SEO TIPS: The Long and Winding Road…

A common complaint from webmasters just getting started in SEO is that it takes so long. Many webmasters expect to see results from day one of an overhaul and start getting panicked when they don’t see them. What has to be kept in mind is that SEO is a process. it is a series of steps that have to be climbed one by one.

It takes time for search engine rankings to change because it takes time for indexing to be conducted. New rankings don’t magically appear in the weeks following your site launch – the process takes months.  While you may snag some #1 rankings for a few long tail phrases in an obscure niche, but to rank your entire site competitively is a slow, painstaking process. That is what those who are new to SEO need to understand.

Regarding long term expectations of your SEO, there are several factors to consider. How optimized is your site? Do you have navigation issues that could prevent the spiders from crawling your site?  If your established site had no optimization in place at all, opening the site up and giving it a fresh look and an easy to navigate format is the first step, so always start there.

Begin bay asking yourself, is my site flexible? Is it easy to change things as needed to comply with new guidelines and best practices, or is it a burdensome process? If your current back end is inflexible, more time will be required to implement positive changes and to increase the productivity of your content management system. That not only costs you time, it costs you money and potentially some lost conversions.

How old is your website? If your site is new and has no links, Google may not have even seen you yet. Your site may never be indexed or may be indexed and then removed if you don’t address your linking issues promptly. You have to get a couple of links and submit a sitemap if you really want to get indexed. Don’t buy into the scam that someone knows someone at Google and can get around this.

If you have an old site, you may or may not have links. With no links, you need to get moving if you want results in the next year! If you have a number of links already, Google will probably get you re-indexed as soon as they receive notification you are updating. To get the ball rolling, you don’t need the best links in town, you just need a couple so Google gets the message you’re open for business.

Here is another thing to keep in mind – it doesn’t matter what industry and target phrases you are concentrating on because search results will take time to show. Just how long, is anyone’s guess. There is no guarantee on them showing in 60 days or less or any other such time-frame. Don’t give up! Keep concentrating on SEO efforts, watching the long tail and continue analyzing your traffic. Before long, the results will show and you will be on your way.