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Realistic SEO Expectations

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As affiliate marketers, online business entrepreneurs and SEO service providers Mike and I have gained an incredible insight over the past few years into some of the common mistakes that many make when approaching SEO. There is, however, one overwhelming theme that repeats itself over and over again and that is the topic of realistic expectations.

There is something about the Internet that fuels the dreams we all have for independence and trading in a J.O.B. for an online business. That’s a good thing, but the problem is that there is so much out there that is just complete marketing fluff and outright lies that leads people to conclude that the whole “make money online” concept is easy – all you need is this one $77 eBook product and you’ll have floods of traffic and sales the next week.

There is a difference between a dream and a goal. A dream is something like “I’d sure love to make $10k a month” and a goal is “I will be making $10k a month 12 months from now”. A goal has a timeframe and then that timeframe is broken up into smaller chunks and tasks assigned. A goal is not a dream and a dream rarely comes true whereas goals can easily be achieved. I say easily because when you break that timeframe down and define tasks and smaller incremental goals you begin to accumulate success that builds momentum. Remember; success is an accumulation not a one-time event.

Don’t Believe the Hype

The marketing hype – especially on Clickbank $27 and $37 products (apparently a sweet spot for false promises and hype) – has become completely out of control lately. Recently one of these marketing sleezes (we won’t publish names, but you can search around and dig up the story yourself if you really want) released a product via Clickbank with all of the standard hype and false claims of income. Then he started flashing all of his supposed income claims and screen shots as well.

Turns out it was proven via his own screen shots that he was claiming revenue from an entirely different product altogether. We have all suspected many of exaggeration but this was flat out proven lies and this was just one case that was discovered. The point is that much of the claimed instant successes and stories of overnight income are just that – stories. That’s why the FTC has become involved recently.

Building a six figure business can happen rapidly online, but it is not an overnight venture. For those that we know of that are “real” and have done it, however, we don’t know of but a couple that have done it in less than six months to a year. The vast majority take 2 to 3 years to build a six figure revenue online and when we say the “vast majority” we mean of those that actually make it (most, as I’m sure you know, drop out within 60 days).

But before you jump on the “slam the marketers” bandwagon, you need to step back and ask yourself why they do it. They do it because many people are looking for instant success and not willing to put in the work to achieve it. Too many are looking for that “magic bullet” that will solve all of their problems and this is really the root of all failure in any endeavor – online, offline or anywhere else.

The fact is that snake oil salesmen exist because we want to believe them – we want to “buy the dream” they’re selling us (even if a part of us knows it’s just a dream). We rationalize, “it’s only $27, it won’t hurt me to check it out just in case“. But the fact is, it’s more than that $27 because it is the lost time, the wasted effort and the work that you could have been doing to be productive on your site. That $27 purchase may cost you $200 or $2000 in time and lost opportunity.

SEO is Just Like Flying… Sort of…

I’m a private pilot and I can tell you that there is no such thing as instant success in that endeavor either. I got my private license in a couple of months, and most of the work was done in about a 30 day period of intense daily flying or studying, but it didn’t stop there. I flew weekly after that and continued my training to get an instrument rating as well and then began work on my commercial rating. Flying is not something you want to be “okay” at. Ask yourself this. Would you really want to fly with a pilot that had a C- average? I would take my entire family all over – a trip to Disneyland or a weekend in Vegas – and let me tell you, when you strap your son and daughter in the back seat you take a tremendous responsibility into your hands each and every time you take off – something I never take lightly.

So where am I going with this? Stay with me – I’m getting there. Now, flying is not like driving a car. If you’ve driven one car you can pretty much drive any car (with exception of the automatic or manual issue). But every plane is unique. For example, I’m instrument rated in a single engine high performance plane, but that doesn’t mean I can climb into a twin engine and take off or just jump into a turbo prop and head for the skies – and flying a Jet (even a small six passenger one) would be completely unthinkable. To continue the car analogy, just because you can drive a Mazda Miata doesn’t make you qualified to drive a bus or a commercial truck or a fork lift for that matter.

There is a logical progression to a pilots career. Start in a single engine, move to a twin, get some time in a turboprop and then progress to small Jets and work your way up (if you’re headed the commercial route). The point is, you can’t just hop into a Jet because you’ve got a private pilots license and go on your way. Many, however, when it comes to SEO have exactly that expectation.

But the fact is you can’t start of running marathons. First you learn to crawl, then to walk, then to run – it’s a progression that you cannot “skip steps”. The same is true for internet marketing. You have to first have a $100 day before you can expect to be making $10k a month. And it has to happen this way – so accept that. Learn to set small goals and achieve them first and relish each and every one of them. Don’t get discouraged, cherish those small successes.

Mike and I often chat about that first time we had a $100 AdSense day, or the first $1000 a month site, or the first $10k a month site – we celebrate each of those successes with equal enthusiasm. The fact is that success is an accumulation just like SEO – an accumulation of smaller successes which build over time. So be patient and give it the time but also celebrate the small successes as you build towards your long term goals.

The Most Common Misconceptions

We see a lot of the same false beliefs over and over again and so it really warrants talking about them in some detail. I always remember the story my Dad told me when I was growing up about the ignorant man, the smart man and the wise man. Bear with me here, this is really a nugget that will greatly impact your success online.

The ignorant man makes a mistake, learns nothing from it and then repeats the same mistake over and over again. The smart man makes a mistake, takes a step back and contemplates his errors and then does his best to avoid repeating that same mistake in the future. The wise man, however, observes others making mistakes and learns from them without having to make the mistake himself. So our goal here is to help you become “wise” do it yourself SEO’ers! Please, learn from the mistakes that we see others make, learn from our mistakes and don’t repeat them yourself. Do yourself a favor and save that time and money and put it into more productive SEO instead!

• They Expect Near Immediate Results – We say this over and over again, but if you’re not prepared to invest 90 to 120 days in an SEO campaign, then please, save yourself the money and don’t do it. Launching an SEO campaign for 30 or even 60 days is a complete waste of time and money. You have to give it time to grow and respond and you have to realize that SEO is a cumulative effort – today’s work builds on yesterday’s. If you haven’t yet, please download our free Article Marketing Lies eBook (nearly 60 pages of terrific SEO straight-talk) – it covers this topic in-depth.
• They Underestimate the Costs – We work with both ends of the spectrum here. Truly it doesn’t matter to us if you want to learn to do it yourself or if you want to outsource to us and let us do it for you – either is fine with us. But one of the main reasons people fail at SEO is that they underestimate the cost of doing it yourself in terms of money and TIME. Often times you would be far better off to just outsource your SEO. It may seem more expensive, but we have some packages like the Automated Link Building Packages that are so affordable you really can’t do it for the same price yourself. Keep in mind that the cost of failure here is very, very high. If you try to do it yourself and give up or maybe just don’t have the time to do it right, well, you’ll have no results at all.
• They Underestimate the Time – This is really just a continuation of the previous item, but the time issue deserves further discussion. You see, if you don’t dedicate the appropriate time to learning to do it yourself and then dedicate yourself to consistently doing it, well then you’re doomed before you’ve even begun. You’ll likely go away with false conclusions such as “SEO just doesn’t work” or “SEO is too expensive”. The fact is, SEO doesn’t work if you don’t do it right or don’t do it at all. And it’s also true that if you’re not doing it right and not doing it consistently that it can be extremely expensive because you’ll be throwing away a lot of your money. However, done properly and consistently it can be both effective and affordable.
• They Target the Wrong Keywords – This is another big reason we see so many fail at SEO. They come of the gate with a brand new site and start trying to build links for “car insurance” – that is just NOT realistic. First off, you need to pick an appropriate niche and I wouldn’t suggest the “car insurance” niche for any newbie. Secondly, you need to start with long tail low competition keywords. This could easily be an entire eBook in and of itself, but there are many reasons for starting from the bottom up (long tails first and then building towards medium traffic keywords and then towards high traffic keywords). But the bottom line is this. Until you are a trusted and established site with Google you’re simply not going to rank for super competitive keywords. So, how do you build that trust? Start small and “prove yourself” first. After you have a bunch of solid longtail rankings getting medium traffic rankings will be easier. The other main reason for this approach is that longtail keywords are 3x to 5x more likely to be “buy” keywords than high traffic keywords. Our best converting keywords on this site have “zero” traffic according to Google and yet we make sales every single day from them (so obviously there IS traffic for them).
• They Want a Formula – This is just soooo common and is the biggest fallacy there is out there. Guys here me now – THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULA. Think of it this way. If there were a “formula” – write x articles a day, get y number of optins and generate z sales – well, if that were the case, you could simply automate it all. A formula implies a mathematical solution which could be programmatically automated. Well, if you think that is feasible then ask yourself this question. When advertisers are paying $50k for a 30 second TV advertising spot do they rely on an “automated formula”? The fact is, this is “marketing” and marketing is not something you can just automate. Every niche will be different. Buy keywords in one niche will not necessarily be buy keywords in another niche. You might get 3% sales conversions in one niche, 7% in another and .03% in yet another. You have to let go of this desire to find a magic formula and you’ll also save yourself a ton of money on worthless eBook purchases on Clickbank…
• They Assume More Knowledge Is The Key – The fact is that most people that are doing some form of Internet Marketing already possess enough knowledge on the subject to achieve their goals. The problem is usually one of taking action rather than seeking to absorb more knowledge. You have to be careful that your quest to learn more about SEO doesn’t become counter-productive. There’s a difference between seeking knowledge and seeking opportunity. Opportunity seeking usually goes hand in hand with the “magic bullet” philosophy and will just turn you into a professional SEO consumer rather than an effective practitioner. So be careful to keep this “in balance” or you’ll spend so much time trying “to learn” that there won’t be enough time left “to do”.

The Answer to Your Question

So what is a realistic expectation to get to page #1 of Google? Hopefully at this point if you’re still reading this long winded post you’ll realize that there is no ONE ANSWER to that question. SEO can be very, very fruitful if you give it the opportunity to work. But much like a car requires quality fuel to perform, effective SEO has requirements as well.

In the end, you have to really ask yourself one fundamental question. Do I have the time and resources to really learn how to do this myself? Now, we’re not discouraging that. We are at heart DIY SEO’ers ourselves. But for many choosing to outsource their entire SEO operations or just supplement them with a small starter SEO package will make more cost effective sense.

Remember that SEO is a “liquid” and not a “solid”. By that I mean what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow and trust me it can change THAT FAST – one day to the next. All it takes is a single Google algorithm change and you can watch traffic drop 20%, 40% or even 80%. If you don’t believe me, well, check around some of the forums right now on people that have lost 80% or more of their traffic after recent Google algorithm changes. That means if you choose to go it your own, you need to commit to the time and effort of keeping up on what does and doesn’t work so that you’re not wasting your money, or, even worse, causing more damage than good for your site.

 

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