When performing SEO on a site there are literally an endless number tactics, strategies, changes and combinations that can be implemented to help you achieve search engine rankings. Google alone analyzes hundreds of different factors, all to varying degrees, when determining how it ranks pages in the SERPs. Once you get outside the realm of looking only at achieving search engine rankings, a near infinity of factors come into play as you look for ways to improve traffic, draw targeted visitors and improve conversion rates.
The interesting thing about SEO, and even website marketing as a whole, is that making a change or two here or there may not make much, if any, difference. But it’s the combination of changes that often total up to create a meaningful result. Sometimes its about hitting the right combination of changes, other times it’s just a matter of changing a few things that you know tend to work time after time.
Successful SEO requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that the learning curve in credible implementation of copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today’s SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs!