One of my favorite blog posts of all time was called Do It F*&king Now, written by Quadszilla. That post lifted my productivity levels tenfold – for a few weeks. Maybe I should go back and read it again. But first, I want to share another way to boost productivity
Reading blog posts, forums, tweets, articles… is a great way to stay up on industry trends. But if you spend more than an hour a day reading what other people have to say about how to do your job, you may be procrastinating. The best way I’ve found to stop procrastinating is by having a big whiteboard on the wall titled “If you need something to do…” When I’m feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, or generally just unmotivated, I’ll close my eyes and touch my index finger to the board. Whichever item I land on is what I start working on right away – without hesitation. They are in no particular order, as I want it to be a random pick.
It is important to remember this isn’t an “SEO checklist”. This is more of an SEO To-Do list for after all of the usual boxes have been checked and you’ve lost the sugar-high from eating all of that low-hanging fruit.
Here are the items on my list. Please add yours in the comment section:
- Spider site with Xenu. Check for broken links, etc.
- Competitive link analysis using SEO Spyglass or Linkscape
- Fortify inbound links
- Choose one keyword and find three internal linking opportunities
- Do a complete SEO Audit
- Run a page 2 performer report and boost those rankings for keywords bringing traffic from page 2
- Look for event/non-profit/industry sponsorship link opportunities
- Reclaim broken links (run 404 report first)
- Improve text on existing external links
- Check Webmaster tools for more URL parameters they can ignore
- Leave some thoughtfull dofollow blog comments
- Check Webmaster tools, log files or analytics for 404 errors and redirect or fix.
- Check PPC reports for keywords that make $ but for which you don’t rank well organically
- Write an article for a blog, article directory, your own site…
- Update XML sitemap if static. Check XML sitemap for errors if dynamic.
- Cruise around Google/Bing/Yahoo webmaster tool consols looking for anything suspicious
- Add / Update wiki pages (not just on Wikepedia)
- Write a piece of linkbait
- Send out product samples for bloggers to review
- Update social media / networking profiles
- Check for new niche directories and submit
- Answer a question about your niche on Yahoo Answers
- Spend 20 minutes randomly clicking around your site looking for anything suspicious
- Beef up security: Yahoo Alerts, Google Alerts, Change Detection…
- Generate an analytics report you’ve never used before, or spend 20 minutes looking at reports you don’t check often.
- Use Google Webmaster Tools to check for duplicate titles, descriptions, content…
- Completely new keyword research report (if not done in past 6 months)
- Find keywords you rank in top five for on both the first and second page of Google. Try to bump up the page 2 listing to skip some spots and get the indent.
- Check and compare PWS=0 VS standard logged-out Google search for your top five keywords. Is there room to capitalize on video, blog, shopping or other universal content?
- Try a new tactic (for instance or for instance) that you haven’t tried yet.
- Spend 20 minutes browsing your top competitor’s website looking at everything SEO-related, including content.
- Create one variation (singular, plural, possessive, synonym…) of your five top-performing keywords and write and publish content for those keywords.
- Do reputation management. Check first three SERPs on each engine for negative stuff. If nothing is there, search for things like “YourCompanyName Sucks” or “YourBrand bad customer service”. Subscribe to brand mentions on Twitter and elsewhere.
- Check log files for suspicious activity or anything else that stands out.
- Check internal site-search logs for queries that returned zero results. Those are opportunities your readers/shoppers are telling you about.
- Check referrers. Look for anything new, unexpected or suspicious. Thank those who link to you and send appreciable amounts of traffic. Ask for better anchor-text if/when appropriate.
- Learn how to use a new SEO tool.
- Help someone out. Ask if anyone needs a social media submission; retweet a friend; offer a link from relevant content. The favor is usually repaid two-fold over time.
- Get away from the computer. Go for a walk; to the gym; read a book… Then come back refreshed and pick again.
This isn’t a complete list of things I could be doing with my time, but it is more than enough to “jumpstart” me on days when motivation is hard to come by. The great thing about “doing something” randomly from a list when you’re unmotivated is that it usually reinvigorates you enough to get over that hump. If nothing else, it will make the day go faster and help your website rankings improve.
Assuming all of the usual stuff was already done, what “To Do” items would you add to the list?
