SEOs, Luck, Magic, and Fairy Dust

September 23, 2009 // Author: Jacob Stoops // 157 views // View Comments
SEOs, Luck, Magic, and Fairy Dust
Actually, there is very little luck or magic that goes into a good SEO campaign.

I’ll start right off and say it. SEO is not magic, witchcraft, or anything you can pick up at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There are no Harry Potters, Gandalfs, and definitely no Great and Powerful Oz! As an SEO, do you ever feel like clients want you to pull a rabbit out of a hat? As a client, are your SEO expectations realistic?

My good friend Eric Leslie, with whom I worked at Your Marketing Corner, often told me something that really stuck into my head for some reason.

“Luck = Preparation + Opportunity”

This is not only good advice for life, but it can apply to many things – even SEO! When you think about it, there is very little luck involved with SEO, and very few things happen by chance. It is a combination of good preparation plus opportunity. Sure, your site may show up for some oddball phrases sometimes, but the bulk of where you should be succeeding is through careful preparation leading up to your campaign combined with taking advantages of your ranking opportunities.

Wait, magic fairy dust doesn’t help SEO?

There is no magic fairy dust that can be sprinkled on your website to make it rank well. You must have the right expectations and be willing to put effort into the SEO fundamentals.

I’m here to tell you that while it is okay (and encouraged) to have high expectations for your SEO campaign, don’t kid yourself. You can’t always have the world! With SEO you must often start with a smaller focus first, before you can start to have to reach you desire for more competitive search queries.

So unless you already have significant pull within the search engines (in which case I would be asking why do you need SEo), you must start with fundamentals. Basically, you have to walk before you can run; no matter how good your SEO is! This means a healthy dose of preparation, and targeting the right opportunities.

A healthy dose of preparation

The best SEO’s start with lots and lots of preparation and research. It is here where more than half the battle is won. Meaning, if you do well in this area (target the right keywords & ranking opportunities), you will create yourself a little bit of “Luck”.

Luckily for you, being the fine gentleman (and semi-loser) that I am, I’ve already identified and written about many techniques and strategies you can use to do your SEO research:

Finding the right opportunities

Think of it like a video game (circa 1988 Nintendo). Sometimes you just can’t hope to beat with the bigger bosses right away. First, you have to knock out a few smaller bosses in order to pave the way. It starts with how you target keywords.

For example, let’s saying your a t-shirt printing company and you want to target the keyword “t-shirt” and some variations on a national level. Chances are, you’re not going to have a prayer at ranking for “t-shirt” immediately (unless there are some other mystical factors at play).

What you can do is target some keywords that are a bit less competitive initially. For example, “custom t shirts screen” and “custom printing shirts” are far less competitive, but still offer decent monthly search volume. They might be worth taking a look at.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool Example

Remember, by targeting these keywords, you’re at least pulling in some traffic and building some equity. Whereas, by targeting the larger keyword exclusively, you’re likely to pull no traffic or gain equity (at least in the short-term). So something is better than nothing.

What I guess I’m saying is that sometimes you have to start small, dominate those first, and then make a play at the big boss. I say it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond for a while.

Also, I’m not a wizard!

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  • I started following you on Twitter a few days ago. Glad I came across this post. Looking forward to reading all of your posts that you linked to!
  • Thanks Kimberly!
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