As web-builders, designers, hosts and marketers are aware, Search Engine Optimization is one tricky little bastard to figure out. Countless hours of keywords, campaigns, meta-tag-this, meta-tag-that, robots, algorithms and adding your site to the search engines can be taxing, both on your fingers and on your brain. The most frustrating thing is that your SEO job is never fully complete. There are sites, books and blogs dedicated strictly to SEO, and while all of them may be useful to you in some way or another, there are so many different approaches to SEO that none can truly be considered 100% correct.
A quote I saw on SEO Articles sums it up nicely: “Tools are only as effective as the expertise of the person using them.” In order to productively use SEO to your advantage, you must seek out the best ways to use SEO for your particular business or company, then pick and choose the right ways to get your information out on the web, through links, searches, blogs and more. Hours and hours of research are required to achieve this, and anyone who thinks throwing a couple of keywords onto their site will garner them a #1 ranking on Google is absolutely out of their mind.
This especially applies to businesses that may not know exactly how SEO works, or do not have someone within their staff who can show them the way. It takes months, and sometimes years, for your SEO work to pay off. If you sell jewelry online, you are not going to get top placement on a Google search by putting “Jewelry” as one of your keywords, as your company is potentially competing with thousands and thousands of jewelry shops around the globe.
“Search Engine Optimization (SEO): An Hour A Day” gives great insight to the ins-and-outs of the virtual search world, using How-To techniques, examples of what you DO NOT want to do, how the search engines actually gather information, and the amount of time and (more importantly) patience it takes to build a solid SEO campaign. Search Engine Optimization is like the web itself: constantly growing, evolving and creating anew. If you are ever truly convinced your the campaign for your site if finished, you have not followed the rules of SEO very closely.
In saying that, not all super-intense SEO applies to every website out there. You may have found a perfect niche for your business, or are selling such unique products that you have no other competition in your field. While that is all well and good, you still want to push yourself to attract more customers, and get your name and innovative thinking out there, right? That’s where all the different levels and varying degrees of SEO are so specific for your particular type of business model. Some things that work great for one company may have the exact opposite effect on another’s SEO strategy. In the end, it all comes down to what you need for what you do.
If the need for SEO for your business concerns you, High Ranking’s SEO articles are a great resource for getting you moving in the right direction, or try Webconfs.com for some great insights, as well how to promote yourself and analyze your competition. The books and links mentioned here may get you started on your way to a successful SEO campaign and strategy, but in the long run, it is up to you how much effort you want to apply to SEO, and how much you can make it work for you.
