SEO Works Just Fine If You Up Your Game

Do a search for “how to become a pro basketball player” and you’ll get endless advice. Stay in the game for many years, hone your skills by training, work hard, and understand the commitment you need to succeed.

Being an SEO is no different. In fact, almost every piece of advice in this video clip on how to be a pro athlete can be applied to how to succeed in SEO.

The only difference is: SEOs can’t know all the rules of the game because Google keeps changing them. Imagine a basketball player having to figure out the new rules every time they got the ball, and still being able to perform well.

We are under what seems to be a flood of frequent algorithm changes. Google made more than 3,200 changes to Search (including algorithm changes and more) in 2018 alone. Then in 2019, we saw some pretty significant algorithm updates, too.

Our website rankings can jump up and down like puppets, and Google is the puppeteer. With the many updates, plenty of published research shows the winners and losers, and the volatility of them all.

But I know something is different by the number of calls coming to our agency from desperate people whose businesses have been harmed by search traffic losses.

Right now, we’re up against a new kind of “Google dance” where even the best websites’ organic results are uncertain. This new Google dance forces us all to up our game and not just sit and hope for the best. Businesses are at stake.

So what do you do? Take a page out of an athlete’s playbook and do what it takes to get to the top of your game.

Study

• Study what Google says and what it doesn’t say about its algorithm. Follow Googlers like John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Danny Sullivan, and YouTube channels like Google Webmasters.
• Research the confirmed and unconfirmed algorithm updates, and read what experts are saying about them. Then, how are they impacting your sites?
• Find SEO case studies of similar sites or industries to get a sense of what’s working.
• Read articles and insights from other SEOs by reading or subscribing to sites like ours, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and so on.

Train

• Take SEO training even if you consider yourself an expert. Everyone needs refreshers to improve their skills.
• Attend conferences — there are hundreds of digital marketing conferences every year to choose from.
• Do SEO drills, and experiment with proven SEO strategies to see what’s working in a live environment.

Perform

• Work hard and take your SEO career seriously. You can’t do SEO halfway and succeed.
• As an SEO professional, you have the power to make or break businesses online. You need to live and breathe SEO, and put in the time to be your best.

My favorite quote is "Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard". Following that has helped me reach my goals #WinFromWithin

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) January 4, 2012

The bottom line: In the search competition where there can be only one winner, SEOs must stay at the top of their game. Otherwise, they sit at the sidelines while others get the glory.

My recommendation: check out our classroom SEO training course.

Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay Inc., a global digital marketing firm providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media marketing, SEO-friendly web architecture, and SEO tools and education. Connect with him on LinkedIn or through the BruceClay.com website.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.