Understanding What Goes Into Optimal SEO

People who have websites want to come up at the top of the search results in Google. It's just part of owning a website. Sort of like wanting your kid to be the start on the softball team or in a spelling bee. It's natural to want to be number one. But often when I speak to clients about SEO (search engine optimization) their eyes glass over and ultimately ask, "But what will it cost for you to do it for me?"

This is the million dollar question with regards to SEO. Why? Because you can do a lot of things to optimize your site for the search engines, but it may not have a definite correlation with your ranking. So it might take 100 hours worth of effort for one site, or 500 worth of effort for another, and continuous effort on another.

We have a new client right now who is in the daycare industry, which is an industry where people generally don't have websites. We're excited because we see getting her to the top of google for daycare searches in her area won't take a lot of effort. But then we have a client in the business coaching industry, where there are millions of sites, all seeking to be number one on Google. That's going to take a bit more effort, and we will be extremely fortunate if we achieve page 1 of Google.

I recently came across Search Engine Optimization, a great article by Court's Internet Marketing School. He talks about all the pieces that go together to create optimum SEO. He does it in a non-technical way so you can understand all the effort and processes that are involved in optimizing for maximum search engine indexing. I would recommend reading it so you can gain an overview of what is involved when optimizing a site.

The most important things you should know about SEO:

• Understand what's involved in the process so you know what you're buying.
• Understand that there is no guarantee, and if you're offered a guaranteed, look elsewhere.
• Understand that SEO takes a lot of time and a lot of patience (just so you get why it costs so much).
• Know that it is effective, but nobody can accurately predict effectiveness until after the fact.