If your website is not performing well in the Natural search results, it's quite possible there are structural problems that can be pinpointed and addressed. Frequent hurdles we encounter include duplicate content, lack of content, poor keyword selection, misuse of redirects, and always-scary canonicalization issues. Sometimes the flaws can be traced back to decisions that were made when a site was built, and other times things were mucked up later on. Many issues are fixable, but none will fix themselves.
No matter how long things have been awry, it's essential to not only identify the issues, but to figure out who is going to resolve them. Whether it's an in-house person, a consultant or an agency, make tackling the work a priority. Unlike SEM, where changes can be made and immediate results can be seen, SEO is more gradual, which sometimes translates to a de-prioritization of the tasks by in-house teams who always have other fires to extinguish.
Please be careful not to be confuse the types of issues mentioned above with ongoing content development, link building and social media, which are integral components of successful SEO and which require an enduring commitment of resources to achieve meaningful benefits.
Once fixed, these kinds of one-time SEO issues usually don't recreate themselves later, so bite the bullet, get the work done, then move on. In the spirit of moving on, I hope that you have wonderful holiday season!
