The process of search engine optimisation is a long, sometimes tedious and occasionally frustrating one. The results it can produce are often excellent, but the journey along the way often prompts businesses to make rash moves. Instead of waiting for results to come in to them, they run out to meet them.

A lot of SEO mistakes come from this rushed approach. Site owners who are too desperate to build their link profile buy links in a haphazard way. Others, hearing about the advantages of fresh content, purchase content-generating software which churns out text like so much refuse. The main effect this kind of rush of effort has is to make the search engines suspicious.

There are ways to prompt results that are a little less risky, like utilising the contacts of your SEO company to help build links or seriously investing in good quality content. Even so, when everyone is trying to achieve the same easy result, your field of competition is a large one.

Take your link profile, for example. One of the easiest ways to build a good link profile is to look at the links of your competitors and approach the same sites to see if they’ll hand you a link as well. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about this approach. This is often a very effective method, particularly if your site is objectively as appealing as your competitor’s. However, it results in a link profile that is very similar to your competitor’s. Why should the search engines rank you higher?

A similar thing is true for content. If you look at a competitor’s site and see that they’re publishing one industry article per day, you can probably gear up your content plan to compete. All the same, you’re competing on their level, meaning that all you will achieve is equal or lower status with the search engines and with internet users. This doesn’t count for much when what you want to do is blow your competitors out of the water.

The answer is to take on the harder tasks as well. The harder tasks can provide more satisfying results simply because they are harder. Most businesses won’t touch them.

Some quite hard tasks to tackle include:

• Individual link connections. Getting influential bloggers to link to you can be tough. Most bloggers are aware of the value of their links and don’t want to risk linking to a bad site. Achieving these links takes time and effort, a kind of courtship if you will

• Unusual link targets. Sites usually approach bloggers and other businesses in their industry for links. Think outside of the box. Sites that aren’t usually approached may take some convincing to link to you, but the work will get you a unique link

• Quality content on every page. Many sites skimp on content because it’s much easier to slot in a few keywords and a picture than create a whole article. Users are drawn to content-focussed sites. Get one up on your competition by making every single one of your pages interesting and informative

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