SEO is the Tortoise that beats the Hare in a race of Endurance

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.