There is a lot of free SEO advice out there. If you look in the right places, and no how to judge what you are reading, it’s also pretty easy to filter out the good advice v.s. the bad advice. So, how is a poor publisher supposed to thrive in an environment where so many people know exactly what to do?
First, just because the advice is out there, it does not mean that it is correctly understood. So this filters out a bunch of people. But let’s assume it’s between you and 100 other publishers who know what to do as well as you do. How do you win? There are two components the answer:
1. Focusing on the best strategy (or one of the best strategies). This is not as easy as it might sound. Successful SEO in a competitive world requires a focus on high ROI efforts. If you simply blindly wail away at different strategies, you are probably not going to make it.
2. Superior Execution. This is also not as simple as it sounds. Once you have decided on a strategy, you have to commit to it in a big way and push it hard.
Say for example, that you decide on a strategy of getting major colleges and universities to link to your site. Let’s further stipulate you are trying to get their libraries to link to your site, or some department in the school (this is probably harder than getting a student to bookmark your page, but worth oh so much more…).
Let’s also stipulate that you need 50 or more of these links to win. So how are you going to do it? You may need to morph the content on your site. You may need to generate 50 really high-quality research articles on a topic of interest to your targets. You may need to invest in developing a unique and special new tool.
In short, it’s likely to be very, very hard work that will take quite some time to accomplish. It won’t happen overnight, and you may have to do a lot of boring work, over and over again, and then you may need to redo it. You may need to spend some real dollars to get the content or tools that you need.
But this is about winning. As Vince Lombardi once said: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” This is the mentality you need to have if you are going to get to, or near, the top in your space.
You gotta commit.
