SEO last minute - too late?

When things are going down do you start thinking about SEO? I mean, - you get less calls, sales are falling, and when everything seems not working you get the idea: "Ah! We will improve our search rankings! That should help!". Here are few ideas about the "last minute SEO" that might help to change your attitude.

There were few projects in our experience when companies were taking SEO as a last resourt to help their marketing campaign. And guess what ... shortly after they instructed us to commence the work they gone bust.

One of the names I recall was Worlds Gardens (online retailers of gardening tools and accessories), who asked us to do SEO work on their website (business was declining). Two weeks of solid work of researching, re-coding templates, optimising and ... we got a letter from a newly appointed Administrators stating that the company went into a receviership, followed by another letter stating that after evaluating all assets and liabilities (yes, Inland Revenue is always first in the queue - that's the law!) we, as creditors, may claim £1.50 (Let me spell it out for you: One pound and Fifty pence).

Is SEO an instant coffee? - No! It is rather a product that needs brewing. Why? Let me tell you the approximate time required in order to see results of initial SEO efforts:

1. Customer decided to take the site through SEO process.
2. Initial discussions will have to take place to find out what are the objectives, deliverables and the baseline.
3. A research has to be made in order to identify the correct set of key phrases / key words that are both popular and viable.
4. Usability of the site to be reviewed.
5. The source code to be reviewed.
6. Initial report will have to be prepared and then reviewed approved by the Client. (Items 1-6 will take about 1-2 weeks)
7. Advice to be implemented. (Depending on programmers and complexity of the site this may take from 1 to 3 weeks)
8. Waiting game. - Search engines spiders need to crawl the site and re-index it, it does not happen every day and may take anything upto 2 weeks.
9. Then we shall see the results and analyse the impact. So it could roughly be upto 7 weeks before some results appear.
10. And it is not enough, - the first results will tell us what else have to be strengthened, adjusted or revised. - Hence, another iteration!
11. So, generally, we are talking about from 2 to 4 months before your site shows visible improvements.

CONCLUSION: Do not think that SEO is not important at present! It could be too late if you do not take SEO seriously. Of course, there is always an alternative, e.g. if you are in a rush and desperate you can advertise with systems like AdWords - it will cost you (hence Google is a multi-billion company), but it will work from Day 1 for you. Although for a sustained influx of visitors the SEO (natural search rankings) is the way to go.