The conversation starts like this. A business owner comes in and says Can your company help us get our website better search results in the search engines? And I reply, WOW, I've got great news! You've come to the right place. We specialize in SEO."

Digging deeper we find that the business owner's wife's nephew's friend helped with some changes on their site a few months ago but has now moved on to Jr. College and is no where to be found. Meanwhile, because he's not around anymore to optimize the site, they've seemingly fallen off the search engines or are no longer able to pull up for key search terms or even the company name. The business owner says Can you pickup where he left off and help us get back up for search results?

My response is, Did I say we do Search Engine Optimization? We provide Search Emergency Operations. As a matter of fact, I'm leaving right now to help out with the fires in California

Kidding aside, as online marketers we know that falling off the search engines doesn't really happen without a good reason. More importantly, after a site has been damned to purgatory it takes a great deal of time and resources to right the wrong and get it back up in the SERPs. Dealing with clients that don't fully understand how their site could be doing great in the search engine one week and then the next disappear, can be quite challenging.

My suggestions to finding solutions for these clients:

• Have a heart to heart with the client and let them know up-front the seriousness of the problem at hand and the possibility of a long road ahead.
• Find out how much the company is willing to re-invest in righting the wrong.
• Have a clear plan that evaluates all areas of the site. This evaluation should revolve around search engine best practices and guidelines.
• If you must, submit a site map to the search engines for review.
• Plan, implement change, evaluate, and review. Sometimes this process can take awhile. The web crawlers work on their own time-table.
• Be patient and stay the course.

Lastly, have a long term plan for the client. Implementing search engine best practices takes time if done properly. The long term effects of growing a site by making these changes will surely bolster a site's presence in the search engines but more importantly, will build its effectiveness on the web.