Remember the phrase “slow and steady wins the race”? That’s a good thing to keep in mind when hiring someone to handle your search engine optimization. Fast and furious SEO will yield few results. The exciting news? If you do it right, the online market can be dominated, profits will skyrocket, and you could have more work than is manageable. Not bad, eh?
It should be noted that this won’t happen overnight. Full results may not even happen within six months. Realistically, every SEO campaign is unique and prior to research, it can be difficult to nail down an exact time frame. But when you’re getting started with SEO, concentrate on the long-term and set your goals accordingly. If you are shortsighted, your success will be short-term.
If you’re in it for the long-term, there is much more to gain. If someone is selling you on a short-term (1-6 months) SEO plan and promising the moon, you should run! The proper foundation must be set, consistent work must be fulfilled, and time must pass for SEO to work. And after all the initial work, your SEO should be maintained and reinforced to make sure that you keep the rankings you achieve.
-
1
-
2
Comparing SEO to Short-Term Marketing Solutions
Depending on your situation, quality SEO might seem expensive, but there isn’t a better way to spend money on your business. In 1998, Google averaged 9,800 searches per day. By 2011, it had increased exponentially to over 4.7 billion searches per day.
Think it would do good to be on the front page of Google when someone searches for your product or industry? It’s a no-brainer! Money spent on top-notch SEO comes right back into your pocket because it will increase traffic to your website, which in turn increases the likelihood of people purchasing your product or service.
What good would spending thousands of dollars on a website do if no one could find it? It wouldn’t matter how awesome it was if traffic wasn’t generated by search engines. Americans spent over 200 billion dollars shopping online in 2011. How do you get consumers to your site? Dominate with SEO.
What Makes SEO Work?
SEO is successful because of the long term. It takes time to build a quality website and lay the foundation for quality and correct search engine optimization. Ask anyone who owns a website empire how long it took to get there. It isn’t an overnight process. And that is a good thing, because banking on a short-term return, such as marketing with print or magazine ads, can be super risky and have a considerable lower payout than marketing avenues that provide long-term benefits.
Also, be sure to remember that a “front page site” requires constant upkeep. Websites don’t stay at the top by looking back on what they did. They keep pushing, optimizing, creating engaging content and searching for new tactics to stay on top.
The bottom line is there is no investment like SEO. Other avenues can increase profits over the short term, or for a season, but nothing has an ROI quite like SEO does. If you invest in a long-term SEO plan with the right company, it isn’t a question of whether or not you will see the return, but when. Invest in the long run. No one wants to be a one-hit wonder anyway!
