SEOs tend to get infatuated with the latest tricks and techniques published on the hottest blogs. And while it’s enjoyable (and often extremely useful) to check out what other people are doing and to reassess your own process and projects, too much of this “blue-skying” can lead you down the road to severe anxiety and perhaps even a panic attack.
So what to do? With the information fire hose blasting your face, how can you make progress — without feeling like you are missing out on the stuff “all the cool kids are doing”?
Play doable games. Set winnable, useful, short-term goals.
Bring yourself back to earth. Sure, think about those long-term 5-10 year goals from time to time. But don’t get hung up on that stuff. Give yourself a chance for clear and near wins. Where do you want to be in the next two weeks? How many visitors do you want your website to have in a month? Find a specific, fixed, easily doable number. Work towards that. Give yourself the chance to win small, again and again, and you will suddenly soon find yourself winning big.
As productivity guru David Allen has pointed out, the brain is teleological — it focuses on results. When you set in your mind a short-term, specific, doable, useful goal (such as the ones we just described), your brain will figure out how to get you there. You do NOT need to know every step for the journey to advance.
Think of it this way. Imagine you are stuck out on a desert plain when it starts to thunderstorm. It’s raining harder than ever in history. If you stay where you are, you will drown. You need to get to a high point. You could spend your time figuring out how to get yourself to Mount Everest. But this will take WAY too long, and you will die in the flood. Instead, if you simply get to the nearest hill, you will avoid drowning and live to fight another day.
Sometimes, the “good” is better than the “perfect,” in other words.
If you are drowning in SEO technique and process, just get yourself to a high and dry place and then reassess from this better vantage.
