Dec 14 2007
Why SEO Strategies Fail and 5 Principles for Success
The subject of this article is not about SEO tactics, it’s about the principles needed for the successful execution of SEO strategies. This is also not about the subject of playing a cat and mouse game with the search engines so you can get high rankings right now with little effort. Very few experts just come out and tell you that a successful SEO program is really just a lot of hard work (because nobody wants to hear it and it does not sell). The tactics are freely shared for a good reason: the devil is in the details. Successful SEO firms rely on efficiency of execution to provide value to their clients. If you take what Google tells you at face value and execute well-known best practices you will have some measure of success. But real “conquer the competition” success is dependent on the level of execution.
With the assumption that you are executing best practices, you still have formidable barriers that are the real key to SEO breakthroughs. Here are 5 common characteristics of successful SEO programs from an executive level. These laws should govern the execution of your SEO tactics.
- Place a High Priority on Keyword Analysis– if your on-site optimization follows best practices but you do not place emphasis on the science of maximizing keyword opportunities, you will not succeed. I’ll say it one more time, place your emphasis here.
- Quality Content is King– quality content requires talent so you need to invest in talented resources. The lions share of high impression/high conversion listings are not linked to mediocre or garbage content.
- Quantity of Quality Content Rules– the reason that large and respected media sites dominate rankings.
- PageRank is About Building Relationships– If you pay attention to laws 1, 2 and 3, the online community will be drawn to your site as you engage in building relationships in the online community. Gimmicks for link building may initially succeed but will ultimately fail when search engines adjust to the tactics. This is not to say that you can ignore link building fundamentals.
- Longevity Matters– The longer you exist with a large quantity of quality content, the better you will rank. Unless you are in a tight vertical that is unoccupied, you are at a distinct disadvantage if you have a newer web site. The reason I bring this up is because you may need to temper your expectations.
These are the hard lessons I learned from building a successful SEO program at Junionia.com, a top 500 e-commerce site. We did not gain traction until these principles were applied. This is also the primary subject matter of my speaking engagement at Mid-Market e-Tail in October of 2006.
The methodology of SEO optimization is well-documented in websites and blogs. The problem is sorting through the clutter of bad advice and unsubstantiated articles. I have taken the time to find a few good resources on SEO building blocks: link building, site optimization and content optimization.
On Site optimization: 12 Basic On-Site SEO Tactics for On-Site Optimization
Link Building: How SEOmoz Built One Million Links in 33 Months, The Secrets of Building Links
Content Optimization: Holistic Search Engine Optimization
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