Everyone wants to be highly ranked in search engines, and so many people and companies are looking for a quick and easy way to attain results. Just as there is no magic weight loss pill, or easy get rich quick scheme, there really is no quick fix that will have meaningful or long term effects for search engine rankings.
I have come to learn that just as in so many areas of life and business, anything done for the wrong reason won’t work too well. If you’re optimizing your site, buying links for the sake of it, starting a blog purely for SEO purposes or paying someone not knowledgeable in your industry to write articles for you, I would bet that you won’t likely have good long term results.
On the other hand, if you are writing good, quality, relevant content in order to improve your website, writing a blog to provide more value to your customers or to start a web community, getting links naturally from articles you wrote or were written about your business, or generating links from other companies, associations you belong to, or other such sites that want to link to yours, then you’ll probably attain much better results.
Much like building a successful small business, getting good rankings happens gradually over time. I speak to people daily who want to be #1 in Google overnight. Keep in mind, it’s one thing to get traffic, it’s another thing entirely to convert that traffic to sales. Most website owners are astounded at how low the percentage is for visitors that make a purchase. But in this new world where everyone’s optimizing their sites and getting lots of visitors, consumers are fickle, will leave a site quickly if it offers little or no value, and must trust you before they buy from you. Remember, if it’s so easy to get traffic and make sales quickly, then you’re not the only one doing it.
Another common mistake often made is expecting that internet marketing can be the sole form of marketing. Traditional marketing techniques should not be neglected, as start-up sites often need word of mouth and personal networking to generate sales at first. Like any business, marketing should be a multi-pronged approach, including traditional and online marketing techniques.