SEO – What to chase

My wife and I just spent 8 hours in the car driving from home (Charlotte, NC) to Florida.  Typically, this makes for an interesting time.  As you can imagine, I get bored easy and my wife just likes to relax – not a good combination.

This time was different.  Sandy had a laptop and earphones.  So she watched some girly movies.  I had my iPod Touch and listened to several quality SEO podcasters for several hours.  Occasionally we had pleasant conversation.  But overall, this arrangement kept me from pestering her.  Everyone was happy.

As a side benefit, it means I am more psyched than ever about SEO.  You see, many people think SEO is boring.  Honestly, it is.  Writing tags, editing pages, checking rankings, bla, bla, bla.

But after listening to some experts talk about the latest and greatest techniques for link building in particular, I’m excited once again.  These guys are brilliant and their ideas on how to use blogs, social media, and other sources was just awesome.

I’ve now got some great stuff to share with my colleagues and students in the upcoming weeks.  I’m also excited to get to work on several of our internal projects to make them even stronger.

SEO – WHAT TO CHASE

While driving, I heard two great SEO illustrations that I want to share.  These are not really tips or techniques, but a mindset.

Two experts were discussing how to view SEO.  Unfortunately, many think of it as a battle between you and Google.  That’s not really true.  Your real competition is not Google, but the other sites (or businesses) competing for your key phrases.

To illustrate, if you are camping with a group of friends and a bear jumps out of the woods, do you need to run faster than the bear?  Not really.  You need to run faster than the others with you.

It’s an interesting way to look at it.  Don’t chase the algorithm.  Outrun your competition.  It’s almost always easier.

Why?

Because even though the algo has not changed much over the years, it is hard to chase it.  When you shoot an arrow at a flying object, you don’t aim for your target, you aim for where the target will be.

Do we know where the Google algorithm will be in 3 months, 6 months, one year?  We have some loose ideas, but not really.

So don’t chase the algorithm.  Outrun your competition.

And next time you go on a long trip, bring something to watch or listen to.  That’s today’s advice for SEO and a happy marriage.