Things you should know as an SEO client

SEO is a long-term strategy (think years) and takes time to see the full value – sometimes 6 to 12 months depending on the industry and competition out there. Have a brand new site and are going up against sites that are well established or been getting SEO for a while? It will definitely take time to outrank them. Otherwise Google would be doing a terrible job!

 

SEO is not about fooling search engines into ranking your website. Search Engine Optimisation is quite simply making your website valuable for visitors and therefore making it worthy of ranking in Search Engines. Another way to look at it is being the “best answer” to the questions people are searching for (see point 6).

 

Good SEO is about getting targeted and qualified traffic to your website, not as much traffic as you possibly can.

 

First page rankings may take 3 – 12 months for certain search phrases, and depends on many varying factors. How recent is your content? Is your site mobile friendly? How quickly does it load? Is it ‘ticking all the boxes’ so to speak?

 

In many industries, there are many other businesses competing for ranking. Simply consider both your offline and online competition. There are dozens and sometimes hundreds of other businesses with websites like yours that are trying to rank for the same phrases as you.

 

Google and Bing are not there to promote your business. They make their money by providing the best answer to people’s searches – good SEO makes your site the “best answer”.

 

Be realistic about the keywords/search terms you think you should rank for. At the same token, there is no point trying to gain visibility for phrases that no one is searching for. You need to find a good balance of search terms that are actually being used but that will equate to a lead, signup or purchase rather than simply a visitor doing research.

 

If you rank highly one week you may not next week – rankings fluctuate and are becoming more and more personalised. By having a quality website with quality and recent content, well optimised and that works well, you have better chances of performing better in search engines.

 

If your site starts ranking well and attracts lots of visitors, ask yourself is your site ready and will your site help visitors complete your “most desired action” e.g. submit an enquiry, buy a product, pick up the phone and call?