SEO essential in order to be competitive in many markets, but there is a limit to what it can do. First of all, as I’ve written earlier, you need to be realistic about who you are competing against. Even the best SEO cannot make your site outrank every competitor.
SEO cannot make users stay on the page longer. However, having a low “bounce rate,” or the percentage of users who come to a page and quickly go somewhere else, will boost your rankings. This can be achieved by creating an easy-to-navigate and frequently updated site. Keep users interested, and they’ll stay longer. Sites like Facebook have low bounce rates because users fill out forms, interact and give feedback. This improves the site’s ranking.
SEO cannot directly make you more money. Good SEO will drive more relevant traffic to your site. However, the quality of the content drives conversion. This is a measure of the number of potential customers that go on to buy. In the context of a website, it is usually the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. A store that gets a lot of customers in the door only to leave moments later because of the clutter or poor customers service is not as successful as a store that gets fewer customers that are able to see the merchandise and are interested in buying.
SEO cannot guarantee ranking results or visitor counts. No company can guarantee organic listings, or it wouldn’t be organic, right? Something that is hot today is not tomorrow. Trends change by the nanosecond.
A higher score in Google’s PageRank of popular websites does not automatically constitute success in SEO. It is possible some of these “shortcuts” or “black hat” schemes may appear to work in the short term, but they can’t last for very long.
Like any project that yields real results, it requires a big investment of time and money, and if an “expert” tells you something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. SEO takes time and requires patience.
You cannot do SEO once and expect great results to continue. A car requires constant maintenance, workout routine needs to be rearranged to continue to yield results and break plateaus, and your SEO campaign requires regular attention. Good SEO is ongoing, requiring a commitment to adding content.
By: Ilene Rosenblum
