What NOT to expect from your SEO expert

A lot has been written about what to expect from your SEO expert:

• Identify winning Keywords
• Optimize your Website around the chosen Keywords
• Higher Search Rankings for your Keywords
• Increase in Targeted Traffic from Search Engines
• Increase in Traffic from other Sources (Stumble Upon, Twitter, Ezinearticles, Reddit, Digg)
• Increase in Link Reputation, Social Reputation and Website Reputation
• Higher number of Quality and Relevant Natural Links (By virtue of Merit of Content)
• Advise on Creation of Content/ Articles/ Blog
• Syndication and Promotion of the Content across Article sites and Social sites
• Weekly & Monthly SEO strategy (Quality, Consistency, Participation and Relevancy)
• Analyzing (Traffic, Users etc) and Reporting (Links Built)
• Create a Value-based SEO Strategy that benefits Users/Customers
• Create a long term and sustainable SEO strategy for the success of your online business

But this post is not about that!

I decided to write something for the clients, so they can understand - "What NOT to expect from their SEO expert".

This is not an act of rebellion against my clients, or potential clients (as if I will scorn my livelihood :-), but rather an upfront observation based on client interactions over the years.

Most of these were relatively harmless questions from innocent clients, but some came from clients with strong expectations of what they thought were the roles and responsibilities of their SEO expert.

# Don’t expect the SEO expert will increase your sales

While SEO will increase the targeted traffic to your website, it cannot ensure that the user will convert to a sale. The sale depends on your product, services, rates, credibility in business, the demand and supply, and also the way they are promoted online.

But you can build metrics for calculating conversions (ROI – Return of Investment) like on a user submission of an enquiry form, or a user registration, or signing up for a newsletter etc.

# Don’t expect a new site be ranked in 2 to 3 months

I won’t beat around the bush. A new site will generally take 5 to 6 months before the selected keywords start ranking on page #1 of search results. Yes it helps if you are creating valuable content, syndicating and promoting that content, working on a blog, participate in relevant social communities and building relevant links, but that does not mean that you don’t have to cross the “time threshold”.

If you have a domain 3 years or older, it will generally be easier to start seeing results in less than 3 months. If you have already been doing quality link building and following SEO principles, and looking for enhancing your visibility and rank, then the “time threshold” can be greatly reduced.

# Don’t expect search rankings to change each week

SEO is not cause and effect. What this means is that if your SEO expert does a, b and c, then the results would be x,y and z. So don’t expect your search ranking to move up 5 places because you have done web directory submissions and social bookmarking last month. It just does not work in this way.

What you can expect is that after a period of concentrated effort (generally 3 – 4 months) you will see a quantum jump in your search rankings (sometimes even a few pages), of course depending on the competition for those keywords.

# Don’t expect search position #1, #2, #3, #4 …

Many clients ask for #1, #2, #3 rankings in search listings with a guarantee. Yes, it’s possible after a year of effort, but even then I will not give the client any guarantee. Page #1 is the ideal target I suggest. There may be times you may have to even settle for page #2 for very competitive keywords.

# Don’t expect a Guarantee

This highlights my point above. There is no guarantee possible. And if you find a company or person ready to give you a guarantee, do check as there may be a catch.

Focus on creating valuable content, syndicate that content, and promote it across relevant social, web and user communities. If you can do this consistently, you don’t need any guarantees.

# Don’t expect the SEO expert to work on Results based Remuneration

This expectation is so common that it pains me. Are there any SEO experts out there ready to sell their time, effort and network for a free ride? If so, then I have to ask them why? And maybe so should you …

# Don’t expect your SEO to design, write, program, be a webmaster …

While a SEO expert can be designer, a programmer, a marketing professional, or a webmaster, it’s not necessary for a SEO expert to have all these skills. There are skilled professionals for design and coding needs, and its best to have your SEO expert focus on SEO.