizing content refreshing and net new - Strong backlinks - Proper keyword targeting - internal linking Until those boxes were checked, all the technical SEO wizardry in the world wasn’t going to move the needle. Don’t get me wrong—technical SEO has its place. Broken links, indexing issues, duplicate content—these matter. Fix them, and move on. But let’s stop pretending site speed or image compression is what’s holding back your search performance. Focus on what matters most. Because in the grand scheme of SEO, obsessing over technical tweaks is like rearranging furniture on a house that hasn’t been built yet. Is search a priority for you in 2025? Where are you doubling down?

I shifted from chasing rankings to driving revenue. This week, I spoke to an entrepreneur struggling to grow his organic traffic. He found a technical issue that affected every page on his site. He fixed it. Then, he waited for his traffic to spike. It didn't. Now, he's looking for the next technical issue to "fix" his organic traffic. But he's not going to find it. Technical SEO shines for custom-coded and huge sites. But, for your typical website, it fails to deliver on marketers' expectations. Old-school "checklist" SEO tactics give marketers false confidence in their organic strategies. Examples: Improving page load speed, fixing broken links, and increasing article word counts might influence rankings. However, these tactics won't deliver the substantial organic sales growth that some marketers expect. Most brands maintain a site built on a modern CMS with hundreds or thousands of pages (not millions). They should fix low-hanging fruit technical issues, then quickly move on to authority building, content development, and CRO. The modern CMS solves most technical issues. When your goal is conversions and sales (not just rankings and traffic) you do SEO differently. Questions you should be asking: - Which relevant keywords have purchase intent? (purchase intents convert much better than informational intents) - How do we track organic conversions? (double-down on keywords/pages that generate organic sales) - How does SEO support conversions on other channels? (direct conversion may not be the best organic conversion strategy) Consider a more conversion-focused and multi-channel approach to SEO. Growing organic sales (not just traffic) ensures that SEO has a real impact on your business.

One thing most people don’t tell you when rankings drop suddenly? They rush to “fix” things. The playbook is familiar: rewrite content, push keywords, add links, and somehow, that overreaction does more harm than good. A fall in rankings is rarely a call for extra effort. More often, it’s a signal to bring things back to stability and clarity. Before touching the site, I go to Search Console. -Are impressions down, or only clicks? -Is the drop limited to certain pages, or across the domain? -Are competitors seeing the same movement? That alone tells you whether you’re dealing with a real issue or just a noisy SERP shift. Steady impressions mean content isn’t the problem. Collapsing impressions mean you shouldn’t touch everything at once. This matters even more in local and finance SEO. Trust is slow to rebuild there, and panic signals only make it worse. Most recoveries I’ve seen came from doing less, not more. Identify the root cause first, whether technical, algorithmic, or SERP-related, correct the obvious mistakes, leave everything else steady, and allow re-evaluation. When rankings fall, it’s rarely an emergency. What you do next is what counts. — Aditya Raj Singh | Local visibility for Upstate NY wealth firms