A common mis-conception is that SEO is a ‘fire and forget’ solution to increasing your rank and conversions. It’s common in the sense of the general public. Unfortunately, it’s very far from the truth and can require a lot of understanding on behalf of the person trying to get their head around it.
SEO is an iterative process. Whilst some search engines may publish their algorythms, many don’t. This means that it’s often a case of trying something to see what affect it has.
This dates back to times when your meta tags were deemed to be one of the most important factors of SEO (probably before SEO was even termed as a phrase). Making changes, watching for weeks or months to see what difference it made, then make more subtle changes in an effort to creep one step higher. Patience is key and that is as true today as it ever was.
I think that the time factors have probably reduced. As a test, I made a post containing a word that isn’t used too often, it was listed in google within a few hours, so it is possible to be able to assess the impact of changes quicker (albeit depending on the site and how often google/other search engines check it out).
The process of SEO also requires more thought than ever before, a set of requirements, a clear plan of changes to be made as well as a monitoring program are all key to success. This becomes more evident when dealing with the differences between what some search engines want and what others will penalize you for. Sometimes it’s a fine line which you have to balance to both get the rankings and keep them. I was reading a blog the other day (a female web developer - pink developer or something - let me know if you know the blog name as I forgot it), she was pee’d that at some point google had randomly decided that her site had failed to meet their “quality guidelines” but that icanhascheezburger.com was perfectly acceptable (a very funny site - particularly for geeks). HEr site was well written and with good content so I can see her frustration.
It just goes to show that even when you get it right - you can get it wrong without even knowing it. SEO can be a thankless task, more so when it doesn’t go exactly right. Ultimately, the people who make themselves a success at it, do so through many hours of constant trial and error. If you are just starting out, take your time, it won’t be a quick fix.
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