SEO Can Be Frustrating But Don’t Give Up Hope!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

As a small business owner I am responsible (with the help of the Brick Marketing team) for creating, executing and maintaining my own SEO campaign—so I understand firsthand how frustrating the SEO process can be. Yes, SEO can be incredibly frustrating and a little confusing if you don’t fully understand what you’re getting yourself into but that doesn’t mean you should give up on your SEO program!

Here are 3 ways SEO can be very frustrating and how to keep the faith:

Frustration: Google does what it wants when it wants.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s a Google world and we all just live in it. I know that for some site owners, and plenty of SEOs, it feels like Google just does what it wants when it wants to (even if it seems contradictory). How are you supposed to keep your SEO in line with what Google says and does when it feels like they are changing the rules every three months? Just when you finally get the hang of one tactic you have to learn something new!

Solution: Play by the rules and you won’t get burned.
If you’re the kind of site owner that “chases” the algorithm this is both incredibly frustrating and incredibly dangerous—you run the risk of getting caught by the next algorithm update and watching your SEO campaign go up in smoke. My advice? Never invest in any SEO tactic that might come back to haunt you in the long run. I never lose a wink of sleep at night over anything I have done for my own company site or my clients’ sites because I know it was all well within the Webmaster Guidelines.

Frustration: SEO takes too long.
There is no other way to put it—SEO is a long term process. The actions you take today might not bear any real fruit for 3-6 months. And in a world where businesses demand immediate ROI for every dollar they spend 3-6 months can feel like an eternity. How can a website be expected to invest in something when you can’t measure the results for 6+ months? When do you decide it is or is not working? What if you’re just wasting money and you don’t even know it!?

Solution: If you need immediate traffic invest in PPC but keep the SEO wheels turning.
Yup, SEO takes a long time. But if you need an immediate surge in traffic you might want to try PPC. Keep in mind that PPC doesn’t work for every brand or industry and depending on the keywords you’re targeting it can get very expensive very quickly. For instance, 10 years ago I might have only paid a dollar or two for “SEO” as a PPC keyword; now I could easily pay $15! But if you just get into the mindset that SEO takes a long time and that’s just the way it is it’s a lot easier to deal with. Start the process now, gets the wheels turning and then supplement with PPC and other online marketing efforts.

Frustration: SEO is too complicated to do alone.
Onsite optimization, link building, content marketing, social media marketing, video marketing—when does it all end?! There are so many parts to a white hat SEO campaign that it’s impossible to do alone. A small business owner has to wear a dozen hats as is just to keep the doors open, they definitely don’t have time to write two blog posts every day. And a SMB marketing manager might have a small team but their plates are equally full and no one on staff really “knows” SEO. It’s just too complicated for any one person to learn or do alone.

Solution: Invest in your own SEO education and the education of your team.
SEO isn’t rocket science or brain surgery. Once you understand the basics is actually a fairly straightforward process. Invest in your own SEO education and take an SEO training course, read a few industry blogs, signup for a webinar and so forth. Once you get a good idea of what an SEO program is supposed to look like/entail you can customize it to meet the needs and capabilities of your own organization.