I was reading Pete’s blog on the importance of time when performing SEO on your website, and it reminded me of one of the questions we frequently get asked by some of our clients, relating to other websites.
It is tempting to look at one of your friends’ websites or the website of yor competitors and think “well they got a ranking for this keyword really quickly – so I should too”. However there are so many factors which influence how quickly the search engine optimisation of a website leads to rankings that so often these comparisons aren’t fair.
For example a website which has been established since 1999 and have a large number of inbound links will have a greater reputation than a website established in 2008 with a smaller number of inbound links. So if you were saying “well I know they starting chasing X keyword 3 months ago and are now in the top 10” this won’t necessarily mean you will also get into the top ten for this keywords in the same timescale.
Another area to consider is the level of competition for the keyword you are looking at getting rankings for. Your friends’ website might well have got a top 10 ranking in Google really quickly, but if this was for a keyword on which there is little competition and you are looking at highly competitive search terms then the timescales needed to gain rankings for the higher competition keywords will be longer, as there are more people trying to rank for this keyword.
Competitor reviews are an important element of search engine optimisations but taking into account the history, market and reputation of the site is also important, before you compare how quickly they rank with your own SEO.
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