The Ultimate Secret to SEO

I remember when I first started learning about SEO. It was probably 5 years ago or so while I was still in college at the University of Washington. I was studying marketing and started learning various SEO tactics on my own (unfortunately there weren’t any SEO classes at the time).

Of course, I resorted to sites like Moz, the Google Webmaster Blog, or random black-hat forums to learn the newest “tricks” or to figure out what I was doing wrong.At the time I remember constantly thinking, “I must be missing something”. In other words, I would read posts by these SEO gurus and I couldn’t help but think two things.

1. Why would someone share everything they know?
2. They wouldn’t, so there must be something they are holding back.

 These were some of my thoughts during that stage in my SEO life. “Maybe if I add microdata all over my site I will rank higher faster!”“It’s really all about link building. I’m sure these guys are fooling us all and are just buying a bunch of links.” 

The True Secret

Fast forward to today and I have finally realized what the true secret is to all of their SEO success. Can you guess what it is? Domain authority? Links? The correct title tags?

Perhaps there is a magical tag that people don’t introduce you to until you’ve been working in the field for a number of years?

As you have probably guessed, none of the above are even close to the secret I’m talking about. I have come to find that the true secret to SEO success is consistency. There! I said it – the secret is out. Sorry Moz, I had to let everyone know!

Excuse my sarcasm, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to convey here. For a long time, I always thought I was missing something. The truth is I wasn’t so much missing anything as I was ignoring the obvious. Doing a good job and getting a site to rank organically takes time. Sure, there have been times where I have helped sites rank first or second in a week or two. But for the most part?
It takes months, and sometimes years. 

How Can It Help?

I know, I know, this isn’t what you wanted to hear, right? The good news is that all of the things we are learning on blogs, from professionals in our industry, and from Google are still important. In fact, consistency plays such as huge part in digital marketing because it applies to all areas of the practice. Here are some examples:

• You need to constantly be keeping up to date on industry news, algorithm changes, tools, and more.
• You need to constantly be checking the analytics of your websites.
• You need to constantly be working on your websites.
• You need to constantly be trying out new methods and pushing your boundaries.

 What’s the key to all of these things? Consistency. What good is it to work on a client’s website once and then not touch it for the next years? Google’s algorithm has over 200 signals.

It’s our jobs as digital marketers to know those signals as best as possible, and apply/tweak them on our client’s websites in order to meet their goals for ranking. So, I encourage you to not give up on whatever site you are working on now. If something isn’t working out, press on and figure out a solution. Be consistent, be diligent, and don’t be lazy.