SEO: Maintaining Sanity and Motivation

Resources mentioned:
Google Search Console
https://search.google.com/search-console/about


AI Episode Summary:
Wondering why your fast-track SEO tactics crumble like houses of straw and sticks? Brace yourselves for a hearty lesson in crafting a brick-solid SEO foundation that’s impervious to the huffs and puffs of digital marketing wolves. As we peel back the layers of SEO strategy, you'll discover the virtue of patience and the folly of obsessing over fluctuating keyword rankings. Instead, we’ll reveal how monitoring impressions in Google Search Console can be your beacon of progress in the murky SEO waters—ensuring you're setting sail towards long-term triumph, not just chasing fleeting victories.

Join us for a candid chat where we chuckle at SEO myths and unravel the truth about climbing the search rankings ladder. It's not about a one-hit wonder but more like a symphony of well-orchestrated tactics. In this episode, we debunk the magic bullet theory of SEO and share why a sustainable, methodical approach will save your sanity in this ever-changing game. By the end, you'll be armed with a strategy that's not just about surviving the digital landscape but thriving in it, making sure your SEO efforts aren't just a flash in the pan.

Timestamps:
[0:24] Maintaining Sanity and Motivation in SEO
[2:40] A Common Mistake in Measuring SEO Progress
[3:57] The Dangers of Individual Keyword Rankings 
[5:02] What is a Google Impression?
[7:04] The Quickstart SEO Dashboard
[8:05] Building an SEO Brickhouse 
[8:41] It's like Chocolate Pudding
[9:32] How Bad SEO Advice Gets Created

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Chapters

• 0:48 Maintaining Sanity and Motivation in SEO
• 3:04 A Common Mistake in Measuring SEO Progress
• 4:21 The Dangers of Individual Keyword Rankings
• 5:26 What is a Google Impression?
• 7:28 The Quickstart SEO Dashboard
• 8:29 Building an SEO Brickhouse
• 9:05 It's like Chocolate Pudding
• 9:56 How Bad SEO Advice Gets Created

Transcript

Meredith's husband 0:24

This week how to maintain your sanity and motivation while you're doing SEO. It's kind of a two birds with one stone.

Meredith 0:33

Yeah, I hate that expression.

Meredith's husband 0:34

Yeah, so let's all the birds to live but these, these stones are two birds can sit on it at the same time. Yeah, and drink water from the water.

Meredith 0:43

Yes, and there's for seed.

Meredith's husband 0:45

Yes, that's our two birds with one stone.

Meredith 0:47

I like that one.

Meredith's husband 0:48

Okay, so you remember how I talked about the three little pigs in SEO, right, I've mentioned the three little pigs many times. Have you ever been here?

Meredith 0:58

No.

Meredith's husband 1:00

Okay, so I've likened the SEO process to the story about the three little pigs. You know the story of the three little pigs.

Meredith 1:06

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 1:07

Yeah, the first two, you know, they're trying to protect themselves from the big bad wolf. And they build in straw and the ones built it out of straw, and the other builds it out of twigs, and the third builds it out of bricks, and the wolf blows the first two. Houses down and it's the brick house that is safe because it's a brick Making an anger house.

Meredith's husband 1:27

The more I think about it, the more I use this example, the more I think it relates to SEO. It's probably why it's a famous story is because it relates to lots of things.

Meredith 1:34

Yeah, so it's like at first. You don't succeed, try, try again.

Meredith's husband 1:38

Anyway, many, many people approach SEO like it's going to be a straw house or a twig house. It's gonna be quick and it's gonna be easy not take much time when. If you want, if you want a SEO brick house that's gonna last for a long time, it's got to be. You got to build it out of bricks.

Meredith 1:53

It takes longer and take a lot. I remember when I was in school we built bricks and it takes a long time for each brick to be built.

Meredith's husband 2:03

It's not like you. Just well, you don't straw, you don't have to make the actual bricks we're going to assume you have like a? The Home Depot or something.

Meredith 2:10

It just breaks around forest lying around.

Meredith's husband 2:13

There wasn't a Lowe's or uh no Okay well, whatever, it's not my point.

Meredith 2:18

The point is the people who built eggs, if you seen in the forest just walking around holding bricks.

Meredith's husband 2:23

Today.

Meredith 2:24

Yes.

Meredith's husband 2:24

I'm done today.

Meredith 2:25

Okay, there you go.

Meredith's husband 2:27

So while your siblings, after they built their house quickly, they're gonna go run and play and do something else and you're gonna be stuck Building your brick house. It's, it's a little bit frustrating, yeah. It's hard to see progress.

A Common Mistake in Measuring SEO Progress

Meredith's husband 2:39

It's hard to see and the thing that I see most people doing. They make a mistake here in measuring their progress. They look at their rankings. Either they just go to Google and they type in what they think are their keywords and they look for their website, or they use a tool like Sarmash and they want to see where their keywords are ranked right, that makes sense, though you want to see where you are, just like a measuring stick.

Meredith's husband 3:03

Yeah, but that'll drive you crazy. Yeah, it's guaranteed you're gonna go nuts. Because what happens? Those keywords jump around, a lot, fluctuate, especially, especially if you're not already on page one or in the top five positions. Your individual keyword rankings are gonna jump all over the place.

Meredith 3:20

It's just like in a scale. That's why you don't wave yourself, because the numbers jump around all the time and you'll see the progress when you feel the progress.

The Dangers of Individual Keyword Rankings

Meredith's husband 3:30

Okay, and a lot of times what happens and this I've seen this happen actually several times with my students is their SEO is going perfectly Like they put months of work in. Everything is just like it's happening, exactly the way At least I would want it to happen. It's good, it's just perfect. And yet they are upset because they go and look at their keyword rankings and they said all this P this keyword this he said P this keyword that was at position 47 is now at 89.

Meredith's husband 4:01

I must be doing something wrong. That's gonna drive you crazy. There is no way, because you're gonna think, oh, whatever I'm doing is wrong. Either you're gonna give up, you're gonna. It's hard to have motivation when you think you're going in the wrong direction.

Meredith's husband 4:13

Yeah, you're gonna do it, or I'm like or you're gonna change what you're doing, thinking that it's not working when it was working it was so what you got to do instead of this, or there's another problem. You're just looking at one keyword. There are literally an infinite number of keywords and I guarantee you that, no matter what you think your keyword is and how people are finding you, there are many, many other keywords that people are using. People search all differently. So what you need to do instead of looking at your keyword rankings- and looking at your wrinkles in the camera Is focus.

Meredith's husband 4:50

Is focus on impressions, impressions, impressions, impressions, and you do this by looking at Google search console.

Meredith 4:56

Like this impression of Christian Shaw yeah right, that's pretty good.

Meredith's husband 5:02

So an impression is anytime that Google displays your website in search results for any keyword, in any position, number one through 100, that's the first 10 pages. So every time somebody does a search on Google, google generates 100 different positions that's 10 pages and then people scroll through them one at a time. But every time you do a search there's 10 pages. There, it's just. You probably are not looking past the first page.

Meredith 5:31

And some people I often do.

Meredith's husband 5:35

Well, I actually have it set so that all 100 display on one page, so I can just scroll Really now that that's a super sneaky.

Meredith 5:43

Oh, that's a nice move, not moves.

Meredith's husband 5:46

So you can have an. If your website appears at the bottom of page 10, that's still going to be an impression, and so what we want to do is we want to focus on building more impressions. That means, basically, google likes our site. It's feeding up our site to users more often. The more impressions, the more Google likes our site and the more apt it is to show it to users. Now, especially again when you're starting, you need to focus on impressions because you're not going to have any rankings. So it's super important to get into this habit and not look at your rankings. It's kind of like.

Meredith 6:21

Looking at your likes. That's what it is. It's the same thing behind it, like if you do post on social media. How many likes, how many likes, who liked it, who liked it? That's almost a mere banffering who liked it, who liked it? Who liked it? Who liked it, who liked it. You know it's a very human thing to do. So I understand why you're looking at your rankings, but what my husband, my dear sweet husband, says?

The Quickstart SEO Dashboard

Meredith's husband 6:46

So you want to focus on impressions, and you can do that with Google Search Console. It's very easy and you can look at impressions for all keywords at once, or you can look at an individual keyword. You can look at the last 12 months or 16 months or two months or whatever you want. I would encourage you to do that. There is also I have a Quick Start dashboard on the website. It's a free tool that actually pulls that information out of Google Search Console Really, and it's a simpler way to do it. It's something that I initially built to share with clients because it's just pretty or easier to use. They can use it on their own. I like that.

Meredith 7:20

That sounds good to me.

Meredith's husband 7:21

So if you don't like logging in to Search Console because there's a little bit of a learning curve, it's not the prettiest looking thing in the world you can use it. It's free. What it's free? That's so nice. Google Search Console is free. This is also a free tool.

Meredith 7:35

Oh yeah, how do we get it?

Meredith's husband 7:37

I will put the link to both of these below Okay.

Meredith 7:40

That would be very helpful. I would use that, especially if it's pretty. My question is how does this have anything to do with the three little pigs? Cause they didn't have Google Search Console.

Meredith's husband 7:52

Yes, so it's a lot like. So imagine you're building a brick house.

Meredith 7:56

Yes.

Building an SEO Brickhouse

Meredith's husband 7:56

Right, you're putting down one brick at a time, one and after All in all, it's just another brick in the wall. So you might step back every once in a while and look to see does your brick house? Does it look like a house? Yet, yes, does it look like just a few bricks. So if you imagine doing that, after every, say, 10th brick you built, or every brick you build, you take a step back and you look and it doesn't look like a house.

Meredith 8:20

It's gonna-.

It's like Chocolate Pudding

Meredith's husband 8:20

Eventually, at some point you're gonna step back and it is gonna look like a house. By looking at your keyword rankings and measuring your progress based on that, it's like thinking oh well, now my brick house looks like a house. It must have been that brick that I just placed that made it look like a house. I should have just done that brick first. Why didn't I do that?

Meredith 8:41

Do you know what it's like?

Meredith's husband 8:43

It's like when you're-. What is it like?

Meredith 8:44

It's when you're cooking, not the instant kind, but when you're cooking chocolate pudding and you're mixing it on the stove top and you're thinking this is just watery blah, and then all of a sudden it becomes the pudding that's kind of right.

Meredith's husband 9:04

I was a little upset that you hijacked my brick house story but that's actually With chocolate pudding. Yeah, with food, but it's exactly right. I was surprised Because what's gonna happen is, if you are looking at your impressions, they're gonna be building over time and yet your keywords are gonna be random, but at some point, all of a sudden, your keyword may jump up to page one.

Meredith 9:24

Exactly.

Meredith's husband 9:25

And it is not what you did right before that that caused the jump in rankings.

Meredith 9:29

It's a cumulative.

How Bad SEO Advice Gets Created

Meredith's husband 9:30

It is everything you've done. Yes, and you know what also happens. This is how bad SEO advice gets started. At least some of it is people do something and they let's say they're doing this and they do something, and then their rankings jump and they say, oh well, it's that one thing that I did that made my rankings jump, and they share that with friends and they say this is the one thing you need to do. And then guess what?

Meredith's husband 9:53

And everyone does yeah it doesn't work for other people because they didn't put all the other bricks there first.

Meredith 9:59

Exactly. It's like if you're going to jump off of a diving board, you better make sure there's a diving board, and diving boards take a long time to build and install, and all that. You can just jump off a mountain with no diving board.

Meredith's husband 10:13

This is what our life is like. Everything we do, we sit around the dinner table. You know what it's like. It's like. You know what this is like. It's like-.

Meredith 10:24

But it's right.

Meredith's husband 10:25

I think it's a good way to look at the world as if it were like something else.

Meredith 10:29

Yeah, because we understand that.

Meredith's husband 10:31

Anyway, do that, good luck. Don't look at your rankings, they're going to drive you crazy.

Meredith 10:35

It's going to drive you crazy In this world.

Meredith's husband 10:37

We want to keep as much sanity as possible.

Meredith 10:39

We need to and stick together.

Meredith's husband 10:42

Keep it simple.

Meredith 10:42

Keep it simple.

Meredith's husband 10:44

No, I don't know, I just made that up.

Meredith 10:45

Yeah, clearly.