Limitations of SEO - Chapman Net Systems, Inc.

What are the limitations of SEO?

SEO is a crucial part of marketing any revenue-generating site, but the return we can provide is always limited by factors beyond our control.  CNS will attempt to optimize the rankings your pages can reach within the context of the competitive landscape for target searches, and the relative popularity of your competitors (in the eyes of the search engines).

It is important to recognize that the term "optimization" does not, and cannot, mean that we can make a site appear #1 for the most common searches related to it's products and services.  A company that promises such a result may be mislabeling "paid search" services like Pay Per Click as SEO, or potentially using black-hat techniques that will may result in your site banned from Google.

Google and other search engines have many ways of knowing how "popular" a site is on its own, without including the traffic that they send for free, or traffic that is paid for (paid links and pay-per-click ads).  They track this through plugins such as Google Toolbar, ISP statistics, and countless other means.  All things being equal, this is a primary factor used to determine ranking.  Thus, a site like BestBuy.com, which advertises all over television, their stores, in magazines, etc., is going to be seen as extremely popular.  SEO campaigns for large national e-commerce sites also start at $30,000 per month, which means a small retailer should not expect to beat BestBuy.com for a coveted term like "iPod" in Google's rankings.

In the end, good optimization can allow your site to expand its reach by reasonable margins.  You won't often beat much more popular sites, because they'll also be optimizing their sites, and spending much more time and money doing it.  However, you can expect to see reasonable increases in the number of search phrases that bring visitors to your site, you'll often find your site beating out competitors who are more popular for some phrases, and "free" search engine traffic will gradually increase.