SEO predators are rampant, making bold claims, promising guaranteed results, and urging you to stay with them “for at least a year, because it will take that long to see results.”
SEO is a multifaceted, time-consuming discipline that requires tailored strategies for different use cases. Determining the best approach can be overwhelming, to say the least, and the cost of getting it wrong is one that most businesses can’t afford. Formulating an effective SEO strategy is a task fraught with perils and pitfalls at every turn:
A constantly changing landscape - Search engine algorithms update frequently, sometimes multiple times per day, requiring continuous learning and adaptation.
Information overload - There’s a vast amount of SEO content in books and online, much of it conflicting or outdated, making it difficult to distinguish reliable sources from misinformation or obsolete advice. Most of this content is produced by SEO specialists as part of a sales funnel to get you signed up for their SEO services.
Technical complexity - SEO involves understanding website architecture, HTML, CSS, JavaScript rendering, site speed optimization, and other technical concepts that can be intimidating for non-technical people.
Long feedback loops - SEO changes can take weeks or months to produce results, making it hard to know if you’re doing things correctly or need to adjust your approach.
Lack of transparency - Google doesn’t reveal how its algorithms work, so much of SEO knowledge comes from testing, correlation studies, educated guesses, and trial-and-error rather than reliable documentation.
Balancing multiple factors - SEO isn’t just one thing—it involves content quality, technical optimization, backlinks, user experience (UX), mobile-friendliness, page speed, and more. Knowing what to prioritize can be daunting.
Competitive nature - SEO rankings are relative to competitors. Even if you improve your site, you might not see results if competitors are improving faster.
Requires diverse skills – Effective SEO demands a mix of technical knowledge, writing skills, data analysis, psychology, and marketing strategy—a knowledge base that is costly, time-consuming, and hard to pursue while running and growing a business.
Time-intensive and expensive – Regardless of how you approach and implement it, SEO requires a massive amount of work: research, coding, copywriting, producing landing pages, optimizations, and revisions. Consequently, it is expensive. It is not uncommon for SEO specialists to charge over $10,000 monthly for their services. (We don’t!)
Finally, with so many SEO specialists out there, how do you find one who can deliver real results and ROI? SEO predators are rampant, making bold claims, promising guaranteed results, and urging you to stay with them “for at least a year, because it will take that long to see results.” The all-too-frequent scenario is that by the end of that year, you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars with little or no results to show for the spend.
We've navigated these rough seas time and time again (and so have our clients before hiring us). We've been designing and developing for the web since the early days of search engines—remember Yahoo! and AltaVista? Today there are hundreds of search engines in use, but make no mistake: it's Google's world; we just live in it. And ranking high on Google is the first step to ranking high everywhere else, including on the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.
At Lost Highway Media, we've built, and continue to build, a proven track record of getting our clients' websites to the top of page one search engine results. Here's how to get there... LEARN MORE