SEO is Never Done
One of the hardest things to get my clients to fully embrace is that SEO is a long-term, ongoing process. It’s a marathon, not a sprint! You’re link building activities build upon themselves to help increase your brand presence online, your trust factor with the search engines and your overall online success. You shouldn’t quit your SEO activities just because it looks like your goals are being accomplished. It’s not unusual for a site to slip backwards once they stop their SEO. Just because you’ve achieved the ranking position you wanted, that doesn’t mean someone else can’t take it away from you! The best defense is a good offense and SEO is the best offense you have online.
I once had a client who wanted to give SEO a “try,” but wasn’t sure if they wanted to commit for the long haul. I understand that. If you’ve never done any kind of on-site optimization or link building before, seeing a full SEO plan laid out before you can be very intimidating. We agreed to do a dry run, so to speak, for three months. When the trial period was over, we’d discuss whether or not he would like to continue his SEO efforts.
The three month trial period went better than I could have hoped. His company worked in a small niche where most of his competition wasn’t doing too much in terms of SEO. Scenarios like that are great opportunities for companies to really own the best keywords and dominate the search results. After the three months he was ranking in the top positions for all his chosen keywords, his traffic was up and so were his sales! Everything he could have wanted to see the value of SEO was staring us in the face.
Know what his reaction was? “I think we’re good as is.”
I couldn’t believe it. He pulled the plug on the SEO strategy and walked away! I tried to explain to him that SEO requires consistent actions and a continuing approach, but he thought the three months worth of on-site optimization and link building where enough to carry him on.
SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. If you are seeing good results, that doesn’t mean you can call it a day and let it run itself. The Internet never ends. Every day there is more content being created than you could consume if you spent the rest of your lifetime trying to do so. That means that there is an unbelievably large amount of clutter that you have to make your brand stand out amongst. If you don’t have the determination to settle down and strap in for the long haul, you’ll never get the most out of your SEO and you long-term success could suffer because of it.
5 Responses to “SEO is Never Done”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
So true Nick – your SEO efforts have to be continuous and new unique content added constantly to stay fresh so that your competitors don’t beat you to it! And it can certainly be a tough job sometimes to explain that to clients……….
Thanks for swinging by and sharing your comment!
Take Care,
Nick
I think once success is reached, people may tend to rest on their laurels. I have done it from time to time with regards to SEO, but then I get the “wake up” call when my traffic dips, or doesn’t increase.
SEO is an ongoing work effort, and you must ensure that you review and change your SEO strategy on a regular basis, as SEO tend to change.
[...] SEO is a long term process. It takes time to see results but when you do, they can be “delicious”. Like Cookie Monster could not control his urge to eat all of his chocolate chip cookies, some website owners or developers can’t control their urge to go overboard with their link building as soon as they see some success. Instead of chanting, “Me want cookie!” they chant “Me want links!” and want to double, triple, or even quadruple their link building. What they don’t realize is that they found success initially because they built their links in a way that was natural. As websites age, more links will build gradually. Typically 20-25 link building tactics per month is really all that is necessary. The Cookie Monster approach might get you 500 links in a month but they won’t all be quality links and that strategy could also raise a red flag to the search engines. In addition to wanting to go link building crazy, SEO Cookie Monsters often think that they should use their knowledge to create lots of other websites (microsites) that will rank well in order to outdo their competition. This isn’t the best strategy because it is much more important to do a very good job of building up one site rather than a poor job of building up many. [...]
SEO’s main selling point (to me) is that it is an ongoing opportunity. By this I mean; there is always room to improve ranking for current keywords, as well as opportunities to find and rank for new ones.
When I discuss SEO with potential new clients, I always frame it as an ongoing effort to build their business. As the economy cools, I point out that competition for shrinking market shares will become more intense, and that a solid SEO strategy will support a company’s marketing efforts, even in tough times.