We’ve all heard the saying patience is a virtue.

If you are a business owner, entrepreneur or marketer, my guess is that patience may not be your strongest quality. In order to grow a business and keep things afloat, you need to be moving quickly at all times. Yet, if you want to populate on the first page of Google organically and improve your SEO, patience is what differentiates the pretenders from the contenders.

It can take years.

You have to realize that on the first page of Google, the first five results account for 67.6 percent of the clicks, according to a Moz study. It is one thing to rank on page one. It is a completely different animal to rank in the top positioning. Ranking on the bottom of page one versus the top is the equivalent to making it to the NFL as a quarterback and just being a backup versus actually starting, making the Pro Bowl and winning the Super Bowl.

Think like a local bakery.

You wouldn’t believe how many businesses decide to put the majority of their budget into pay-per-click ads (PPC), since that can generate leads the very next day. It’s instant gratification, and I’m not just saying this due to my agency experience. SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, estimates that 87 percent of search engine dollars are spent on PPC versus only 13 percent spent on SEO efforts.

If you can rank towards the top of Google organically, however, there is not another marketing effort that can yield a better ROI. Once you begin ranking in the top positions on Google, your business will be in a whole different ballgame.

Think of your SEO strategy like opening a bakery. If you are trying to compete with the local baker down the street who has been in business for 30 years, it isn’t going to happen overnight. You might have to stay open an extra day of the week to lure in customers who can’t go to the more established baker on his day off. You’ll have to go door to door to businesses to inform them of your corporate baked good packages. You’ll need to hand out samples so people can try your delicious pastries for free. You’ll need to sponsor a local baseball team so all the parents of the kids get your cakes for their kids’ birthdays, which will help expedite word of mouth marketing. Just like it takes time to establish a customer base, it takes time to earn credibility in the eyes of Google. Trust me, if you can be patient, you will reap the benefits.

This is our strategy.

Step 1: Come up with a defined plan.

Step 2: Measure your success.

Step 3: Generate great content, and in turn, acquire backlinks.

HARO is one of the greatest tools for PR and SEO any business owner or digital marketer can make use of. It’s free, it generates amazing exposure (if executed properly) and it can really be a game changer (again, if executed properly).

HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage.

Sign up and use this resource as much as you can to build credibility and establish media relationships for your site. If you spend the time and send back two pitches per day for a one-year timespan, you will get tremendous exposure on some of the most popular sites on the web. This will not only help increase your brand exposure, it will greatly help your SEO as well.

Step 4: Optimize your on-site content.

Step 5: Focus on local.

In order for Google to give your business local credit, it needs to see local action taking place.