Do you want to be good at ranking sites? Would you like to be one of the best at search engine optimization? Do you think SEO is something you can start and then not follow through on? The truth is if you want to be good at something you need extensive knowledge and good SEO habits. To be a good SEO, you have to start with the knowledge part and read everything you can constantly and from that teach yourself good SEO habits.
If you want to be successful at anything there is the method of taking someone’s idea and simply making it better. Or if it’s a sport, study the way they play and find a way to improve on it. Being successful at SEO is no different, you would be surprised how many great search engine optimization campaigns came about by imitating a campaign that someone else completed, however, improved on the concept. If your peers are making their clients happy with positive rankings, then why can’t you imitate them and make your clients happy? After all, imitation is one of the finest forms of flattery… Right? This goes back to forming good SEO habits if you as an SEO can form great habits, even if they were learned from other SEO’s. This means you have developed good SEO habits and can replicate the results.
What Type Of Good SEO Habits Am I Talking About?
Really there are too many to touch on in this blog post, but I will discuss a few of them that are probably the most important in my opinion. These are in no particular order of importance.
A Good SEO With Good SEO Habits Will Review Analytics And Then Review Them Again.
We all do this by using several free and paid tools, comparing the numbers, looking for abnormalities and for things that are really working. You can never get personal with analytics. If you thought a blog post was amazing, but it’s not performing well, don’t let it hurt your feelings. All you can do is learn from the experience and move on. If you do let your feelings get in the way you might spend too much time trying to make something happen that simply isn’t going to and guess what guys, this is a bad habit.
Many people who do search engine optimization believe they have the answer for each client. We all know this is not the truth, because every client is different and just because you have tricks that work for one client it doesn’t mean those same tricks are going to work for another niche or industry. You have to watch the analytics, learn from them and if they are telling you something different than what you believed you must trust them and change up your strategy.
Good SEO habits to form as a good SEO is to spy or review the top sites in the SERPs and learn from them. If you can figure out what they are doing well, which is the reason they got there, it’s time to take their strategy or at least your hypotheses on how they did it and start testing. Once you figure out the secret it’s time to change that strategy and go after the winning technique to get your client ahead.
One great tool I have found, while not free, it works great to analyze the top websites. If you get a chance to use SEMrush, do not hesitate.
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Another Good Habit SEO’s Should All Incorporate Is To Read And Study New Strategy and News Every Single Day
Seo is an ever-changing term, some people don’t even believe it’s the proper term in today’s environment. Other terms have been tossed around like SEsOcial, Internet Marketing Specialist, Digital Strategist and many other terms that have been thrown around. There are honestly fewer industries or jobs that change more than search engine optimization. It’s almost like clockwork, you can almost guarantee there will be some sort of change to the Google Algorithm every week and if not you will see changes to Facebook, blog networks or a million other factors that SEO relies on are constantly changing. SEO’s are continuously learning new things, figuring out new changes and testing them constantly. Staying up with the latest news is one good habit to begin today.
The great thing for any digital strategist is that you have several ways to stay abreast of the latest information that is out there. Some people actually have the job to follow the trends, keep an eye on the analytics and figure out if Google has made a change to their algorithm because Google will not tell you most of the time. If you need a few sources to keep an eye on and I do mean keep an eye on, here are some for you:
The Moz Blog:
Moz has always been a reliable source for all things SEO and the latest search engine optimization tips. They don’t just stop there, the Moz Blog will talk about pretty much every topic as long as it has to do with digital marketing. They have been known to help with content marketing, analytics, SEO and even the sales funnel and how you can optimize it to your advantage.
SEMrush:
This is the tool I spoke about up above that if you get a chance you should try. But, they also have a great blog, not only because they have a lot of great information to share, but they also know that having a ton of killer content is important to their overall content marketing strategy. SEMrush will provide you with great information on keyword analysis, give you optimization tips and even help you with the content you are writing.
Google:
Yup, that’s right Google has a blog and it’s better known as the Google Webmaster Central. Google designed its blog for Webmasters and SEOs with the idea that the blog could be used to help their clients do well in Google’s search. (I know it sounds crazy doesn’t it). This site will give you some really good insight into what Google is up to, even if they don’t come right out and say it every time. They still provide great knowledge on how to use their products, just in case you need extra help.
Search Engine Land:
Search Engine Land is one of my favorites and I would say it’s a blog that you should definitely bookmark. If you have heard of Marketing Land and you like it, then you should like Search Engine Land too as it’s a sister publication. Again this blog will cover every topic in the digital marketing world that you can imagine. You won’t just learn about SEO, but you will learn about Social Media, PR, Content Marketing and a lot of times you will learn how these things tie into or help with SEO.
If you like to learn things on your own and figure things out that aren’t just laid out there as a news article, you still have YouTube as a resource. There are literally 100’s of channels you can follow and single video tutorials that are coming out all of the time. I am only going to recommend the most obvious ones that I think you should already know about, also I do like watching them. You will probably see a small theme here as I recommend you subscribe to the Moz video channel and with that said you shouldn’t waste any time doing the same thing with Whiteboard Friday. This is some education that is sometimes common sense and other times extremely helpful. Sticking to the Moz them, be sure to follow Rand Fishkin on all of his different social media channels.
What I am trying to say is you are never done learning as an SEO. You are never doing work on a site as an SEO. The word SEO should almost mean fluid movement and it’s up to you as a search engine optimization expert to stay on top of all of the changes. Again good habit!
You Can Talk And Strategize, But You Have To Act Too
Ok, you have been learning all of the new techniques, following all of the latest changes, you keep up with the news every day. You even have the most expensive SEO tools, but what does all of that mean if you don’t act on your knowledge? Basically, nothing! You need to take all of these good SEO habits and form another one! Don’t just theorize, Act and make the moves that need to be made.
The difference between an SEO and a great SEO is that great SEOs look at the analysis, figure out what needs to be done and then formulate a plan. Once they have a plan they put it into action and more times than not positive movement is seen by the client in the SERPs. A great SEO is not plagued by analysis paralysis, this is a sure-fire way to see your rankings plummet.
Sometimes this means you have to be a good motivator, be able to convince others or simply be trusted enough by your boss or the client that you know what you are doing. For example, it can take some effort to convince your boss your site needs a redesign. Check it out here for a reputable website design company. If you come up with a great strategy, but cannot get it to go live, then all of your work was for nothing. This means a good SEO Agency needs to include people persons or at least people confident enough in their work to get their strategy pushed through.
If you are not sure how to get your ideas pushed through and need your project approved quickly there are a few things you can do.
First, you are going to need facts, so you will need to present the project and include the analytics that backs you up and show the potential gains that can be made from your new strategy. You always have to prove ROI, so create a compelling case that is going to convince everyone else that your new strategy is going to show a return on investment. If you need technical changes, include them with your initial plan and in the developer’s language so they can immediately start to make the changes. As with any project you will need to set a clear timeline and keep everyone in the loop on how things are proceeding.
Taking Action And Not Just Strategizing Is A Good Habit To Develop!
SEOs Never Stop Improving Their Skills and are Always Updating Their Websites
Doing search engine optimization is an ongoing job and a good habit is to never stop trying to improve yourself. This might mean making the content on a website better, improve the backlink profile, improve your communication skills and your technical SEO skills. Using the right tools is always the proper thing to do. A tool like Linkio helps marketers and SEOs in their ongoing link building campaigns by giving the right anchor text percentage in order to gain an advantage from your competitors and bring quality organic traffic.
The SEOs that want to stand apart from the rest, simply never stop looking for ways to make themselves better and have an uncanny drive to make their client’s websites rank better in the SERPs.
Being an SEO is not as easy as some people think. Some believe we are simply guessing and seeing what works. If you are an SEO you know this is not true, the truth is SEO is a huge and complicated field. Search Engine Optimization demands that you know many different skills and that’s why the leaders in the digital world of SEO are those that develop good SEO habits and are continuously working hard on a regular basis.
Another Great Habit To Develop Is To Post A Link To An Article On Every Social Platform
A lot of people don’t realize that Search Engine Optimization has a lot to do with Social Media, especially more as time goes by. The idea is that the more you share/promote on social media networks, the better your content will do. Google still has not verified if social metrics are a deciding factor in ranking, but we all know that they do have some level of impact on SERPs.
We know this because Social Media is a traffic driver to your website. If you have increased traffic then you are seeing an improvement in your user metrics. If you have amazing content those users hopefully will encourage more people to visit your site and possibly link to it. This is how things go viral and can start a ripple effect pushing your article out to more people than you alone ever could. This is why we know Social has an effect on the SERPs, even if it’s not a direct effect.
What do you have to do as an SEO if you have good SEO habits? Tweet, share on Facebook, Retweet and post on any other social media channel you can think of and hope the social impact will take care of the rest.
One Of The Last Good SEO Habits To Have As An SEO Is To Write And Publish One Article Per Day
You might be thinking this is crazy because writing a single article is very time consuming, if not the most time-consuming thing you can do. But with that time comes one of the most valuable things you can do. If you are creating new content, you are driving traffic to your site, because creating new content is the SINGLE best traffic driver there is. While you are developing content, aside from habit that is part of the content habit, is to develop long-form content. If you can make the article over 2,000 words you are an overachiever, but in the greatest way for SEO value.
Google is in love with long-form content, as of this week it gets better rankings and it also takes you a long time to write. Investing the time into these articles will produce good long articles, so take an hour or 2 a day and work on your content. But, you cannot write content, just to write content, because this will basically be a waste of your time. You need to make sure your blogs are high quality, relevant to your niche and focused on one topic. This means don’t get ADHD and start out talking about backlinks and end the article on cute puppies. This doesn’t make sense to your users or to Google and you just wasted your time.
Start spending your time on long-form content every day and this will be one of the good SEO habits every SEO should possess and it will absolutely pay off for you!
