Yeah, I know analogies are tired. But I love them… so they may happen here a lot. Just a heads up.
Anyway, welcome to a new year, where everyone resolves to have more career success and get in shape. Ok, so resolutions are notoriously short lived, but for those who don’t revert back to Twinkies and covert games of solitaire at work by February 1st here are some ideas that apply to both resolutions.
If you want to increase your business or your career credit, try turning up the volume of your online business. How? A good SEO campaign of course! If SEO is a vital part of overall online business health, and exercise is an essential element of a healthy lifestyle,then it’s easy to imagine why some advice applies to both SEO and working out.
Commit to the process
Deciding to start SEO is like deciding to start a workout routine or going to the gym. Once you begin doing it consistently and commit to the process you get better at it, it becomes easier and you see significant results.
If you go sporadically, or give up after a couple of visits, you probably won’t gain much benefit from it. Making one or 2 changes on your site and expecting to rank #1 for competitive phrases is like driving to Planet Fitness, doing 3 squat thrusts, spending the rest of the hour flexing in the mirror and going home wondering why your pants are still tight.
SEO, like working out is not something you can do once or for a brief period of time and then give up and hope the good you’ve done will last. It must be maintained and refined continually in order to remain effective.
Give it your all
Half-assing your work out will never get you buns of steel and dabbling in SEO will never get you great rankings. Period.
You can get on the tread mill set it to “leisurely stroll” and peruse the latest “Us Weekly” for half an hour but you’re not going to see a lot of results. If you build your site blindly, write link bait with zero market research, guess your best keywords and pray. You might also want to ask to win the lottery while you’re down there. Doing SEO properly takes time, and effort. It requires research and engagement with your community and your online market. Without these things you’re basically bench pressing the bar without the weights.
Vary your routines
Unless you want gigantic biceps and tiny little legs eventually you have to ease up on the curls and start doing some lunges.
Essentially, SEO is the same way. You can precision tune your on-page factors, but if you never ask anyone for a link, or promote your content in an effort to build links your rankings will never move. You can build back links all day long, but if your usability sucks, you’ll never really see the benefit of the traffic that comes for good rankings If you create social media profiles to protect your brand but never use them to build brand loyalty, you’ll never have any fans, friends or followers.
Doing one thing well is great, it’s called a strength, or a forte, but in SEO it’s not enough. Really good internet marketing is marked by diversity. It means actively, even if not evenly, engaging in a variety of marketing methods. By engaging multiple strategies there is a greater chance for maximizing rankings, traffic, and conversions on numerous fronts.
Personal Trainers, Classes and DIY
You can work out for free, and you can do SEO for free. As long as you know what you’re doing. Granted, most of us instinctively know that we can start to exercise simply by moving our legs in the rapid repetitive motion known as running. SEO can be a bit less naturally intuitive. However, the options when it comes to working out and doing SEO are much the same. You can go it alone, or get help. In fitness, a class may mean joining a roomful of sweaty people peddling frantically on bikes that goes nowhere. In SEO it may mean going to a conference or having a professional come in to give a full staff training. In either case, at the gym or learning SEO participants benefit from having someone who knows the ropes in the lead.
Using a personal trainer is yet another option for gym goers. Sometimes there’s nothing quite like tailored, individual attention. It can be extremely helpful to have someone show to the right moves to tighten your glutes, or exactly how to use the leg press properly so you don’t look ridiculous, or do more damage than good. Getting an SEO for your website is about the equivalent of having a personal trainer help you create a work out tailored specifically to your strengths, weaknesses and goals. A good SEO will have ideas that fit your exact needs. Every site, like every body is different having different needs and unique results. But one thing is common among all of these options, regardless of whether you choose to go it alone, or get assistance, do some research first.
Engaging in the culture improves your results
No matter how much you go to the gym, or how many crunches you do, if you never really embrace healthy living as a lifestyle you will inevitably plateau. The more you view exercise as part of a proactive approach to healthy living, the more you will find new ways to feel good and stay fit. With SEO, by being as minimally involved as possible, never learning about the jargon or how all the elements work together, it will always keep you on the fringe of your SEO campaign. By keeping in the loop, being involved and passionate about the process you will discover your own infinite well of great ideas innovative strategies.
The health of a website in terms of online life can be deeply impacted by good SEO, in the same way a person’s life can be deeply affected by regular exercise. By following some of the same principles for both it’s possible to have a long and healthy life, get rankings and look good in skinny jeans.
