Stop Reading and Bleedin’ Get On With It!
I’m shouting at myself here - not you!
I’ve spent so much time this past year, especially with the arrival of Twitter, reading, perusing, digesting the writings and blogs of numerous SEO gurus and wannabes, that I’ve not actually done much work.
Not only do I spend an inordinate amount of time reading these worthy blogs etc, but I then spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying which, or any, of the excellent tips and advice I should implement.
- Should I search the ethernet for PR4+ blog posts, which don’t implement the ‘no follow’ and then try and figure out how to, sneakily, get my link in, so it looks oh so natural?
- Should I be making fan pages on Facebook, My Space, Bebo, Sqidoo and Wikipedia?
- Should I be creating numerous twitter accounts to cater for the wide range of products I could twit to unsuspecting followers?
- Should I be writing numerous blog posts to my various alter-ego blogs and inter connecting them all?
- Should I be creating more niche websites on the WP platform?
- Should I be searching out different hosts so that I don’t host my sites on the same IP address?
- Should I be signing up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference, although they cost a fortune?
- If I sign up for the latest SEO/Affiliate conference will I make myself ill worrying about networking?
- Should I be writing dozens of articles for article sites
- Should I be writing concise articles, inserting just the one link to my site, for other complimentary sites?
- Should I be spending most of my time finding those ‘impossible’ PR8 one way links which will lift my site up to Nirvana Link Heaven?
- Should I just concentrate on good content and bugger the SEO side of stuff?
- Should I forget about good content and concentrate on the on-page stuff?
- Should I use ‘no follow’ to sculpt my site into the silo effect? (no I haven’t got a clue, either!)
- Should I start using pivot tables to analyse my data from Google Analytics?
- Should I start actually analysing my data from Google Analytics?
- Should I be concentrating on the long tail keywords and not the short tail ones?
- Should I be using Linkscape or Majestic - or both?
- Should I start buying links? (that’s a rhetorical question Matt, I’m a Yorkshire lass!)
- Should I start selling links? (another one of those rhetorical jobbies!)
- Should I start interlinking my pages with the relevant anchor text (don’t forget to alter it, though) from within the content on similar pages?
- Should I ‘no follow’ all my affiliate links?
- Should I ‘no follow’ all my outbound links?
- Should I bother with recriprocal links?
- Should I bother with backlinks from sites with PR1 or less?
- Should I submit to directory sites?
- Should my main content be moved to the top of the page with the help of CSS?
- Should I start following all the Twitterartis mentioned on the latest top 500 worldwide SEOists
- Should I stop salivating each morning at the thought of the little pearls of wisdom which might have appeared in my Twitter timeline overnight from SEOists with strange names?
And all the while my Nursery Furniture page is going AWOL, there’s dust bunnies blowing through various empty pages, merchants have changed networks, my best selling products are out of stock, my husband, child and dog are heading out the door, my rear end is taking on a black leathery patina - a large black leathery patina - my head is so full of nonsense that I can’t think straight - and I missed Christmas!
The end result - I’ve hardly done any of ‘em, a few comments on obscure blogs, submitted to a few directories, started downloading competitor sites into Linkscape and produced some extensive excel spreadsheets and erm, that’s it really ….
But thank heavens, the work I’ve done for years on the website - updating, removing and adding products, writing concise descriptions with relevant keywords and ensuring good descriptive (but not over the top) urls is still paying off and the majority of the pages are still ranking high and producing a healthy return.
THE CONCLUSION - JUST BLEEDIN’ GET ON WITH IT
January 14th, 2010 at 01:11 pm
Blinking heck girl that’s a long post! Should we just skim read to the end and the important tag line?
On the a4u forum there’s been a person asking an inordinate amount of questions. It was driving me mad, until I realised it also meant I was spending too much time reading the forum rather than getting on and writing content.
January 14th, 2010 at 02:05 pm
Glad I took the time to read this post Elaine, I think I’ve considered at least 75% of the questions above, and spent way too much worrying when the almighty G drops my site a few spots in the SERPs, combined with too much time on Twitter. Time to stop over-analyzing it all and get stuck into building my site to be the best it can be for the visitor, the rest will follow (I hope!)
January 16th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Brilliant - absolutely brilliant.
Perhaps I should print it out and stick it on the wall as check list
Neill
January 17th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Lol - Great stuff.
Slight correction:
“# Should I just concentrate on good content and bugger the SEO side of stuff?
# Should I forget about good content and concentrate on the on-page stuff?”
Good, fresh content is part of on-page SEO.
Agree 100%. Just Do It!
January 17th, 2010 at 01:48 pm
Thanks for the comment James - have to disagree somewhat though - pages I haven’t touched in yonks are still sailing high - yet some pages I update regularly bob up and down alarmingly - untill I get the balance right again.
January 18th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Too b…..y right.
At least you haven’t paid anything to the SEO ‘Gurus’.
I find your comment about old pages VERY interesting as you can observe Google listing loads of them on page 1, some with hardly any content. I’ve got them unchanged for years and still there in position.
… and similarly have rewritten some of them in a supposedly ‘SEO’ way with lots of content, only to see the poor old algorithm completely unable to cope and send them off down to page 50 or something and now struggling to get back.
Perhaps Google has now built in a ’sudden blog-type BS text rush filter’, to insure against pointless text rubbish appearing high in its index.
I await an SEO to explain that.
January 18th, 2010 at 01:28 pm
oh I wouldn’t say that Bob - I have paid for SEO advice over the years - and it’s usually been good value if only because you do see your site through someone else’s eyes - and I’ve only consulted ‘tried and tested’ SEO gurus - not your fly by nights who promise you No 1 position in a matter of days for £200 - in fact I’ve paid for honesty!! -not always pleasant - but always helpful!
January 18th, 2010 at 08:05 pm
Elaine - sounds like your Gurus are real and not in quotes !
Thats a scary list especially when the importance of each changes randomly from week to week.
btw I thought it was illegal to mention pivot tables in public - I’m going to have to have lie down now…
January 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am
I stopped reading all the SEO sites long ago, I didn’t have a clue what half of the above meant, specially the silo thing. I just concentrate on putting out good unique content and trying to get decent links in. It seems to be working.
I’m worried now though… have I missed a simple thing that’d boost my organic traffic 30%?
Arrgghh!!!
January 19th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Hi Elaine,
I great read and very amusing. Too much reading and not enough action is certainly a crime of many people. In my particular case, I spend too much time doing the wrong things!
With my computer-caused arm and back pain getting worse these days, I need to focus on just those activitiies that result in some extra money. Rather than work for work sake, a real curse if you’re a perfectionist.
Oh, and I shouldn’t be reading this really, but then the title on Twitter was compelling.
Dan
January 20th, 2010 at 04:53 pm
Excellent post Elaine, although I shouldn’t have read it as I don’t have time :o)
January 20th, 2010 at 06:15 pm
YES YES YES!!! This is exactly the same as me. What with a full time job I’ve found myself spending the last almost 1 year researching and self teaching! I realised I was stuck in this cycle too scared to take the plunge and…just get on with it!! So I now have my 1st site in progress and not far from launching. Yes it might not be great and hey it might not convert but.. I bet my 100th site will be fantastic!
I’m now taking the plunge and I’m going to learn from my mistakes and its feels really good. I now feel like I’m working towards that big day when I realise my day job is not needed anymore and I can concentrate fully on what I love….being a geek on my PC at home 
Spot on Elaine,
Steve
January 20th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
I know that feeling of being overwhelmed. The way I deal with it is write a priority list and then just focus on that.
March 5th, 2010 at 01:04 pm
Hey,
I totally understand where you are coming from that its hard to stop your head spinning with different ideas and tactics etc… that its hard to actually stop and focus on one thing at a time.
My biggest one is stopping me buying new domains and coming up with new ideas and just focusing on my old ideas and getting them where they need to be!
You say you are from Yorkshire…so am I! what part are you from if you dont mind me asking?
Cheers
David
www.succeedandinspire.com