SeO: A Grind Worth Embracing
At the beginning of 2023, I started a niche website. The goal at that time was to take something I loved (reading sports books) and share it with the world (or maybe just my friends).
It was fun, light work, to sit down and pen thoughts on particular categories and subjects. Like other pursuits, it was a nice release from my day to day work.
As I started to publish more and more, I also began to read about SEO strategies. Reading turned into podcasts and YouTube videos, and all of sudden I was following every SEO expert I could find on Twitter.
Eleven months later, I’m no SEO expert, but I know enough to be dangerous. Probably most important, I have a profound respect for those that do this work. Here’s why:
Google updates, AI, and privacy concerns constantly move the goal posts. While we’ve all worked in jobs with external change, this is an area where it pays (literally) to be in the game. Back in September, thousands of top ranking websites fell off a cliff as a result of Google’s most recent update. When hundreds of thousands of clicks go away, many of these sites were fighting to survive. Clicks = traffic = money.
There are a lot of elements to technical SEO that require an expert skillset. From external plugins to slight changes to back-end code, this is the stuff that I’d often close my eyes and cross my fingers every time I was about to click “Save.”
At its very core, a well constructed SEO strategy embraces the technical side but also clearly answers a searcher’s question. For example, a search for “How to cook a steak on a grill” should take me to place where I learn how to do it. The best pages not only answer the question, but they do it in different ways:
*A written step by step checklist and directions
*Pictures of each step
*How to videos
*And finally, additional sections on related questions
You can be the best technical SEO in the world, but if you’re not providing valuable content, the whole exercise is moot.
Last December, Google laid out explicit guidlines for EEAT, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. If you’re creating content to rank on Google, this is what they’re looking for.
Some of you reading this might be thinking, “Cool, I can do this!” If that’s the case, just start. Start creating content and thinking through how you’re demonstrating EEAT.
Others may want expert help, and if that’s the case, I’d recommend by my buddy Shawn, who dreams about this stuff.
Last thing I’ll say: One of the key learnings I took from my journey thus far is that this takes time. Articles that I wrote in the spring didn’t get any love at all at that time, and now several of them are driving significant traffic. I won’t get into all of the reasons why, but simply say: be patient. If you put in the work, good things will happen eventually.
