5 Things if You Did in 2002, You’d be Rich Right Now

Companies are moving away from the idea that they can simply install “an SEO package” and business will magically explode.  Your digital presence is an asset in the same way physical buildings are assets.  If you build it, but you don’t hook up the water and electricity, it ends up looking like this.

In looking back at the last ten years, the landscape has dramatically shifted – blogging (the political history of blogging is interesting, if you feel like dorking out, read the Wikipedia entry) social media, SEO best practices, paid search and remarketing have all dramatically grown; however, the building blocks required to be successful have not changed – they have just become more obvious.  The following are five simple lessons that if you practiced in 2002, your web presence would have a tangible, real value.  The good news is that all of these still apply today: 

Lesson 1: Invest in Systems, Not Shortcuts

One of the things that used to be frustrating about SEO was the effectiveness of shortcuts or trickery in achieving rankings. Discussion forums were filled with talk of keyword stuffing and ways to fool the search engines. As a business owner, I made the (unwise) decision not to invest in SEO because I felt it was too unstable. Rankings were changing often, and I felt I could not accurately rely on my SEO traffic. Fortunately, Google and others have expanded their algorithms to the point that tricks do not really work anymore and the risk of penalization does not justify any possible reward. In retrospect, I realize that in forgoing SEO, I was not seeing the forest through the trees. Content was king in 2002, and it is king in 2012, so you should care about SEO. Shortcuts wear down and become ineffective but if you had left the tricks to others and focused on a system of developing and publishing quality content, you would be 10 years ahead of your competition. 

Lesson 2: Paralysis by Analysis Leaves you…Paralyzed 

This lesson is much more pervasive and underdiagnosed than people realize.  We see this lesson play out in businesses in many different forms and have been guilty of it ourselves.  Here are different ways we see this happen: 

Overcomplicated approval processes for content publishing:  We get it. Your content should be good, have a consistent voice, not be offensive and not misrepresent your company.  But put it in a simple process and let it run. If it needs tweaking, tweak it.  Too often, there are too many cooks in the kitchen and businesses will analyze their content to death.  This makes the process of publishing content tedious and a painful chore. 

Overly worried about giving away information to your competitors

Your competition is probably not sitting in a room manically hitting “refresh” on your blogs trying to aimlessly figure out what to do next. This type of thinking is being more afraid to lose than afraid to win. Good content takes time, money and organization and if you have spent the time to do this – stop worrying and flaunt it. 

Anxious About What Others Will Think

Blogging can be painful.  It’s like talking to an empty room and you are guaranteed to look back at some of your older content and shudder.  Who cares?  Get over it.  It’s part of the process. 

Thought by Committee

The world is moving too fast for this to be effective.  Again, put in place a structure for content with clear roles and responsibilities and let it run.  If you can make the joke, “How many people does it take {your company} to publish content?” and people laugh, you probably have too many people involved.

Lesson 3:  Coordinate Your Offline Efforts With Your Online Presence

Some of the lowest-hanging fruit for content generation is the things you are already doing. Supporting the community, job postings, new hires, physical newsletters, etc – all of this content should be integrated into your online presence. This can expand past posting on your own website and be used for link building. For example, job postings are great ways to build links and awareness about your business. We have found that there is tangible, quality content that companies do not even realize they are generating. Putting in place a system (architecture, content, links) to get this online can greatly improve your online presence. 

Lesson 4: Think of Your Website as a Physical Building and Maintain it

Your website needs fresh content, solid architecture and good links. In the “old days,” when Google would look at your website, it was equivalent of judging you by a Polaroid of however you looked that day. Now, it is more equivalent to time-lapse photography.  Is your online presence growing or shrinking?  If you are not maintaining it, it is most likely shrinking. 

Lesson 5: Waste Money

This is a little bit facetious but true. Not everything you do will work and the world is moving fast enough that you may find it necessary to tear down or rebuild something you just built. That’s OK. It’s part of the process. If you are focused on making progress and improving your content, links, and site architecture, then over time, the aggregate return of the sum of your efforts should make up for some of the short-term losses or wasted efforts you experienced.  As Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.