SEO Expectations July 20
I’m often asked by clients what they can expect from their SEO investment as they typically want to hear they’ll rank number one for every keyword associated with their business – and preferably in under two weeks.
Let me start first with the bad news: there are no guarantees any degree of SEO effort will make you rank number one or even in the top ten for a given keyword or phrase.
The good news, however, is that SEO can and will help search engines better understand what your site is about and will enable your site then to be served in results for search queries that are relevant.
SEO is a long-term effort and on-going (that whole journey, not destination analogy). Neither I, nor any other SEO provider, can guarantee you top rankings for any keyword. If they do make that promise, be very cautious and make them put their money where there mouth is – i.e. tell them you don’t pay unless they get you there. Also, even if your site does pull off a top rank for your target keyword today does not mean you will hold that position or even the first page tomorrow. An example I saw recently was where Apple was ranked #1 for “laptop” in Google. Then Google changed their algorithm (likely reducing the weight of the links to the site since the site itself is not at all optimized for the term) and they dropped to page four – literally over night. You can imagine what that must have done for their “laptop” search query referrals.
The expectations I like to set with my clients is that I will give them the best recommendations for optimizing their web site for search engine visibility and regardless of whether they rank well for the targeted terms following implementation, their site will in fact be crawled more thoroughly and will provide the search engines with more focused and more targeted content from which to evaluate relevance.
There are many factors (some speculate that it is in excess of 200) that are considered when a search engine is determining rank for a particular query. Some are well-known in the industry and there are best practices around implementing those. Many, however, are kept secret by the search engines (Google likes to refer to it as their “secret sauce”) as they don’t want webmasters manipulating and spamming the search engines to gain top rankings for sites that don’t offer relevant, valuable content for their users.
The factors you can control right now are on-page optimization (content and meta tags) and your site structure (to make it easy to crawl and index by the search engine spiders). As part of my SEO service, I will give you specific guidance on how to create a crawlable and indexable web site (fortunately, your site is already easily crawlable and indexable – thank you for not developing it in Flash!) and will provide detailed guidance on how to create more relevant content (from both a search engine and user perspective) which will give you the foundation for being successful in organic search results.
A factor that will take longer to overcome is the age of your site. All else equal, a younger site will rank lower because it doesn’t have the track record of a site that’s been around a lot longer. Also, newer sites tend to have far fewer links to them. If they haven’t been around long, then it’s unlikely that many other sites or blogs are linking to it. Links are incredibly important in SEO as the search engines see links as votes of authority from other sites. And it’s not just the quantity of links that matter; it’s the quality as well. In fact, one link from a high-quality site (longevity, popularity, relevance and source all come in to play here) can provide much more link “juice” than 100 links from small, non-authoritative sites that don’t have related content. Also, if the engine senses that the link was acquired only for SEO purposes it may be considered spam and may count against you.
I realize this doesn’t provide any concrete expectations but it will provide the a good foundation for a web site to be successful in organic search in the future.
You may see results in two weeks; you may see them in a year. It all depends on how well you address the basic and advanced SEO tactics and also on the off-page factors – some of which you may not be able to influence quickly or at all.
Again, I’d like to stress the importance of the age of your site and the links to it. These factors alone may inhibit your ability to achieve high rankings in the short term. I realize most clients are nervous about the ROI of an SEO investment, but if implemented the recommendations I provide, as well as an on-going effort at the off-page optimization (link building, e.g.), will put your site in the best position to garner natural search referrals.
Just so you know I’m not blowing SEO smoke, other people in the industry have had plenty to say along these lines so here are a few links (or search for “SEO expectations” and you’ll see a lot more along these lines).
Creating a Positive SEO Experience
Setting Realistic SEO Expectations
