Why Patience Pays Off in SEO

An athlete doesn’t develop championship skills overnight, and a master chef doesn’t just throw some ingredients together and hope the result is palatable. Similarly, you can’t expect your new website to skyrocket to the top of search engine page rankings overnight.

Indeed, search engine optimization is a journey, and it isn’t a short one. Here are some of the reasons that patience benefits you when you’re building visibility for your website.

SEO Shortcuts Are a Waste of Time and Resources

You may come across a search engine optimization service that promises eyebrow-raising results within a short amount of time, but those types of promises are unrealistic. They may use techniques like low-quality backlinks and cheap, quickly produced content. While those tactics may give your website a temporary boost in rankings, any results you see from shortcuts are going to hurt you in the end.

Search engines, particularly Google, make it their business to eliminate low-quality content and spammy shortcut tactics. As Nick Rink of Business2Community points out, “Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Google’s website indexing process steer marketers down a long-term path. Google wants you to prove your worth over a period of time and the only way to do this is to follow what they want you to.”

Subsequently, search engines analyze not only how much content and how many backlinks you have but also the sources of those things. Search engines can smell quick fixes, and more often than not, they eventually will penalize your site for taking them.

Creating Quality Content Takes Time

The websites that you see at the top of search engine results pages are reputable websites that offer something of value to consumers. They update their content regularly and have a strong presence on the Web.

Think about the people whom you want to reach. What concerns them? What catches their attention? Use the answers to those questions to infuse content into your website that makes Google and other search engines stop and take a second look.

Also utilize social media. The conversations that you participate in will help to establish you as an authority in your industry, and Google confirmed years ago that social signals do play at least a limited role in your site’s organic SEO.

Earning Valuable Inbound Links Boosts Search Visibility

When authority sites link back to your pages, search engines notice. Make connections with others in your industry — or in industries related to your own — and link to other blogs on your own website.

Earning relevant links boosts your search visibility. Yes, this will take time, but it will spare you the trouble of having to track down and remove spammy backlinks later. Indeed, patience with your SEO campaign will save you time later down the road.

You Can’t Build Domain Authority in a Day

Although a domain’s age isn’t really a big factor in SEO anymore, your domain will gain authority through quality content, good marketing, earned backlinks, and customer-generated reviews. On average, this can take between three and six months, but sometimes it can take much longer depending on your competition.

They say that patience is a virtue, and when it comes to SEO and Internet marketing, the old proverb rings as true as ever. Build a quality website and use techniques that will organically grow your presence on search engine page rankings. With no small amount of patience and effort, the results will speak for themselves.

Image via Flickr by SEOPlanter

Tony Pataky is a Web Presence Strategist for Mediagistic, and he has been in the marketing field for nearly 8 years. His marketing experience includes marketing research, project management, marketing & business strategy, SEO, content marketing, and social media.