SEO is No Overnight Task
Read any worthwhile article on search engine optimization (SEO), and the message will be the same. To get to the top of Google, the first piece of advice you will come across will most likely be: “Create good quality content”. Google wants nothing more from a website than fresh, quality content to add to its search index. But researching the right topic and producing a punchy article is half the battle when it comes to getting traffic from search engines.
You could be writing about a revolutionary cure for cancer but the story alone won’t get you to the top of Google. If you want to get onto the front page of Google, you can expect to be in for a wait. But with the possibility of generating thousands of qualified leads to your business website each week, getting on the first page is a task worth your time and effort.
Just getting a newly created website onto Google could take days, or even longer. First, you need to notify Google that your site exists. Then Google will begin crawling your site. The easiest way to alert Google your site needs to be crawled is through Webmaster Tools.
*TIP* Google might only visit your website once every week, two weeks, or monthly depending on how frequently you update your content.
You must decide while building the content what keyword or phrase you then want to rank for. You can be sure there’s a competitor who is already on the first page of the search results. You must consider how you will convince Google that your content is worthy of a first page listing too. Google wants to show searchers the most trustworthy and relevant links, and invests a lot of time to make sure that their results will satisfy users of their search engine.
Getting to the top fast.
Are there ways to speed up the process? Yes, one of the factors Google looks at is social media interaction. A sudden surge in social media activity might help your website rise up in the rankings quickly. But those gains will not last for long. There must be value found on the website to maintain a high rank. Rising quickly without a viral surge requires a lot more proof that your content is trustworthy.
Proving your content is AMAZIN’
Once you have written a piece about your revolutionary cancer cure, Googlebot will need to see some sort of evidence that people think it’s of any value. This might come from other websites sharing a link to your news piece or a surge of social media activity discussing your cure for cancer. Google will also monitor how many searchers click your link in the search results instead of others, (which is another reason that SEO takes time).
Is SEO worth the wait?
You might be thinking that all this waiting around is an unneeded setback to your business but there are plenty of benefits to SEO for those who wait.
- Beat your competition – No one goes beyond the first page of Google, in fact fewer than 40% look beyond the first three listings, focusing on your business’s search engine optimization will help you to bypass your competitors, especially if they have no web-presence at all!
- Increase local & national visibility – Google’s ‘Pigeon Algorithm’ gives enhanced visibility to local businesses so you can reach targeted searchers in your local area and nationally.
- Cost-effective – If you work with the right professionals, SEO is one of the most affordable and most effective marketing methods to increase your online presence.
- Long-term standings – Once you have increased your web position you can expect to remain there for some time without the need to continually spend more of your marketing budget. The right keywords can generate thousands of highly targeted leads to your business website with no additional costs.
- 24/h marketing on autopilot – Your website is marketed to potential customers on auto pilot, 24/7 with search listings, even when your business is closed.
Everyone has an opinion about search engine optimization. What is undeniable is the fact that search allows almost any business to reach its target market without breaking the bank; and that is something that makes SEO considerably hard to beat.