There are two subjects in today’s blog. One is good SEO, the other is good floss. In one, I consider myself an expert; having done the trial and error to death on it. On the other, I’m not so steeped in experience. I can’t say I really enjoy it, but as I ruminated over some of the finds that the one has given me, I’ve realized the obvious: good SEO is like good floss. Here’s how:
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Nobody wants to do either.
Search Engine Optimization is hard work. It is costly, but the results are definable and real. There are many facets to SEO; and I don’t pretend to be an expert, but at its core, writing a ton of blogs is the main ingredient. Flossing too is hard work that no one lines up to do it. There’s a variety of quality floss products out there, but there’s also the cheap kind that hurts your gums. Going cheap, you end up with a mouth full of blood and spit, but it still works. Gums heal fast, and in the end, you don’t have leftovers in your smile. Bonus, but there’s not much attraction to either, is there?
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You have to be consistent for both to be effective.
As stated earlier, there’s so much pain involved that being consistent is a real task. With SEO, the key to being consistent is three fold: having a thoughtful and flexible editorial calendar; having content in that calendar that won’t bore the pants off of a centipede, and getting it done on time every time. When you floss, you need to not only mimic the above SEO rules: you need to stick to your calendar: do it every day. You need to be flexible: sometimes there’s roast beef from lunch stuck in your incisor and you can’t wait until bedtime to get it the heck out of there. And you need to do it every night. P.S. You don’t want to know that diabetes and other mouth-borne diseases start when flossing stops.
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You have to see the results.
Long term results suck. And not just in this digital age. They’ve always sucked. Always will. We all want to see our sites ranking up there ASAP because that means there’s a better chance of more business coming in the door. Likewise, with no cavities and no micro-parasites living in your mouth, the results are living longer when you really didn’t know you were about to die.
And here’s the real kicker: flossing doesn’t give you whiter teeth. That’s something that only brushing can achieve. SEO won’t increase your sales, it only gets your page up in the rankings. Want results from flossing? Look at the chunks of food that didn’t make it past the first stage of digestion. Want results from SEO? Look at the mirror and ask yourself “Am I really a blogger?”
So let’s forever remember that SEO is like flossing. Hard work, consistency and patience will get you results. Maybe that’s not the end goal for either, but they both do work in the end. Now you can rinse.
By: Wacky Dave, Creative Director of C7
