Patience – A Key to Search Engine Success


SEO Success chartMatt McGee at Small Business SEM has put together a chart of successful search engine optimization.  

It’s a one-page chart you can print out and post at your desk.  Refer back to it often, and it will tell you what to focus on.

One of the elements Matt covers is patience:

Patience: True, there are exceptions every now and then, but for the vast majority of companies big or small, search marketing is a process that takes time to implement correctly. There are no short cuts, no quick fixes. Success almost always takes many months, if not a year or more.

I’ve found patience to be one of the biggest keys to success online — and in business, too. 

Our society reveres overnight successes.  Yet, I know of few businesses that — truly — were successes overnight.  

Look closely at any business that appears to have come out of nowhere.  Chances are it is the product of a few years of hard work behind the scenes, performed in relative obscurity.  It’s just that nobody noticed until things started taking off.  It only seems to have been successful overnight.

Websites are like that too.  First comes diligent work and a long time when it seems nobody is noticing;  then success. 

4 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

4 Reactions
  1. So true. I hear so many companies say somebody told me they can do it for me in a day with some program and charge only $100!

    Ya get what ya pay for.

  2. Agree with all points. Which is why any company that guarantees you the top spot in organic listings is not a trustworthy company. In natural search, there are no guarantees.

  3. How many of us think, “wow, my company should be at X place by now.” Or, “I should have X sales/hits/prospects/customers, like that other company does.” Everytime I start thinking those thoughts I remember that anything worth doing is worth doing well and slow and steady wins the race. Thanks for posting this and keeping enthusiasm in check with reality.