SEO is a Marathon

You have built your website and monitored your traffic as closely as a mother watches her child, but you are not seeing traffic jump the way you expected it to. You have placed your links with care, your content is fine, and you’re scratching your head trying to understand why after a whole month you are not resting in the top position on Google yet. If you’ve ever felt this way, there are a few possible reasons why, and there is good news ahead for you – if you can stick to a plan.

The first thing to know is that top rankings do not materialize over night. In especially competitive keywords it can take months to crack the top ten! It is very rare that the new kid on the block will topple the king of the hill with ease. Keep in mind, that as hard as you work to climb the rankings is how hard everyone else will have to work to claim your spot – if they dare try!

Further keep in mind that SEO is not a one shot deal. What was working great last year may not work this year. You need to keep yourself informed on the latest trends and changes to SERP algorithms so you don’t get left behind and lose the hard you put in already. Good SEO is something you commit to on a regular basis, not something you review once a year and scramble to adapt to.

Don’t be headstrong and take the approach that you can do it all on your own. If you want to take a hands on approach to the SEO of your site, you have to study SEO just as you do the trends related to your business. If you find that you are not getting satisfactory results on your own, get the help of a professional. Just as you would hire a pro to fix your car or do your taxes, your SEO needs are no different.

Don’t acquire a domain and just start tossing copy on page after page with keywords crammed in thinking that will work. You should already have copywriters in mind that can provide you with unique content that hits your niche perfectly. What you need to remember is that hitting the proper keyword density and having great title tags only goes so far. Getting people to your site is one thing, but converting those visits to sales is quite another. You need content that is reader friendly and actually compels them to start placing orders.

Finally, be smart and blog! Ideally, you want to post one fresh piece of unique content to your blog at least five days each week. Search engines love blogs. People love blogs because it provides them with a chance to comment and feel involved. The benefit is that involved people are people that pass your blog on to others which increases your exposure while you are still getting out relevant information about your business and referring traffic to your main site through links.