I read many posts from website owners and bloggers bemoaning the fact that they are not doing better in SERPS (Search Enginee Results Pages) and desperately seeking to gain prominence in SERPS and rank in the top 10 SERPS pages. But like most things succeeding in Google SERPS is not a sprint but a marathon. Sure there will always be so called SEO experts who can gain instant overnight success but the truth is that unless you are an exceptional SEO experts (and perhaps as many as 90% simply aren't) then most gains are short lived. SEO is expensive and is only as good as the next google algorithm change when it is likely that the short term tricks deployed by SEO experts will have been spotted by Google and the loopholes changed. Google offers free advice on how to DIY your SEO for your own site, which is much more cost effective, but of course no one is stopping you from spending upto $1000 dollars to so called SEO experts, many of whom can't even spell the word. The first document from Google that is a must read for any self respecting website owner is Google Guidance On SEO . However if you feel you must buy SEO services (although personally i wouldn't bother) then check the following Google guide out so that you at least don't get ripped off Google Guidance Before Buying SEO. Here are my free top tips for Developing A Long Term Google SERPS Strategy For Success; 1. Think of your site as a long term investment. Be willing to have a 5 year plan to make your site a success. Very few sites are overnight successes, although i accept that it can happen. 2. Work Hard - be willing to plough at least 3 hours per day into realising your vision for your site. 3. Develop a daily plan of action. for me it consists of the following as a guide; a) Write or respond to 15 do follow forum threads on DP, SITE POINT and Warrior Forums - That's 5 per site (don't spam) b) Post 5 quality comments on do follow blogs c) Write one new article for my site. (Google lovesfresh daily content updates) d) Write a shorter version for posting on article directories - especially ezinearticles.com & goarticles.com This is not a definite guide but doing this day in day out for the past 3 years even when my sites were not making any money and had just 3 visits a day has paid dividends. I now earn £780 per month (net profit - that's after tax) from my online efforts alongside my fulltime day job.) This is not mega bucks but is a nice steady income doing something I enjoy. It's hard work but developing a long term strategy in Google is far more important than worrying about whether you rank No1 for a keyword for a few hours. Build your site slowly and organically, without spamming and Google will love you for it.
Hm, there is absolutely no reason a site cannot rank highly in a short while as opposed to 5 years. You can have a 5 year plan (they had "five-year-plans" in the USSR during the Soviet years!) if you are prepared to put in a lot of low-value SEO grunt work and your time and labor are cheap. This is not the best time expenditure for most serious people. 3 hours a day is 5,475 hours over 5 years, so given your revenue how much you have made per hour so far? Is it worth it? Moreover, your plan is not guaranteed to work. Everything depends on how competitive your market is. The techniques you are describing are bottom-feeding SEO techniques, they don't really work well at all and you have to wait forever to see results. If your market is competitive they work hardly at all. Now, of course a likely problem with hiring "an SEO consultant" is that most SEOs use the same cheap techniques and don't have the right access, so you are merely delegating the same grunt work to him. This helps a bit but does not give you any kind of cutting edge. On the other hand there are SEOs that can rank you fast and reliably and without risk. I can show most of my clients the first results within 7-14 days, and I rank them within weeks not moths. Now, this simply guarantees a boost in relevant traffic but not necessarily in sales. Sales will result only if your business model is sound. If you have something that really sells, you'll be golden. That's why high quality SEO is profitable and a no-brainer for a sound business. I hope this helps!