November and December have been good for one of my clients; it’s a Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company based in India. They have received a lot of International inquiries ever since we activated Google AdWords for them. The conversion rate jumped up 200% in a month and is going great guns.

Organic SEO is shaping up well for them. They are ranking well for quite a lot of pharmaceutical products. And why am I you telling all this? The reason being, when the website was launched a few months back, the chances of the website being PR5 and ranking well were remote.

A lot of factors come into consideration for a website to rank well in organic results. Efficient SEO requires more than a smart Search Engine Optimizer. The website I am talking about is not a blog, but a customized website.

3 Requirements for Efficient SEO:

1. A Good and Flexible Programmer / Developer: A good programmer is the one who knows every aspect of the project and can quickly turn insights into action.The pharmaceutical website I was working on was not ranking at all for a few product related keywords. And these keywords were definitely competitive. A few well written articles were put up on the site under a ‘Featured Products” column. This web page was linked from the index page and all the internal pages. Within 10 days, we had broken in top 20 for a number of those keywords. How does the programmer fit in? Within minutes of receiving the article and getting actionable insights, my programmer colleague set up a system such that every article added under that category will automatically come up on the website.

   And why do I appreciate his presence so much? Because he made my life easy and saved me the trouble of manually adding links for each new article. After all, any further delay would affect my monthly report.

2. Content Writer: My client has their own content writer who works with a lot of enthusiasm and zeal to provide world class content for the website.When the above mentioned product related keywords were not ranking well, I made a list of the topics and mailed it to her. Within 3-4 working days, I received an email from her containing 700- 900 superbly written articles.Having an efficient content writer is a blessing for any Optimizer. It is highly recommended for an organization to hire an in house content writer who understands their organization and product as much as they do.

   I am sure that a content writer who didn’t belong to the pharmaceutical industry would not have written articles half as good as the in house writer.The point being, a serious organization will not outsource content writing, unless the writer belongs to a similar profession.

3. An Understanding Business Owner: I am sure every optimizer will agree with me on this. A rational and understanding website / business owner.Why does the business owner figure in my list of efficient SEO?Let me give you an example.A day after launching a website, the business owner called up my friend and demanded to know, why they weren’t in the top ranking position for their business name. This question was asked in less than 24 hours of the website being launched.Fortunately for me, my client – the Pharmaceutical Co. owner is a very rational and patient person. We hold meetings every 2 months to discuss the developments. He understood very well that it is impossible to break into the top SERPs in a few days for the most popular & most competitive keywords.

   We got a content writer from him and complete control of the website. Within a few months, the results were visible for all to see.

Optimizing a website is not the domain of a SEO Analyst, but requires joint efforts from all the departments involved in developing the website.

I believe that without the co-operation of these three, life would be very difficult for a SEO Analyst.

What do you think? What according to you are the other factors important for efficient SEO?