I have guided many successful business marketers and owners through the process of building their online presence through SEO, I can usually consult individuals with the exact tips necessary to get their online presense up and flowing. However, over the years I have learned that there are certain character traits that highly successful SEOs embody that can often make the difference between a highly successful SEO effort and a moderately successful SEO effort. If you are thinking of becoming a full time SEO consultant, this is a perfect article to read to make sure your personality fits the bill for seeing your efforts through completely with the most success.
Persistance: If you do not give up quickly, they will come
There is no such thing as overnight SEO or instant SEO. No matter what some poeple try to say, I have not seen any “successful” SEO ventures result from the tactics that state they are going to get you results overnight. The way to get long term search engine visibility is through persistent high quality activity.
Six years ago I was introduced to the idea of running a marathon. At the time, I thought, “Sure, I’m in decent shape, all I need to do is just keep running until I finish.” This mentality is of course easier said than done. Your bodies just aren’t naturally ready to run 26.2 miles without having some training. My first marathon I ran was a true test to my will to persist through difficult times. I had not properly trained for the event. The most miles I had ever run in my life leading up to the day was 10, and that was only once, and it was not a pleasant experience.
It was the L.A. Marathon of 2007. It was a hot day. And I felt it. By mile 13, my body was still feeling good. I got a false sense that I was half way done, and was still feeling good.
All of a sudden, at mile 18 things changed. My body really started to hurt and started telling me to stop. I had never felt this sort of feeling before. So many thoughts rushed to me, “It’s too hot, you need some water. You still have 8 miles, that is too long to finish. I think I may have injured a muscle. I just can’t make it.” But what you learn about yourself on marathon days is you can persist. Even though you are hurting. Even though it is extremely tough, you can persist and finish the marathon.
Successful SEOs likely have the mental fortitude required to complete a marathon even when their bodies tell them to stop. In the SEO world, there will be times where it will be difficult to continue. You will not be seeing quick results. Curve balls will come and rankings will change. But if you continue to take the proper steps daily to improve, the point will come where it is a lot easier. Persistence in SEO is an absolute must.
Adventurous: Willing to Try New Things
There are many theories out there on the best steps to take to raise your rankings in the search engines. Some of them are no brainers tried and true, like creating high quality content, creating lots of high quality content, creating targeted titles on your web page, and getting backlinks.
However, not all SEO experts agree on every tactic available. For many years I completely avoided social media with my SEO tactics. I had so much success without them, I did not want to force any of my clients to have to go that route. In 2013, this has certainly changed. If you do not have at least one social media location connected with your website, you are missing out on some easy SEO potential. Not every social media tactic works, but trying new options within this realm is starting to prove very beneficial.
There are many strategies on the black hat side of SEO that can help to gain and advantage in the market. However, my thought on this is in the long run, if you are going about your SEO strategy with an idea that you are trying to do less, produce lower quality, and outrank, you will ultimately get sniffed out. Now that bounce rate is playing a larger role in your continued rankings over time, visitors are telling the story whether your site is important. You can try new things, but make sure you are also consistenly maintaining high standards of quality.
Be sure to research strategies before implementing. Don’t just take any random blog post you read and think whatever it says is absolute truth. Do some research. Make sure new strategies are in fact good strategies. Sometimes, you simply have to be willing to try new things. I personally am not big on trying new things without first going through some extensive research.
Being Thorough
One of my favorite traits of top SEOs is how thorough they become in their craft. If you think about how much is involved in raising your search engine rankings, it can sometimes get a bit overwhelming to manage it all.
Just take the example of one of my favorite SEO tips, linking within the content of your website to other content. Quite simply, that means you are pointing key texts within your content to other relevant content (on your site and off your site). Google simply loves to see links, especially when you are relating content on your website through links. This task, while very important to your SEO growth, is one of the most tedious and time consuming. To create your internal links you have to have a deep knowledge of your own content on your site to know where to link to. Then you have to locate all the proper links and enter them within the related content on each page. In addition, as new content is created, it is even valuable to go back to old content and add links to your newly created content to further enhance your internal link building structure.
When I create a blog post, I usually spend around 2 to 4 hours creating the content, and then 1 to 2 hours adding proper links throughout the post. It becomes extra difficult because once you are “done” with the writing phase, you are excited and ready to post to your blog right away. But proper content creation simply isn’t “done” until links are created, photos are added, and all the additional design aspect are finalized. For me, it helps to ensure you have the proper time allotted prior to writing content for your website. Allot enough time to compose the content (if that includes research) and then allot enough time to properly prepare the content for display.
You can quickly see how having a thorough mentality will help in the quality of this process.
Patience
Just like being thorough, many top SEO consultants are extremely patient. The difference between the SEO plan and the adwords plan is the difference between a sprint and a marathon. Your SEO results are not expected to occur instantly. For low competition links, you can expect to rank well in 3 months. For high competition, it is more likely a years time to really see some good results
Patience is so important because you will be tempted to get out of your rhythm after seeing little results in highly competitive markets. If you can just know that smart efforts will work, that Google will reward consistently good content and consistently strong link building, it becomes much easier to continue with your strategy.
I equate our SEO strategies to planting a garden. When you first start “planting”, you are learning everything from scratch. You have to learn the proper tools to use. You have to learn the proper fertilizer to get your plants the correct nutrition they need to grow and flourish. You need to understand the proper amount of sunlight your plants require. And you simply can’t neglect watering them.
The same is true for your website. Initially many of the ideas about building a buisiness online may seem foreign. You are not familiar with the business building tools available to you online. But over time, you start to learn which tools assist your process and become invaluable parts of your online business process.
You learn to fertilize your websites with the basic needs all websites should have. A clean design that doesn’t turn users away. A slick logo that invites company branding. A content management system setup that allows for the most development potential.
You learn to give your website the proper amount of sunlight by connecting with other like-minded individuals in your niche or space to provide backlinks and shine light on your growing website.
As an SEO, be sure to take a step back and think what search engines are trying to offer their users. They want to offer their users the perfect answer to the question users are asking. If you approach you content creation with this in mind, and then take your persistant, adventurous, thorough, and patient mind site along for the ride, you will have little problem seeing success. It will just be a matter of time.
Jeremy Oms
Jeremy is an entrepreneur and leading manager of New Blood, Inc. Excited about all things Internet related, Jeremy spends much of his time project managing custom web applications and directing advanced search engine optimization efforts.
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