Search Engine Optimization is dead. Or is it really?

How many times have we heard the complaint that somebody owned a fantastic website, did excellent onsite optimization, built up hundreds to thousands of relevant back links but had nothing to show for his results? He was simply not ranking anywhere on the face of any of the search engines for his targeted keywords.

Well, truth be told, this problem is not uncommon. Even I run into the same situation every now and then! In my years of running SEO campaigns for my clients, I’ve experienced this several times but the good news is – it is never a permanent situation.

So if you ever run into this situation don’t start freaking out. Here is a helpful checklist that can help you keep your sanity and persevere on your SEO path.

1. Are you being impatient? Are you expecting results within a week or even days? If you have been buying into the hype that SEO is something that can happen overnight, get re-educated. The only way you can get ranked really fast on search engines is through paying for it, or through implementing black hat SEO methods which will get you ranked and delisted so fast you won’t even know what happened. Pure white hat SEO takes time. Give it at least 2 weeks and beyond to see results.

2. Are your chosen keywords too generic? If the keywords you picked are very generic, expect to struggle to even get listed. Examples of generic keywords are ‘ice cream’, ‘hard drives’ and ‘computers’. The competition for these keywords is not only fiercely competitive, but so generic that the search engines have practically tens of millions of web sites to give attention to. You will have work extremely hard to even get listed for these keywords, then ten times harder to climb your way to the top. In the first place, you may want to consider selecting less generic keywords. For example, ‘ice cream in New York’, ‘reliable hard drives’ and ‘good computer reviews’.

3. Are your chosen keywords highly competitive? If the keywords you have chosen have a lot of competition, getting ranked will take more time than usual. Be patient and keep persevering.

4. If you are using article marketing as part of your SEO efforts, are you distributing too much duplicate content? There are debates whether having duplicate content will damage your website’s search engine reputation and cause them not to be ranked or even – gasp – delisted. Well, I believe that everything needs to be balanced and I think that – if you have too much duplicate content out there, it is likely to be part or all of the cause why your website is not ranking. You can remedy the situation by keeping the content on your website unique always and distributing re-written articles. Try to generate different versions of one article so that you can leverage on that single article.

5. If you are building up back links through blog commenting, are you always submitting your keywords to the same websites? Most search engines work on the basis that they will rank a website according to the number of unique back links linking back to the website. Each link from a unique domain counts as a vote. If you are indeed using blog commenting as a SEO strategy, you should build up a large list of friendly blogs to submit your keywords to so that you have more unique back links. If you have been commenting on a small pool of blogs repeatedly, it is not going to help your ranking much if your chosen keywords are competitive.

6. Are you building your links too fast? Have you been distributing articles and submitting blog comments at the speed of light? Again, there are debates about whether building links too fast will damage your reputation with the search engine spiders. But I think it will be prudent and rational to practice patience and build your SEO links with moderation. I tend to agree that moving too fast will be more damaging than helpful in many cases through my experience.

Aldric Chang is a successful serial creative entrepreneur and internet marketing expert who shares seo tips and information on how to make money online on his blog.

One great thing about listing your business in Google Local Search is that because it’s free, there’s no way to waste money. But it’s real easy to waste your time on it. As a business owner, you’d probably agree anything that doesn’t help grow your business is a waste of time. Sadly, most business owners get poor or no results from their Local Search listings because they don’t know what they’re doing.

In my experience, business owners fall prey to these four bad myths:

Bad Myth 1: You need a great location to rank highly. You don’t. Some Web weenies claim that whichever business is closest to the geographical center of town holds a trump card over all competitors. Sure, Google gives you a minor boost if you have a central location, but it’s only one factor out of many others. I’ve seen businesses from the next town over rank #1 for local searches in this town. It all comes down to this: if you have a great location, don’t get fat and happy. If you don’t have the best location, don’t despair; there are specific ways you can get found as THE local guy.

Bad Myth 2: You have to name your local listing after whatever your front sign says. Nothing says you need to use your official business name in your listing name, which is that blue link that gets displayed next to the local map. All that matters is whether that blue link of yours contains specific benefits to the customer, includes the name of your city or area, and (most of all) is something that people will actually type into Google Local Search. By the way, if your listing focuses on your name (“John A. Doe, DDS”), change it. Customers don’t care about your name or your official business name; they just want to know you’ll fix their problems.

Bad Myth 3: You can’t position yourself in the market your real customers are in. If you located in a little town or suburb that’s not too far from a larger city, there’s no rule that says you can’t position yourself as serving the larger market. Sure, you can’t say you’re in a metropolitan area you aren’t in (not that it would help you anyway). But if most of your customers are in a more populated area, you may want to get found there. On the other hand, if you’re in an area that has especially stiff competition, but your customers are in a more specific area, you’ll want to target just them. That’s where a tool called Google Neighborhood Search comes in, which lets you get found in a very specific neighborhood (in addition to being visible in your wider area).

Bad Myth 4: That Google Local Search listings are just listings, in that you just put one out there and let the customers roll in. Too many business owners are stuck in the passive phone-book mindset “All I have to do is write my little 2×4 ad square and I’ll get customers calling me up.” True, some businesses owners can pick up a few area customers by just slapping a local listing up there. But they get those customers despite their own laziness. And who knows: maybe they’re fine with having “enough” customers as opposed to more business than they can handle. The bottom line is if you want more than just a trickle of local customers who find you through Google, there are certain solutions you have to use with your local listing, which can put you way above the competition. Doing things with your local listing versus just letting it sit there is what separates the men from the boys.

For more on how to avoid “Bad Myth 2″ plus other info on how you can get visible in your local market, go to http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com There, you’ll get 3 no-cost solutions you can use today to get more local visibility than you’re getting now.