SEO is not hard, it’s easy to learn the fundamental concepts, execution is difficult, over time you’ll become more experienced and it will be easier to get results in SEO. it It involves acquiring knowledge about various digital marketing techniques, which can be likened to adding new tools to your toolkit as you become proficient in their use.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a complex and challenging field, but it can also be very rewarding for your business. There are many factors that can affect a website’s search engine rankings, and it can take time and effort to optimize a website for search engines. But while SEO can be challenging, much of this challenge is really related to the time it takes to develop your SEO strategy and implement it.
If you’ve wondered, “how hard is SEO?” or found yourself delaying or avoiding SEO because you’re concerned about the difficulty, we have good news for you: SEO isn’t necessarily hard. It just takes time.
Is SEO Hard?
No SEO is not hard, though the level of difficulty involved in SEO can vary depending on the complexity of a website, the competitiveness of the industry, and the experience of the person doing the optimization. That being said, with the right knowledge and tools, anyone can learn how to do SEO and improve their website’s search engine rankings. The most important thing to remember is that SEO does not have to be hard. In fact, it really isn’t! SEO is a long-term process that you plan, adjust, and adapt over time.
But before that, you need to understand what SEO is and how it works. Once you know enough about it, you can make the strategy work from there.
SEO Basics
SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility, and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of SEO is to make a website more attractive to search engines so that they will show the website in a higher position in the SERPs. This can help to increase the amount of traffic that the website receives from search engines.
There are many different aspects to SEO, but some of the main steps include the following:
- Keyword research: Identifying the words and phrases that people are using to search for the types of products or services that your website offers.
- On-page optimization: Make sure that your website’s content and structure are optimized for search engines, including the use of keywords in the right places and the creation of a clear hierarchy of information.
- Off-page optimization: Building links from other websites to your own to show search engines that your website is popular and relevant.
- Backlinking: Creating authoritative content that other websites will want to link to.
Backlinks are Hard to Get
This might be the hardest part of SEO because it requires both good content and proactive steps. When a website links to another website, it is effectively vouching for the quality of that website’s content. When another website links to your website, it is called backlinking. Search engines view backlinks as a sign of trust and credibility, and they use this information to determine the relevance and authority of a website. As a result, websites with a high number of backlinks tend to rank higher in the SERPs.
If you don’t take action, it can be hard to get good backlinks. However, there are many different ways to get backlinks to your website. Some common methods include guest blogging, link building, and creating shareable content that others will want to link to. It’s important to focus on getting high-quality backlinks from reputable websites rather than trying to acquire a large number of low-quality backlinks.
To rise in rankings, you need to focus on providing high-quality content that is relevant to your audience and optimized for search engines. You should also make sure that your website is user-friendly and easy to navigate and that it loads quickly. By following best practices for SEO and consistently working to improve your website, you can gradually improve your search engine rankings over time.
Linking In and Out
In general, it is more important to have other websites link to yours rather than to have your website link to other sites for the purposes of SEO. This is because backlinks from other websites are considered to be a strong signal of trust and credibility to search engines. When a website links to another website, it is effectively vouching for the quality of that website’s content, and this can help to improve the linked website’s visibility and to rank in the SERPS.
Having your website link to other sites can also be beneficial for SEO, but it is generally less important than having other websites link to you. When you link to other sites, you are providing your visitors with additional resources and information that they may find useful. This can help to improve the user experience on your website, which is a factor that search engines consider when ranking websites in the SERPs. However, the value of these outbound links for SEO is generally lower than the value of inbound links from other websites.
While inbound, outbound and internal links can be helpful for SEO, inbound links from other websites are generally considered to be more important. It’s important to focus on building a diverse and high-quality backlink profile rather than just trying to acquire as many links as possible. This takes time. It takes time to build up your content, it takes time to create authoritative content, and it takes time for people to find your content.
SEO as a Long-Term Strategy
There are lots of elements to a successful SEO strategy. You need to build your content, your links, your meta descriptions, titles, and tags– and then once all of these pieces fit together, you need to wait. You have to keep working on your website and really push that good, reliable content.
You want to be on the first page of the SERPs, and you want to stay there. The only way to accomplish this is to maintain your SEO strategy as a long-term investment of time and effort.
SEO Auditing is Challenging
In the SEO campaigns we’ve worked on a majority of the case studies that show a lot of success we’re the hardest to execute. Take for example this travel blog that we reversed a Google penalty for:
The client sought help from StudioHawk after a negative experience with an SEO agency in the USA, as her traffic had significantly decreased. In the first month, I took action to identify and resolve major issues, including a manual action imposed by Google. Implement an on-site recovery plan to fix internal and external errors. Initiate backlink outreach and link acquisition efforts.
This was hard in finding the heart of the issue during the SEO Auditing process, as you’re diving through thousands of URLs and trying not to get stuck down rabbit holes.
However after we lifted this manual action, it achieve a consistent 30% increase in organic traffic. The situation was unique, as a poorly executed schema markup had resulted in Google placing a manual action on the high-performing travel blog. Reversing the action was crucial in recovering the traffic.
In addition to addressing the manual action, the campaign also involved fixing a variety of on-site issues. Despite rectifying the manual action, then I continued working with the client to drive results. The hard work paid off, as the client was able to fulfill her goal of skiing on slopes around the world.
AI Tools Increasing the Competition in SEO
As AI technology continues to evolve, the SEO landscape is becoming increasingly competitive.
These tools that are easily accessible mean you can spool up hundreds of blog articles and design a website in a day if you’re that good.
With AI-driven tools, businesses can analyze user behavior and identify key ranking factors that will help them outrank their competition in search engine results pages.
Additionally, automated solutions can automate tedious manual processes such as content optimization or keyword research so companies have more time to focus on other important tasks for a successful SEO strategy.
Volume will increase of what people are able to output, however quality will need increase this will be a harder element to SEO in the coming years.
Final Words: SEO is Not Hard
I can help you do this — as an SEO expert, I’ve helped startups and established businesses improve their rankings. I can help you play the long SEO game and get you to a place where you feel comfortable with your SEO strategy. Book a Call so we can talk about your goals and how I can help you achieve them.