11/07/2012
SEO has long been a process in which instant financial gratification has been hard to come by (especially on a brand new project). I believe the "patience" trait required by the nature of SEO is what causes many projects to fail due to a couple of different things:
1. Many people getting into SEO get sold on "make a lot of easy money working from home" mantras and are lured in by otherwise dishonest marketers.
2. SEO has a lot of upfront cost that may not be recouped for months (or yrs).
As organic real estate continues to become more elusive and expensive inside of Google it really has never been more important to appropriately evaluate your competition and your keyword market.
You should consider the following points when addressing SERP Competition:
Strength of websites competing organically
Google's Knowledge Graph
Google Maps/Places Inserts
Google's Lead Generation Forms (Google Hotels, Google Flights, etc)
Google Serving Ads Off of Local Listings
AdWords Ads with Social Extensions, Site Links, etc further pushing organic results downward
Adding Google Carving via Video Inserts, Paid Inclusion, News Results, and so on
