Seeing your pages rank in Google can feel reassuring, but rankings alone don’t tell the full SEO story. If you’re ranking for the wrong keywords, that shiny visibility might not be helping you at all.
Not all traffic is good traffic
More visitors don’t automatically mean better results. If people land on your page expecting one thing and find something else, they’ll leave just as quickly as they arrived.
This usually comes down to search intent. Someone searching ‘what is technical SEO’ is looking to learn, not to buy. If they land on a sales-heavy service page, they’ll bounce, and Google notices that behaviour.
So while you might be getting traffic, it’s not the kind that sticks, converts, or supports long-term rankings.
When rankings look good, but results don’t
One of the clearest signs you’re ranking for the wrong keywords is when Google Search Console tells a confusing story:
- High impressions, low clicks
- Decent rankings, poor engagement
- Traffic that doesn’t lead anywhere useful
It can feel like SEO is ‘working’ but somehow not delivering real, commercial value (which defeats the point of investing in SEO at all). That’s often because the page is visible for searches it was never designed to satisfy.
Trying to rank for everything (and ending up ranking for nothing)
Another common issue is trying to make one page do too much. When a single page targets lots of loosely related keywords, it often ends up diluting its message.
Instead of being the best answer for one clear query, the page becomes an average answer for many. Worse still, it can start competing with other pages on your site that would actually be a better fit, a classic case of keyword cannibalisation.
Why does intent mismatch slow growth?
Google’s goal is simple: show users the most helpful result. If users regularly land on your page and don’t find what they’re looking for, Google may decide your page isn’t the best match, even for keywords you actually care about.
Over time, this makes it harder to rank for:
- Higher-intent, conversion-focused terms
- More competitive keywords in your niche
- Queries that genuinely match your offering
In other words, ranking for the wrong keywords can quietly block progress for the right ones.
How to Get Back on Track
Fixing the issue doesn’t mean starting from scratch. A few smart adjustments can make a big difference:
- Review the queries your pages actually rank for
- Map keywords to pages, rather than pages to keywords.
- Group keywords by intent, not just topic
- Separate informational and commercial content
- Tighten page focus so each URL has a clear job
Successful SEO isn’t about ranking for the most keywords; it’s about ranking for the right ones. When your pages match what users are actually searching for, engagement improves, conversions increase, and rankings become far more stable.