At least once a week, a client comes to me looking for the “magic bullet” of search engine optimization. They want to know, once and for all, the secret to getting atop the Google, Yahoo, and Bing listings for their best keywords. Sometimes, they even let me know that price isn’t an issue – they just want to do whatever it takes to make things happen now.

So, after a great amount of personal reflection and internal debate, I have decided to spill the beans. Here, after all these years, is the secret to getting great SEO results quickly: First, you make a sweep of your small business website, being sure to optimize all of the basics like page titles, embedded tags, and other technical details. Then, you generate a lot of high-quality, keyword-rich content and post it to your site and blog regularly. And finally, you work tirelessly to generate dozens, or even hundreds, of inbound links to your site from other reputable, well-known sources.

Once you’ve completed all that, all you have to do is keep doing all of the above until it slowly but surely works.

“Wait,” I can hear you saying, “that doesn’t sound all that fast at all… In fact, it doesn’t even sound like that much of a secret.” Well, you’ve got me there. But unfortunately, those are the steps that you – or any other business owner – has to take if you’re going to be assured of climbing up the search engine rankings. There are no shortcuts, and there is no magic bullet. You can spend a small fortune with dozens of gurus and experts, but it’s always going to come back to time and effort. The best that I or anyone else can do for you is to find the right keywords, keep you on schedule, and do what we can to stop the process from becoming any longer or more tedious than it already is.

Naturally, this advice comes as quite a disappointment to many business owners – especially those who have recently launched online businesses. Some of them refuse to believe it all, which leads them to write very big checks to people with questionable credentials. That’s not to say that there aren’t some great SEO professionals out there, because there certainly are. But for 95% of the small businesses jockeying for position on the major search engines, the best course of action is to get started and keep moving forward. Sooner or later, the rest will take care of itself.

Improved search engine rankings can be a huge boost to your business, bringing you hundreds or thousands of new leads and customers every year. But to enjoy those benefits, you’re going to need some knowledgeable assistance and a healthy amount of patience. There is no search engine magic bullet to speed up the process, but if you take the time to do it the right way, the results are worth the wait.

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