I want to share with you the most significant thing I've learned in more than 5 years working professionally with SEO and many others in an amateur way.
Without any fanfare, let's face these facts:
Do not do SEO, undertake SEO.
Like any good entrepreneur, be it an employee or a boss, turn your profession into a company. Your boss or your director is your first customer.
The etymological root of the word company is "imprehendere", which in free translation is to undertake and in Latin had the sense of dealing with problems. SEO are problems, always, unexpected and that require original solutions. Something that worked yesterday, does not work anymore.
Have accounts on social networks. Use each one. Help others and earn a reputation.
There are sites and blogs of SEO in Brazil. Open yours, share your secrets and you will discover that you knew very, very little.
Write articles: write, write, and write. It's a good way to learn and remember what you know.
SEO starts in marketing. What can you sell that no other company can sell? Value your differentials (values, brand, price, product, etc.) and use them, because nobody can do the same.
Do not be merely a technician. Do not repeat techniques. Be someone who understands the workings of the algorithm and creates unique strategies. This: be who creates and not who consumes SEO techniques.
SEO is not about what should be done for the website, but what should be done for the client's business.
For a long time, I ignored the human power of the Internet. It is a human modifier, not a mere media. The Internet is made up of people, SEO is made for people.
I found SEO easy. It's still easy. It is difficult to think the other and understand that SEO is secondary, more important is a total vision of marketing. SEO alone does nothing.
Much of human life is language. SEO is the language of being found in organic search according to a person's intention. Keywords reveal an intention.
SEO is not about bringing visitors, but bringing in qualified visitors to be loyal. SEO is about generating conversions.
I realized very early on that Google had all the information about you or me. This at first made me paranoid. I have learned to accept that in our age there is no privacy and this is good for us to be better human beings. What do we have to hide?
I was lucky to, knowing that Google had this information, to do SEO considering always usability, conversions and visitor retention. Use your SEO expertise to make good websites.
On the other hand, I broke my face by ignoring the power of blogs and, more recently, social networks. I thought they were a waste of time. They are not!
The Internet, and therefore SEO, must be done to generate relationships. A visit is ephemeral, a relationship is perennial.
I learned relatively early that everything was SEO. Especially the information we never imagined Google has. Even so, I only know that I know nothing about them. And SEO is about information that only using the logical reasoning you can deduce.
To tell you the truth, I stopped thinking about SEO or PPC. I discover more and more that one should analyze online marketing as multi-channel. However, every strategy must be done with the resources currently available to generate assets. The biggest asset of SEO is reputation, the best metric are the conversions.
I found that I had secrets about SEO. Today I publish them so that everyone knows. The best customers see, not because of the mystery of this art, but because of their authority and reputation in the matter.
The best marketing is to build reputation. SEO is about reputation in search results.
Do not be paranoid about first place. The first position has more weight in a meeting than for the user, who is just looking. Just as people seek meaning in their lives. Marketing has to work with that sense.
Be a response your visitor wants to convey to your contacts, friends and acquaintances.
People talk a lot about penalization. They usually want to terrorize each other. There are techniques that some do not want you to do and call it black hat, giving you dexterous examples to get you out of the idea. Be suspicious, always.
Black hat is about your intention. If you are making the best of white hat and are still thinking of your user as a pimp, you will be making black hat.
For each black hat technique there is a white hat approach. And vice versa.
SEO is a guy who helps Google improve your index. Do SEO thinking about how you can help improve Google. On the web, even this is collaboration.
I always wanted to be a poet. I found that the very essence of poetry, which ultimately is human, was also found in marketing. Even in marketing!
Do SEO or your job as a quest for truth, for the real. Only the other is real, but the individual is a mere representation of himself. Create something for the other, just as we do not recognize any genius that has been great just for you. This will generate links, reputation and qualified traffic!
We can count visits easily, difficult is to measure the impact we cause. This is only with feedback. SEO should be done for sites that generate deep impact.
Statistics can lie. Misleading graphics.
Reach the intangible, discover the value that lies between the lines. That's the real SEO.
SEO depends on a number of variables. It is done thinking in the medium and long term, but it needs actions always in the short term. Now.
You know that a person is good at SEO when he can identify the signs of Google and interpret a change of positions. Often a fall of position means that the site will rise in the ranking, others that it is in a downward spiral.
The best SEO methodology is implement-measure-learn. And 80% of SEO work is analyzing metrics and trends.
The other 20% are unexpected ideas we have: an unlikely on-page optimization, a link bait tactic for a pipeline client and connections.
The new path of SEO is to invest in Social Media. But the best way to get qualified followers on social networks is by doing SEO.
Keep track of everything about your SEO strategy. Buy subscription of several tools. Get as much information as you can. Read blogs, participate in forums and keep your knowledge up to date.
Always update yourself. Participate in events. Watch the webinars. Read blogs. Buy books.
Test, always; buy domain names and build websites to test your knowledge