punch below weightWhenever someone tells me they want to be in the first 10 search results  I always ask- “why do you deserve to be in the top 10 search results?”

I recently asked a VP of Marketing that question . His company is the #2 market share leader in their category, they have been producing their product longer than anyone else and they have more diversity in their product offering that their competitors. Yet they don’t show up in the top ten search results. It sure sounds like they deserve to be showing up, right? Something must be holding them back.

As this VP told me “they are punching below their weight”. The good news is that it is much easier to correct that than if  they had to produce fluff to try and get noticed. Getting top search engine rankings when you truly deserve it is very doable. It’s truly not very difficult to develop the content and linking strategy that gets the search engine spiders to take notice.

However, if you enjoy top rankings today but you are punching above your weight, please stop worrying only about what search optimization technique you can use next. To make sure you can keep punching strong, focus on developing a business that deserves notice.

Search engines are evolving and they are less susceptible to manipulation than they used to be. If you have a business that is worthy of being noticed, linked to, discussed, reviewed, commented on and/ or otherwise remarkable what you need is a search engine marketing strategy. If you don’t then you need to pray that truly remarkable competitors don’t develop a strategy until you fix your business.

If you focus on offering remarkable products and services then you can get higher rankings with simple strategies. If not you’ll  live the life of a search engine optimist; good luck with that.

Are you punching below your weight?

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