So – you want to bring more traffic to your site. That’s why you’re here. If you don’t know what SEO is – start with this.
It takes time
First off – SEO does not bring instant traffic to your website. If you absolutely need traffic in the next three months, consider Google Adwords or some other form of Pay Per Click advertising. A well-built and optimized site takes time to climb the SERPs (search engine results page). This can range from 3 to 6 months (or more, depending on the competition of the keywords you are targeting).
There is no guarantee
SEO gurus don’t have special contracts with Google that allow you to jump up in the rankings. All we can do is influence Google’s crawler to favor your page more than that of another site. Sometimes - you simply can’t win. If another company has a well optimized site and has been first in the rankings for 5 years, chances are it isn’t going down anytime soon. Google is all about authority. Think age and popularity. Age being the length of time a site has been published and in Google’s index. Popularity being the quantity and quality of relevant, incoming links a site has. Obviously, nobody can change the age of a website – but, popularity can be influenced with a good marketing plan.
There are standards
You can hurt your website’s rankings by being overly aggressive. If Google thinks your site is spam or is cheating its way to the top of the SERPs, it will ding you. When Google dings you – it hurts. You may simply lose some keyword ranking positions, or you might be temporarily banned. When discussing SEO with a service provider, ask them about how they practice SEO. Compare their responses with the standards provided by Google Webmaster Central.
Trust the experts
You know what your company does best – we won’t argue that. But SEO gurus have a better understanding about how people search and what words are more cost-effective than others. For example, let’s assume you are a computer repair company. To you, relevant keywords may be: Computers, PC, IT, Repair, Software, Laptops, Desktops, etc. To a SEO guru, more effective keywords may be: computer repair service, laptop repair, pc repair, it support, computer support specialist, etc (only examples – not based on actual data). Typically, vague words like “Computers” have extremely high competition and may not even be relevant to your searcher. In this case – the user is more than likely searching to purchase a new computer, and not for a computer repair company.
As a summary, here are a few things to keep in mind when considering SEO:
- It is not instant traffic
- It is not guaranteed traffic
- There are standards for SEO (right and wrong way to perform SEO)
- Trust your service provider to help with keywords