We’ve discussed before how essential good SEO is for any company that wants to be competitive online. Unfortunately, many people have unrealistic expectations of how SEO works and also how fast it works. SEO isn’t magic. There is no SEO authority who can guarantee that a site will go from no internet traffic to a deluge of visitors (and conversions) overnight based on SEO work. SEO takes time to make a difference. Every bit of SEO on site and off adds to its overall effect. That effect is amplified by marketing and advertising. SEO investment is valuable, but miracles do not happen overnight.
There are lots of people out there on the internet who will promise you that, for a small investment of money, they can get you amazing SEO results. At one point in history this was even true. Five or six years ago, an SEO expert could manipulate search results by using tricks like keyword stuffing, link buying, and link spamming. Google caught on to this, however, and modified their algorithm to not only render these tricks useless, but to penalize any site that used them. So now if you try to get around the parameters that Google sets, your search rankings may tank and you might even have to start over with a new domain and website. Don’t let that happen to you.
Why Does SEO work?
When we enter in search terms or queries into Google’s search engine, it gives us a list or relevant results. How those results are determined changes all the time as Google tweaks its algorithm. The reason that no SEO company can guarantee search rankings is that Google is very secretive about how its algorithm works.
When SEO experts use the guidelines that Google advises websites to use, over time the websites they work on rise in the search rankings. Because not all websites follow these guidelines, the ones that do have higher rankings. Continuing to use best SEO practices over time will increase rankings as websites become larger, more informative, and more comprehensive. Google rewards all of those things. So adding SEO to a website is good. Continuously using good SEO practices over months and years is much, much better.
What Can You Expect from Your SEO Investment?
Like investing in the stock market, a website owner who invests in SEO can expect that over time he will see a real return in terms of visitors. Rankings fluctuate all the time as Google tweaks its algorithm. Eighty percent of search engine result pages (SERPs) change every single day, so it’s more than possible that even a website with great SEO will go up and down a bit in search rankings. But over the long term, a site with good SEO will do better than a site that is not optimized. This is because 82% of people who search Google will click on an organic listing.
If this sounds unexciting, that’s because it is. SEO work takes time and effort and it has to be comprehensive. It is an investment in time and money. But good SEO builds a foundation for a strong, algorithm-proof website that won’t get penalized and won’t tank with an algorithm update. If you want your website to rank better consistently, you have to make that SEO investment.
