SEO can be a challenge in terms of marketing a business, especially for startups. It’s important for any startup to get the word out about the nature of their business while reaching an audience that matters, and to advertise the new, unexplored, and interesting ideas they bring to the market. That’s where having a good SEO strategy comes into play. When it comes to online marketing, most businesses rely excessively on Web analytics to decide what is (or isn’t) effective. What they find affects future decisions about where to invest time and money. Even radical decisions like firing internal staff, replacing an SEO consultant/agency, or doing away with SEO altogether are made on the basis of data thrown up by their stats package. An erroneous SEO strategy thus can have a catastrophic effect on the growth of the business. These are the primary challenges in the field of SEO businesses might inevitably face :

1) Traditional SEO Is Barely Enough
SERPs are not static. In fact, they vary by user location. Mobile search is exploding. Google knows where your users are when they search and presents them with locally relevant suggestions. Social signals are also being thrown into the mix. What other customers are saying about you and your business is given more weight than other on-page SEO elements. Client reviews are more important than ever before.
Coping with this new reality is important in your SEO efforts.
• In 2018, your search strategy should be geo-targeted and multi-pronged. You need an international SEO strategy, a national SEO strategy, and a local SEO strategy.
• Get your business listed for the right local search terms.
• Invite customer testimonials. Display social proof to attract ready-to-buy clients on the move.

2) Prepare for the Mobile Index
Google began testing its mobile-first index, which focuses on mobile versions of websites for its ranking signals, only resorting to the desktop version if no mobile version exists. This has been a long time coming, as the first whispers began over a year ago, and Google has consistently informed us most of their searches are mobile – but the catch is their index is desktop. The mobile index seems to have many of the same user heuristics as a desktop in that qualitative measures such as long click and dwell time seem to continue to show significant impact on rankings

• When the mobile index goes live, it must be crucial for a site to be properly prepared, otherwise, there could be massive losses in not only ranking visibility but more importantly in organic generated traffic; critical to conversions.
• Make sure that a ‘mobile first crawling approach’ delivers the same results, e.g. make sure your content is fully available and accessible, integrate structured data to mobile view as well, and apply performance optimization strategies tailored to mobile

3) Google & Your Market Are Not Static
If your website ranked well and pulled in a flood of organic traffic last year (or earlier this year), that doesn’t automatically mean that this happy state of affairs will continue into next year. Without a plan to defend past results and a strategy to fight night and day against fresh competition, you can’t expect to continue seeing upward trends in Google Analytics — or profit curves that move in a positive direction.

• Allocate money and resources in your budget to defend your visibility, traffic, conversions, and sales.
• Competition is stiff and getting fiercer day by day.
• Companies without a defensive strategy could lose — and maybe even go bankrupt

4) Prepare for voice search
With the likes of Siri paving the way for the Echo’s and Alexa’s of the world, Voice Search is seriously having its moment. Voice search and similar digital assistants will change the search ecosystem in dramatic and unforeseen ways. Prepare to shift tactics quickly and drastically as the needs & requirements to thrive in this new world of SEO become clearer.
• Content: You should include more terms like ‘who, what, where etc.
• Optimize for more long-tail keywords.
• Consider adding a Q&A service to your site that allows users to ask questions to which you later post answers.
• Schema markup

5) Frequent Changes On The SERPs
Search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed a lot. Google is aggressively promoting vertical/universal search, placing its own products above organic search results which are pushed further down.
1 ] On a 1024×768 pixel screen, a user must scroll to see their listings.
2 ]Clients have to compete against many more sites.
3 ]There are many more elements clamoring for attention and clicks
• Even if you’ve had relatively little growth this year, you’ve not failed. Just retaining traffic amidst all these changes is an admirable achievement. You’re doing something right. Find out what that is and keep doing it.
• Be realistic in your expectations. It’s harder than ever before to predict the future!

As you’ve seen, there are challenges galore in SEO. That’s why it is so essential that you find out whether you are looking at the right data before planning and budgeting for the coming year. Unless you are aware of these pitfalls and remain diligent in digging deep into your data, there’s a good chance that you won’t see all that you need to make a qualified and correct decision.