One of the most frustrating realizations for business owners who are beginning the search engine optimization process – and especially those who are launching new business websites or changing domain names – is that Google doesn’t especially care for quick changes.
Although you might be feeling hot and heavy for the thousands of visitors that would come with a prime search engine position, Google doesn’t see it the same way – it likes long relationships and hates short ones. This preference shows itself in a number of ways, from the tendency to rank older websites more highly to its reluctance to make quick and drastic changes to search engine positions.
But even though the world’s largest search engine might not like one night stands and rapid-fire relationships, you can exercise a little bit of patience and use that knowledge to your advantage. Here are a few quick ways to use Google’s patient approach to get the most out of your search engine optimization campaign:
- Develop your site over time. Rather than rushing to create lots of content quickly, let ideas simmer in your mind and add articles, blog posts, and other pieces to your site regularly, rather than in big chunks. You’ll be a lot more effective, from an SEO standpoint, while giving your readers better content at the same time.
- Embrace the longer term view. One of the ways that newer websites tend to get themselves in trouble with Google and the other major search engines is by trying to shortcut the process, using things like link farms (lots of low-quality, paid links from junk sites) and spun (computer-generated) articles. Stay very far away from both.
- Enjoy the relative safety of your relationship. The good news about Google’s slow approach is that once you do reach one of the premier positions, it’s going to be difficult for a competitor to take it away from you.
So, work hard at getting to the top, and then enjoy the fact that you won’t have to do nearly as much to stay there. Google might not like to change things quickly or rush into a great search engine ranking, but as long as you know that going into the SEO process, you can use it to your advantage.
