SEO Benefits Take Time to Realize
October 30, 2017
In many (most?) fields today, it is considered essential for companies to position themselves as close to the top of potential customers’ Web search results as possible. However, search engine optimization (SEO) efforts take time. Business 2 Community explains “Why It Takes Six Months to Improve Search Rankings.” Marketers must accept that, unless they luck out with content that goes viral, they will just have to be patient for results. Writer Kent Campbell explains five reasons this is the case, and my favorite is number one—search systems were not built to aid marketers in the first place! In fact, in some ways, quite the opposite. Campbell writes:
Bing and Google Serve Their Searchers, Not You.
A search provider’s primary concern is its users, not you or any other business that’s fighting for a spot on the first page. The search engine’s goal is to provide the best user experience to its searchers; that means displaying the most relevant and high quality results for every search query. Both Bing and Google watch how people react to content before they decide how visible that content should be in results. Even when content has had a lot of SEO therapy, the content itself has to be spot-on. This is why Google evaluates every piece of content on more than 200 ranking factors and ensures that only the best quality pages make it to the top 10. The best way to make it to the first page is by aligning yourself with Google’s objective, which is to serve its users.
A company might be seeing slow results because they hesitated—Early Movers Have an Advantage is the second reason Campbell gives. On the other hand, at number three, we find that Creating Quality Content Takes Time. Then there is the fact that Link Building Is Not as Simple as Before. Finally, there’s this more recent complication—Social Media Also Impacts Rankings these days. See the article for Campbell’s explanation for each point. He concludes with a little advice: companies would do well to consider their SEO efforts an ongoing cost of doing business, rather than an extraordinary item.
Cynthia Murrell, October 30, 2017
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