My SEO isn’t working? The #2 Common Mistake

Digital Marketing Articles
A man sitting on top of the question mark pondering why is my SEO not working?

As you might expect, we regularly hear from businesses that are shopping around to improve their local SEO or national SEO performance. Often, they’re unsure exactly why their SEO isn’t delivering results but they can see the warning signs: declining visibility, lower conversion rates, and fewer enquiries or sales.

In our previous blog article, “My SEO isn’t working? 1st common mistake”, we looked at one of the more obvious and easily identifiable issues that can hold a website back. In this follow-up, we explore a more complex yet very common SEO mistake. Moreover, it’s one that frequently goes unnoticed but can seriously undermine your long-term search performance if left unaddressed.

Focusing on Rankings Instead of Search Intent

One of the most common reasons SEO fails is focusing on keyword rankings instead of search intent.

A website may rank for high-volume keywords but still generate low enquiries and poor conversions if the content doesn’t match what users are actually searching for.

What Is Search Intent in SEO?

Search intent refers to the reason behind a user’s search query. Google prioritises content that best satisfies this intent, not just pages that repeat keywords. There are four main types of search intent:

  • Informational – users want answers or explanations
  • Navigational – users are looking for a specific brand or website
  • Commercial – users are comparing services or solutions
  • Transactional – users are ready to take action or buy

Service pages that fail to align with commercial or transactional intent rarely convert well, even if they rank.

Why Rankings Alone Don’t Deliver Results

Ranking on page one does not guarantee leads or sales. If a page attracts users who are researching rather than buying, engagement will be low and bounce rates will increase — a negative signal for Google.

High rankings without intent alignment often result in:

  • Poor conversion rates
  • High bounce rates
  • Short time on page
  • Declining long-term visibility

Google’s algorithms increasingly reward relevance, usefulness, and user satisfaction over keyword repetition.

Award

How This SEO Mistake Happens

This issue typically occurs when:

  • Keywords are chosen based on volume, not relevance
  • Content is written for search engines instead of users
  • Old SEO tactics are reused without adapting to modern updates
  • Pages lack clear calls to action or conversion paths

Over time, this weakens both user experience and organic performance.

How to Fix It: Intent-Led SEO Strategy

An effective SEO strategy starts with understanding what your ideal customer wants to achieve when they search.

Best practice includes:

  • Targeting keywords with clear buying intent
  • Structuring pages to answer user questions quickly
  • Creating content that supports decision-making
  • Aligning on-page SEO with real business goals

At HML Marketing, we focus on intent-led SEO that helps websites:

  • Rank for the right searches
  • Attract qualified traffic
  • Increase enquiries and conversions
  • Achieve sustainable, long-term growth

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Our local teams in South Wales, Newport SEO, Bridgend SEO, Swansea SEO, Cardiff SEO.

Quick Query HML

What is National SEO?

National SEO is a long-term investment that can separate your business from the competitors. Although similar to local SEO, National SEO focuses primarily on ranking for broad keyword terms rather than ranking for specific geographical terms.

Optimising a website involves many activities to increase your rankings and likelihood of people finding your website. We want to increase your websites' relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Here's just a few of the activities we employ -

  • editing website content, adding new content
  • doing HTML, and associated coding
  • promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links
  • optimising mobile search as it's surpassed desktop search
  • promoting mobile first on search is key

HML pledges' to offer the very best value online marketing service to all our members and our guaranteed commitment to outperform your competitors, generate you more income through our rigorous SEO work and comprehensive open reporting.

Seo 6370764

More Options for National SEO?

Find out about what's included in our National SEO membership packages and do compare us, as we pride ourselves on offering the best value comprehensive SEO with guaranteed commitment. National SEO Guide & Pricing

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO (search engine optimisation) targets local people doing local searches for your products or services which accounts for nearly half of all searches.

46%
of searches now have a 'local intent'

So what is local search optimisation?

Local SEO is similar to National SEO in that they both aim to improve the visibility of your website in a web search engine's unpaid results (SERP - search engine results page) often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. The higher ranked on the search results page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive. These visitors can then be converted into customers.

Local SEO, however, differs in that it is focused on optimising a business' for local people searching for its products or services. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with physical locations, like a grocery store or dentist's office, or service-area businesses that operate throughout a certain geographic area, like an electrician or house cleaning company.

With good enough SEO and authority, anyone in the world can rank for a search query like ‘how to fix my dripping tap’. But when someone is looking to purchase locally a product or service, it becomes ‘plumbers near me’ or ‘best plumber in [their location]’. That’s a local search and you’ll need local SEO to ensure you rank high enough for people for find you.

How do we optimise for local searches?

Local seo mobile

As these people searching, typically include a location or ‘near me’ (which aren’t even necessary if searching using Google Maps), search engines understand that what the searcher wants is business suggestions or lists based on location, and so that’s precisely what they offer up in the local search engine results pages (SERPs).

Ranking for local search involves a similar process to general SEO but includes some specific elements to rank a business for local search. Local searches trigger search engines to display two types of results:

On the Search engine results page: local organic results. The local organic results include web pages related to the search query with local relevance. These often include directories such as Yelp, Thompson Local, Facebook.

The 'Local Pack' displays businesses that have signed up with Google and taken ownership of their 'Google My Business' (GMB) listing.

This includes everything from claiming a business listing to ensuring a franchise location appears in a local search on Google (a process known as location data or citation management). It can also extend to managing online ratings and reviews, local-centric social media engagement, and beyond.