SEO is a Process of Growth – Not a One Hit Wonder

Today’s post is not as “how to” as most of my other posts and is made up of my personal experience as an SEOconsultant. One thing that comes up with every client when discussing an SEO campaign, or more specifically “how to rank higher on Google”, is the concept of time. Everyone wants to know how long search engine optimisation is going to take before you are going to see the fruits.

This can be a real problem because a lot of people online (who know very little about SEO) make out you can perform SEO as a one off and this will produce results. Just this week I was looking at a local SEO company page promising results for a one off payment of £400. I have never heard so much rubbish in my life, sure they might rank you for your company or domain name but what good is that if no one knows your company?

You see SEO is an ongoing and in most cases never ending process of growing your online business. If you want to keep your high ranking using Google SEO techniques then you are going to have to keep on top of SEO work. As your site begins to rank higher and develop search engine traffic, there is less work to do, but if you stop building links and adding new content your site will eventually drop down the serps.

When ever discussing SEO in this way I like to use my plant analogy, this may sound a little weird but stay with me. If any of you have ever tried growing a plant of any sort you will know that you don’t just plant the seed and leave it. If you do this the chances are your plant is not going to grow and even if it does it will not produce the result you first intended.

The first step to SEO is choosing your niche or industry area. You need to be asking yourself where your product fits into the marketplace. This initial process also includes doing your keyword research and competition analysis, what keywords are your targeted audience searching with? Is your site going to be able to grow effectively in your desired “plot”? Who is your competition? Are they using SEO? What areas can you exploit?

These things are an important part of the search engine optimisation process and attention to detail is required in order to produce the result you want. Plant the wrong seeds and you’ll produce the wrong plant.

In SEO terms this is ensuring your site is build in the correct way, getting this stage wrong can lead to long term ramifications and seriously hamper progress.

Just like with a plant you need to ensure the ground is filled with rich soil, nutrients and is weed free, the same applies to your site. You need a clean architecture, a keyword rich file structure. Your keywords need to be prominent in the correct positions of your pages, your content needs to be informative and natural. On top of all this the site needs to be user friendly and encourage interaction.

If you get this stage right you are creating an ideal environment for growth.

Like I said at the beginning one of the biggest SEO fallacies is that “SEO is an overnight job”, a one off project never to be considered again after completion. This is grossly untrue and if you waste money on consultants who claim this your going to find yourself disappointed.

In order to achieve the results you want you need to water your plant, link building, content generation, analytics tracking are all needed to ensure your site grows effectively. If a keyword is not converting then change it and target a new one, monitor your rankings to ensure your making progress, if you aren’t diagnose the problem and change it.

This type of work is continuous for as long as your site is around, stop watering and feeding a plant and it will soon die.

Still using the plant analogy Google is a little like the sun, without it there is no SEO, no growth. Due to this fact you also have to be on top of how Google changes, as it continually does to target the “bad guys”. Closely monitor your pages to see which ones are flourishing in the Google sun and the ones that may need more water.

In terms of SEO there is no quick way to having your lovely plant grown instantly, you need to start from scratch, it is a slow process but very fulfilling when you begin to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

I know this wasn’t like my usual posts but I felt like changing my approach to a more philosophical one

Thanks for reading

Tim