How To Stop Your Boat Sinking!

Posted on July 16, 2015

Archive : July 2015

Category : SEO

“The best way to learn a complex idea is to find it living inside something else you already understand.” In search of a metaphor by Seth Godin

I love Seth Godin, and this latest inspirational email couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.

When it comes to "SEO" it would appear that despite our best efforts we often struggle to get our customers to focus on the areas that will make the biggest impact on their rankings.

Too often they end up obsessing over the tasks that at the best deliver very little value or sometimes none at all!! So after reading Seth's email I came up with this metaphor ………

Imagine you are in a boat sailing across a large lake aiming to get to the island in the middle. (Stay with me on this one)

Picture this….. your boat has the following problems:…..

A large plug (yes like your bath!) which has popped out,
A really large hole in the middle.
At the far end of the boat there is a tiny little crack in a piece of the wood through which miniscule amounts of water are bubbling up.

Which problem would you tackle first?

Yes I know it seems obvious now when you look at it like this.

First: Put the plug back (i.e. Add news/content to your site - On-Site Optimisation ) as that is the quickest and easiest fix
Next : Focus on the big hole (Link Building - Off-Site ) clearly this is harder and will take much longer but it will also reap the biggest rewards in terms of rankings. (reaching your destination!)
Lastly : Ignore the tiny crack (Small technical issues) in an ideal world you would rather they not be there but it’s also not going to stop you reaching your destination.

Unfortunately for me my client no matter what I say is convinced that repairing the tiny crack in his boat first will mean that he will get the Google rankings he wants!!

I wish him well and hope he is at least wearing a life jacket!!

So a Top Tip, if you haven’t put any new content on your site recently (last 2 weeks!) or acquired some quality back links then you are focusing your efforts on the wrong thing.

Remember your customer is NOT Google Bot!!

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