Search Savvy Design

Enabling Your Website To Be Found

Are your SEO Expectations Realistic?

As you start build your new website or you are setting goals and making a plan for improving your website search performance, as a Client, has your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services professional discussed realistic SEO expectations with you?

seo-expectations-results
seo expectations

If your SEO professional has provided a specific timeline for specific search engine results or committed to you that your site will be ranking on the 1st page of Google within a specific time frame — you are likely not working with a SEO professional.

SEO is a Process

SEO is a process of optimizing your website content to be more favorably by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing or others. Depending on the explanation or discussion you have been provided it may sound simple and fast.

A good and successful SEO campaign can be challenging.  Success requires constant and sustained efforts, and even yet the SEO reality can be slow.

Some of the common misconceptions that people have of SEO expectations include:

      • Results will be fast
      • Can you work harder over the weekend so our website will have 1st-page Google results on Monday?
      • Results will be fast
      • SEO is a short-term solution
      • Increased website page traffic will automatically turn into greater sales.
      • SEO will guarantee a first page Google ranking

An Analogy for Reasonable SEO Expectations

A good analogy of the SEO process and SEO effectiveness is that of a personal fitness regimen.  Typically is best to focus on small, achievable goals that are right in front of you. Doing so allows progress to happen, less inhibited by the constant worry of where you are in comparison to the mountain of work ahead of you.

Instead of trying to succeed at SEO with a single herculean effort, you can create something great, measure its performance, and then create another starting point from which to continue improving.

There are also External Factors that Impact SEO Effectiveness

There are many uncontrollable factors that will impact the the speed and effectiveness of your SEO results. This is why a SEO baseline study is an essential requirement of any plan.

  • For some products and services the related keywords can be difficult to make quick inroads.
  • The quickness of your SEO campaign will be dependent on how well you competition has tended to their website.
  • A quality SEO campaign should include competitor website analysis as part of the baseline SEO study to determine the challenges.

The regular monitoring of the  competitions websites will track the reality of the SEO process and the gains that are being made.