It’s been three months since the good Mozzers allowed my SEO from a Newb’s Perspective to see the light of day, and I’m back for another round. Except now HappyBrooke has had a dose of reality.
That’s right — I’ve hit some potholes. And I found out that Brooke’s list of essential qualities SEO pros need (which I listed in the last post), though it didn’t claim to be comprehensive, lacked one: the ability to be resilient. Props to Heather Baker for noting this in the comments. In this post, I’ll share my fledgling thoughts on how to cultivate resilience in the face of failure. As Heather pointed out, if you want to do SEO well, you’ve gotta be resilient.
My friends who are, like me, “newbs” to SEO will probably find my epiphanies more helpful than those of you who are old hat. But no doubt veterans have developed strategies on how to stay resilient in your daily battles to rank. If you’re willing to share your strategies with me in the comments below, I’d be tickled.
Why SEO is a bumpy ride
As you and I both know, SEO done right can pay off in tremendous ways for our clients: through website traffic, conversions, brand awareness, loyalty, and retention (just to name a few perks that come from online marketing success). If you can rank, you can reap the benefits.
But there are no guarantees.
In my first four months on the job as an SEO, I’ve not experienced a major Earth-shifting Google algorithm update (yet), but I have experienced the daily joys and challenges of our field. You all know how it goes.
Since starting my job at Happy Dog, this has all happened to me:
- I gained clients, and I lost a client.
- I created content people liked, and I created content nobody gave a rip about.
- I watched rankings skyrocket, and I watched rankings drop it like it’s hot.
Boy-oh-boy am I realizing that to do SEO, you need a healthy dose of Dory’s “just keep swimming” resilience at times.
Credit: Tumblr
Watching the analytics and the SERPs, just waiting for traffic and rankings, feels awfully like trying to get a fire going at a summer night’s bonfire (without the fun of hot dogs and s’mores). You stare into the flames and wait for a spark. Add another log. The fire dies down. You shiver. You frantically run to find twigs. Finally: a tiny blaze! Hallelujah! Then suddenly, a major gust of wind blows it out. Nooooooo!
I don’t know about you, but my emotions follow a pretty specific pattern when I’m idling in no-rank-land. First, I’m frustrated. My client has a great business. He/she deserves better rankings. But then I feel a sense of entitlement: I’m putting in the hours, so it’s maddening that my work isn’t paying off. I feel desperate. My client is paying me to achieve results. Am I a failure? Stricken with grief, I eat candy bars and slump in my desk chair drinking straight from the coffee pot.
What comes next? Well, I’m hired to help our clients optimize their web presence. I’m expected to drive traffic — my clients will not twiddle their thumbs and wait patiently. The pressure’s on. What am I going to do?
The eventual outcome of this whole emotional journey is that I get a grip (finally) and muster up whatever resilience I have. Then here’s what I’m learning to do: to take a marker to the good ol’ proverbial drawing board to see what can be done. This moment, my friends, is the essence of what we do in SEO.
It’s not easy being creative
The reason SEO is so challenging/exhilarating/frustrating/tiring/overwhelming is that, as many experts have already pointed out, there’s no secret formula to earn links, start ranking, and succeed at search engine marketing. There are literally as many ways as your creative mind can dream up, which means you could see astounding results if you climb out on a limb or you could see no results at all and completely, totally flop.
There’s a risk to every creative endeavor we undertake. When we do it on behalf of someone else, the risk increases. In the face of all this pressure, we have to learn how to embody resilience — every day, every hour, every minute, no matter what the analytics are saying.
I’m learning that just because I try a tactic and it doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean I have failed. I’m going to be honest for a minute and shed some light on three of my “failures” in the hopes that you will a) realize you’re not alone, and b) get some ideas of how to move forward.
Brooke’s SEO Blunders
I’m still learning Photoshop. Please don’t judge.
1. Nobody wanted my content
Problem: I spent hours pouring research and creativity into blog posts for a client and then pitching them to appropriate platforms. For weeks, nobody bit.
What I did next: Tweaked the ideas, made tiny edits, and re-pitched the content. People were unimpressed, so I created more content with gusto. Then I set aside the content nobody wanted for the time being and revisited it when I’d had a little space to see if I had any new ideas to improve it. Turns out, I did.
Reality check: Failing to attract an audience’s attention is an age-old dilemma for artists (which we are). Hey, if there’s anything I learned from my college creative writing classes, it’s that if you expect a standing ovation for everything you write, get ready to be disappointed, hon. Plenty of writers spent years writing and pitching tomes that nobody wanted to publish (poor Jack Kerouac had On the Road done in three weeks, or so he claimed, but it took the guy years to find a publisher). Unless you’re already a smashing success, you’re not entitled to anybody’s attention.
How to stay resilient: Learn from the rejection and tweak your overall strategy. Was the content too shallow or too technical? Did you choose an angle or approach that didn’t jam with your audience? Was the platform you chose to publish on the wrong fit for the content? Try something new next time. Don’t fret. You can’t hit it out of the ballpark every time.
2. I lost a client
Problem: All throughout the first few months of their campaign, my client seemed wishy-washy, always about to give up. I played cheerleader on every phone call and email, promising that the rankings for their brand-new, beautiful site were going to improve. But the client, waiting for the leads to roll in, was getting antsy. Just as things were getting exciting on the SEO-side, they bailed.
What I did next: My boss and I did a “What went wrong?” analysis, and we affirmed that the campaign had been solid. The rankings had been slow to come by, but forecasting a month or two down the road, we saw that things were looking up. However, we realized how important it is to check in with our clients and make sure they are happy — this client had had questions but never raised them with us. This experience made us resolve to check in more often and create that opportunity to talk about our clients’ concerns.
Reality check: Even if you perform high-quality work, clients often expect to get leads and see results in a shorter time period than it may take to achieve them. It is important to clearly articulate to your clients that in SEO, “slow and steady wins the race.” In our case, we should have communicated more with our client and made sure they did not have unrealistic expectations of us.
How to stay resilient: If you do a good job but still lose the client, don’t hang your head in shame. The thing is, there will always (or at least often) be a better strategy you could have used. Losing a client can be an opportunity to reflect on how well your strategy worked. With SEO, even the best strategies take time, and you can’t force your clients to be patient. All you can do is focus on providing the best quality SEO services that you can.
3. I couldn’t figure out how to market a client in a boring, “blah” industry
Problem: The day they called to request SEO services, I couldn’t even wrap my head around their product. Wait, so what do you guys do again?
What I did next: I changed their entire keyword strategy three times, didn’t sleep, and tossed idea after idea out the window. Honestly, this was a tough one. One thing that helped (at my client’s suggestion) was having learning sessions with them on the benefit their product provides. When I started to grasp that, it was easier to drum up ideas (I’m still drumming).
Reality check: Not every client will be easy to market. Some industries are just doozies.
How to stay resilient: Nick Stagg from Lemonpromotions brought up a great question in the comments on my first post: “How do you make a plumber sound sexy?” How, indeed? There are probably hundreds of ways to go about it. Overall, I think promoting the plumber will involve four steps:
- Understanding the unique value the plumber provides,
- Knowing who needs his/her services,
- Succinctly articulating his/her value, and
- Creatively sharing it.
As marketers, these are challenges that can inspire and push us. Ultimately, every industry has a need and a purpose, and you can (and will!) find strategies that will work.
Takeaways
If you’re stumped or failing:
- Talk to your clients. Keep the relationship strong. Share your resilience with them. In no-rank land, they’ll need it, too. Let their enthusiasm for and expertise in their field revitalize you.
- Try new things. Be adventurous. Experiment with new content or approaches. Sometimes failure propels us out of the box we were stuck in when nothing else can.
- Give yourself a break. Don’t make yourself miserable by wallowing in continual blame and guilt. Everybody fails! But dwelling on it for too long will prevent you from moving forward.
Whatever you take away from this reflection (I hope it’s not just dissatisfaction at my attempts to provide solutions to common SEO ailments — comment below with your better ideas! I long to hear them!), remember that we’re all still learning how to do this business in an ethical, effective, exciting way. If you fail once, or fail again and again, cultivate resilience. Return to that drawing board. Remember that at the end of the day, your integrity and the connections you make with your clients are the most important things – not your ability to make them rank.
My impression of the SEO community after just a few months of reading blogs and forums is that you people are hungry for the tools and tips to do your jobs better. You don’t want to just do an okay job. You want to succeed, and you want to do it in big, beautiful, bold ways. When you experience discouragement, consider J.K. Rowling’s words in her commencement speech at Harvard back in 2008 (they apply to SEO and to life in general):
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.”
Fail, but do it resiliently. And get back up. You’ll do better next time.
