So we’ve finished up with the on-site SEO on your website, now we’re playing the waiting game. It’s in the Search Engine’s (hereafter SE’s) hands now. I’ll still be carefully watching and adjusting the campaign to suit the SE’s needs.

A little bit more about SEO

SEO is a set of Best Practices which are implemented to present a site in the best light for the Search Engines. All my SEO techniques are compliant with Google’s Search Engine Optimization Best Practices. Still SEO is like any other form of marketing; it is a long term strategy that should be a permanent part of how you operate your business online. There is not magic wand you can wave to see your listing suddenly blow your competitors site off the map and get you in that top spot.

SEO Requires Patience

When undertaking your SEO project, one thing to remember is that you will not see results overnight; SEO takes time & continuous efforts to ramp up. How much time is dependent on many factors including:

• How old is your site URL?
  The age of your website domain (URL) determines how trustworthy it is considered. If your site has been around a while and has quality content that is useful to search engine users it will take less time to get better rankings than a brand new site. A new site can take anywhere from 1-6 months to show up in the search engines with the best SEO techniques. For existing websites, depending on the quality of the pre-SEO, it could take anywhere from 1 week to several months for the adjustments you made to result in new positions.
• How ‘bad’ was your site before?
  If your website had technical barriers that we’re previously stopping the search engine spiders from accessing your content, often you’ll see results fairly quickly. But don’t forget, visibility increases over time and continued optimization efforts.
• Does your web site have Inbound Links ?
  Search Engines count links from other related sites pointing to your site count as votes of confidence. The more inbound links you have, the more trust your website has. Trust is a big factor in visibility on all the major search engines. We will work to build links now to build your Search Engine Trust. If you’d like to suggest sites to request links from, please submit them here.

• Who are Your Competitors and what are they doing?
  You want to be in a position where your SEO efforts are comparable to that of your competitors. But we have an end goal of going above and beyond what they’re doing. For example; if your competitors are optimizing for the phrase “Los Angeles Dog Walking” and their website has 1,000 inbound links and 40 pages of content, we’ll need to work toward that goal in order to be able to compete for visibility.
• What’s up with the Search Engines?
  All search engines update data at different times. Google may index your site data within a week after you make your adjustments and take another week to shift your position for the keyword. MSN may take 1-2 weeks to index your data and immediately update your new positioning. Yahoo can take up to a month to update you web site data and positioning. Be patient it will happen.
• How competitive are your phrases?
  Competitive target phrases, take longer to get results. You’ll also need more inbound links and quality content to attract the search engines back to your site. We have tried to pick the best keyword phrases possible for you you. But if you’re hoping to achieve visibility for something as broad as “SEO” it’s unlikely to happen with any SEO.

Search Engine Optimization takes diligence and lots of patience to achieve great Search Engine positioning. We have to be patient, do our work, check our rankings and always make sure the information on the website is relevant to what you want to list for in searches. Remember free placement does not happen over night but we’re still onwards and upwards!

If you’re looking for a quick fix

Your Search Engine Optimization should be part of your overall Search Engine Marketing plan. If you have available funds, pay for paid inclusion or pay per click advertising for the keywords you wish to target while you are waiting for the natural placement to occur. When you start to get great placement in the free ads area, turn off the pay per click ads for those words. Now you’re getting free traffic.

If you are interested in PFIS or PPC contact me here….