Over the past few years, search engine optimization has become one of the most popular components of digital marketing.
Everyone wants to learn about it – at least, the basics – and, due to this ever-growing demand, there’s an increasing number of online resources full of quick and easy tips on all things SEO.
And that might bring us to a question…
How much can you actually rely on these tips, hacks, and shortcuts for seo success?
In today’s article, I’m going to explore the answer to this question (which, spoiler alert, is: not much) and explain how you can develop a solid SEO plan for your business.
Interested? Keep reading!
The Problem With Relying Too Much on SEO Hacks
Yes, there’s a plethora of traditional hacks and optimization methods that some people swear by.
However, SEO has become an incredibly competitive field, and that means that those hacks don’t really work anymore. They’ve become the baseline of any SEO strategy, if not lower than that.
They’re the type of hacks and methods that any business uses without even putting too much thought. For that reason these types of hacks will not make your website stand out.
A clear example of this is the usage of keywords.
Anyone who’s taken five minutes of their time to read about SEO knows about keywords and many choose to simply put them everywhere on their website.
This might have worked at one point, but not anymore, and it’s certainly not going to work out for your business either.
So, my point is: when creating your SEO success plan, think less about hacks and focus instead on strategy and resources.
Because the truth is that quick and easy hacks won’t get you far.
On the contrary, what will actually get you far are carefully planned strategies and resource allocation decisions. These strategies can be developed as long as you know your competitors, know what you have, and take advantage of what strengths you can double down on.
The SEO Success Solution: Focusing on a Company’s Resources
We know, by now, that SEO is really about resource allocation, but what exactly does that mean?
In order to explain, I need to go over a few concepts that you might already be familiar with, so here goes a refresher.
Every single SEO method and decision that a company makes revolves around three pillars: link building & referring domains, content development & content marketing, and technical SEO.
Now, when working with these companies, I often see that their overall marketing budget is limited… let alone the SEO one.
Trying every hack out there and creating those campaigns may not be the best option. Instead, it is better to be methodical and choose the strategies that have the most potential to provide positive results.
So, the main challenge that SEO professionals face is the limitation of resources, and the primary question that needs to be answered is:
- What mix of SEO pillars can we take on that will give us a good shot at ranking and beating our competitors?
Using Your Inherent Strengths as the Foundation of Your SEO Strategy
Going online to read about SEO is a great learning method, but there’s one common mistake that you need to avoid. That mistake to avoid is to copy a certain strategy solely based on the fact that it worked for another business.
What business owners need to understand is that the success cases they read about detail strategies that were best optimized for that specific business.
So, instead of copying, the way to achieve SEO success is to borrow ideas. Only using strategies that actually fit your business inherent strengths.
Strong Community Presence and Network? Link Building Is For You
Some of my clients don’t have the marketing resources to create their own content development team or hire freelance writers.
However, what they do have is the ability to out into their community, speak, and be heard. They have built a strong network and gathered valuable contacts that can help them grow their business.
In these cases, I usually advise them to take a backlinking approach, to go out there and double down on their network, by pitching them for guest speakership and posts.
Ultimately, this strategy helps them not only build thought leadership but drive more links to their website.
Not Well Known? Give Content a Try
Not every business has a huge network, which means that not every business should rely on link building to boost their SEO efforts.
For clients who don’t feel like they have the brand equity or exposure to pursue guest appearances. The best option is to invest much more on content and/or on technical SEO.
As long as the client has the right attitude and their team is ready and willing to work hard, then we focus on developing a big content library. These content libraries should not only be thorough, expansive and full of opportunities for keyword rankings. But at the same time gives the business an opportunity to show Google why their website is relevant.
Not Well Known and Don’t Like Writing? Go Technical
If neither writing nor networking is for you, there’s a third option you can go for. With solid technical skills you can build and grow strong websites, databases, and simplify the user experiences quickly.
This approach is based on the third pillar of SEO – technical SEO – and it is commonly adopted by tech startups. These startups are using technical SEO as an application that provides user value.
In order to master technical SEO, you need, of course, to have the technical know-how to build the web assets that you need, but there’s more to it than that.
You also need to be able to double down and manage large websites in the ever-changing Google ecosystem.
In other words, you need to be sure that, even if your website has thousands and thousands of pages, you’re capable of launching a whole new side to it and guarantee that Google notices this new addition and properly indexes it.
Even more than that, you need to make sure that each individual page you create is optimized for the right keywords.
It sounds like a complex process, and it is.
However, if you have what it takes to nail it, your SEO will grow and improve by sheer size, as you’ll have more and more opportunities to use keywords, which will naturally start ranking for your business.
In Summary: Focus on What You’re Good at
When it comes to optimizing your website, focusing on your strengths. It’s okay if you can’t do everything.
When running an SEO campaign, make sure you know your resources. Figure out how you can augment them in order to double down on what you’re already good at.
If you focus your resources on any of the seo success pillars we discussed today then you’re much more likely to succeed. The goal is to develop a self-sustaining and highly-organized, resource-allocated SEO strategy.
If you go for the hacks and shortcuts… you’ll get the opposite result.
I’ve seen plenty of people try these SEO hacks thinking they’d see positive changes overnight. Only to realize that they weren’t working. Resulting in using another strategy and needing to go back to square one.
Now you know how to avoid making that same mistake!
