Top five positions must be snatched away from an opponent. There are only 5 top five spots. If you want one, someone else has to be toppled from their place at the top.
You don't get to the top by showing up with your shiny new site; you will have to fight to be there.
At Cole Wiebe + Partners, when we begin a search engine optimization program for a client, the first place we begin is a keyword analysis, followed by a competitive analysis. We want to know who the enemy is.
Out-positioning your current first page rivals is an act of war. We analyze their strategies and then prepare to lay siege.
SEO is not for the faint of heart. In most niches, there aren’t nearly enough top five or even top ten rankings to go around and we have to fight for every position. It’s not uncommon to receive nasty emails and comments from competitors and their webmasters. We employ only fair ‘white hat’ SEO practices, but that doesn’t make being toppled from top rankings any more enjoyable for the dethroned. Counter measures by rival SEOs are to be expected with subsequent skirmishes. The best SEOs (search engine optimization professionals) are thick-skinned warriors and they’re relentless in their pursuit of your top search rankings.
Many of our prospective clients feel that they are somehow betraying their web designer when they hire an SEO. Web designers are artists/creatives and their design work is much needed in the internet marketing process. But what you need to drive traffic to actually see their web design work is a marketer – a copywriter, salesman, master of the 'pen' – with a warrior mindset.
To win in Internet marketing there’s need of the poet (ad copy writer), the artist (web designer) and the warrior (marketer/SEO).
