The secret to SEO

Posted by – July 29, 2008

It often seems that everyone working online claims to have expertise in Search Engine Optimization. It isn’t that surprising given the returns (traffic and money) but because SEO is a winner-take-most game knowing a little bit of SEO is about as useful as being a “little bit” pregnant. And no matter how much someone might know about SEO, if they don’t execute better than their competitors they lose.

And the thing about loosing in SEO is that it’s a loser-take-none game. The returns from SEO only begin after achieving the top rankings. Moving in rankings from, say, 50th place to 20th represents virtually no traffic gain (seriously, it could be as low as a difference of a dozen visitors a month).

So SEO is winner-take-most, where only the top spots get any significant traffic and in a competitive SEO market the secret is all about execution. You are competing directly against people who understand SEO (remember, everyone’s an “expert” here) and the depth of your insight that matters isn’t what industry names you can drop, or how well you can argue the pedantry of on-page optimization. It comes down to being able to focus your efforts more accurately and execute better than your opponent. Does your team execute more swiftly, efficiently and accurately than others? Does it do so without running increased risk of penalization? Does it cope with imitation and sabotage?

If not, please remember that there is no silver bullet except having the best people in a fast-paced team who can out maneuver the competition and the search engines’ improving algorithms. If you really want to be competitive in SEO, and because of the nature of the game you shouldn’t bother if you don’t plan to be competitive, you need good people. And if things get competitive and the other guys have good people you need better people.

So the secret to SEO is finding these technical rock stars to lead the critical portions of your online efforts. Businesses can be built around the right online marketing gurus, and when you find one, we’ll not only tell you how you can conquer your niche, but unlike the other “experts” we’ll actually do it.

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