Searching for Positions in the NFL Draft
This last weekend was a major event for most football fans around the country. The 2007 NFL Draft was a turning point for many men and their careers in the National Football League. Watching the draft made me think about how SEO, football, and the NFL Draft have a lot in common.
In football, there are individual players who are considered stars in the NFL and the sports world. Be it a wide receiver who can get great separation and catch a poorly thrown ball, a quarterback who, amidst intense pressure, swiftly hands off the ball to his running back, or the defensive tackle who does everything he can to stop the run, these stars wouldn’t be very effective without the rest of the team.
So it is in SEO – you have several key components to getting great positioning, but one of those components all by itself, often isn’t enough to bring you a high position on Google or Yahoo. Each component, with its strength and purpose, comes together, to bring its team (the website) a win (a high position).
How can the NFL Draft possibly relate to SEO? During the first round of the draft, teams make a serious investment in players that they can only hope will add to the team. Sure, the stats are there, the players performed well in college, but the question remains – will that translate into professional football? Considerable amounts of money are invested in players who are chosen during the first round of the NFL Draft – whether or not the player will benefit the team is yet to be seen.
A company has different departments. Let’s put it in football terms – offense, defense, and special teams. Your website is a key player on that team. When you hire an SEO firm, you are making a draft pick – you are choosing a company that you hope will contribute to the rest of the team, by bringing about higher positions on the search engines, higher conversions, and higher visibility. Just as it can take time to develop that rookie from the NFL Draft, so it is that it can take time before you start to see results. With a good SEO firm, it may take some time, but you will see the results.
