In Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare the fast paced
rabbit is in a hurry to reach the finish line and prove to the world that he is
the best athlete. Meanwhile the tortoise slowly moves along and eventually
overtakes the cocky hare that stops to rest and falls asleep from exhaustion.
Optimization is similar to the tortoise in that it takes a long time to see the
results of building links, adding articles to online publications and requires
a great deal of patience before a website begins to show the result of making
it to the front of the pack at the top of a results page.
Through concerted efforts that demand the attention of a
website owner and their SEO specialist the goal of landing on the first page of
the directory results can be accomplished. Typically taking anywhere from six
months to a year to achieve the slow process of gaining a natural ranking in
the search engines can be accomplished by those that are consistent in their
efforts and who do not stop to rest when things start to appear to be working.
This week I met with a client who was so concerned about
reaching the top spot in his profession that he did not want to take a methodical
and somewhat slow approach to his online
marketing. Frustrated by the competition he wanted to produce a large
quantity of articles in a short three month time period and measure the success
of his Internet marketing campaign based on what the search engines would perceive
after cranking out as much work as possible before stopping to rest and examining
the distance that the massive amount of work would be covering.
Not realizing his mistake that the search engines do see
links, but take their time to index the information that is submitted to the
various online publishing sites this client (whom I refer to as the hare in our
story) became agitated by the fact that I was unwilling to deliver what he
wanted knowing full well that his effort would have very little impact on his
goal. Requesting that I deliver the hare's pace for a meager fraction of what
the work would normally take to be affective [in the long term connections and
relevancy that makes up his page ranking (PR) and affects the overall quality
score] I had to refuse to work with the man because of his improbable request.
Although I had planned on performing some PPC work to
augment the SEO content and directory submissions to help expedite the success
of a well planned marketing media
strategy I was fully aware that in a three month period of time there would
no significant changes to his current page ranking and I would be exhausted by
the effort that would have ended in the termination of my services out of sheer
frustration on the part of the client.
The expectations of many people is to gain a fast result
when it comes to their online marketing work, but the reality is that the
search engines are designed to move slowly and increase a website ranking over
the long haul. If it were simple to gain a coveted position in the SERP (Search
Engine Results Page) there would be a constant turnover of businesses that are
holding onto the top spots of the search engine results. But in order to be
fair and avoid the unlawful "Black Hat" practices that speed results,
the major search directories are designed to follow the methodology of the
tortoise in slowing the pace and bringing a website into the winning position on
a page after many months of steady work. That is not to say that a concentrated
effort of producing a large volume of articles and blogs as well as adding
links to other directories cannot be sustained for a full year, but the efforts
require a solid commitment on the part of the SEO provider and the client to manage
the workload and stick with the marketing
media strategy that has been developed to reach the goal of any Internet
marketing campaign.
As I realized before signing up the business as
a client and committing myself to an impossible agreement, the prospect of
adding a client is often more exciting than working for someone that does not
appreciate your contribution. Like the tortoise that maintained the same pace
and speed throughout the race, SEO delivers the intended result when it is
carefully initiated and kept moving forward at a steady rate over a minimum of
six months and is best when planned for over an entire year of continuing work.
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