SEO: Do the Work!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

I came across this great post on SEOMoz a few weeks ago and I had to share it, especially lesson #9—“Stop Scheming & Get to Work.” Author Peter Meyers claims this is the most important SEO lesson anyone could learn, and I have to agree with him; DO THE WORK! (Peter says it with a little more force and an expletive in his post).

As Peter points out, your website is your business and your livelihood. It’s what pays the mortgage, college tuition, car payments and grocery bills. How can you not have the time to do quality Internet marketing and great SEO? How can you afford to not have the time?! I can completely commiserate with the small business owner—I’m one as well. I have a family to take care of, a house to maintain and a social life that I’d like to hold onto, but I make the time to create and execute a great SEO campaign for my own business because I know that the work I put in is going to make a difference in the long term success of my website.

I think too many site owners are still waiting for the “magic SEO pill” to come along, the one tactic that is going to send their business through the roof, dominate the SERPs and guarantee long lasting SEO success. I hate to break it to you, but that pill will never come. There is no secret to SEO, no trick that your SEO consultant or provider is holding back so they can keep you as a client. The secret to SEO success is simply to do it and keep doing it.

I am strictly a white hat SEO practitioner. In my opinion, why would you waste time and energy spinning your wheels and fighting to stay one step ahead of the search engines and algorithm updates? All the time spent scheming and planning (and worrying you’ll get caught) could be spent writing great content for your company blog, building a stronger social presence, finding new ways/places to market your business online and so forth. When you invest in black hat SEO tactics, you run the risk of those efforts eventually be voided by the search engines. Even if your site isn’t actively penalized, if your link portfolio is filled with spammy, low-quality links and those links are devalued by the search engines your link portfolio is as good as empty. Why not do the work and spend the time investing in SEO tactics that aren’t going to haunt you?

As Peter aptly says it in his post, “If 80% of your traffic is coming from Google, and you don’t “have the time” to do the hard work…, then here’s the simple truth: no blog post is going to save you.” He is absolutely right. If you read every single blog post and article I’ve written about SEO over the years you’d probably know just about everything there is to know about creating, implementing and carrying out an SEO campaign. But reading about how to SEO and actually doing it are two very different things. It doesn’t matter if all the information you need is laid at your feet and wrapped up with a pretty bow—you have to use it and do the work to make your SEO campaign a success!