SEO can seem daunting at times, and it often feels like an uphill battle because rankings are constantly fluctuating. You might be on top of the world one day, and the next day you get hit with a Google update or a competitor bumps you out of the spot you were so happy about not long ago. Many companies often find themselves asking that simple question: How can I be happy if I never know if I�m going to remain successful? The answer here is to simply recognize your smaller SEO successes.
Some Small SEO Wins You Love to Forget
It�s first important to understand that not all small SEO wins can help you determine your overall success. Sometimes the small stuff can help give you confidence for your big picture, but sometimes it�s nothing more than a little success that might not transcend into your overall marketing effort. In either case, being able to understand these small wins can help give you the motivation to keep driving forward.
A few small SEO wins include:
- More relevant followers are better than a lot of irrelevant followers.
You might notice that your number of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, etc. is decreasing (tools like SocialBro or Facebook analytics help give you a nice line graph). However, when you really start to pay attention to relevance you might find that you are succeeding. The fact that spammy sites and individuals are no longer following you is a sign that you�re on the right track. If every new follower you earn is relevant to your industry, you�re on to something great.
- Evergreen content remains successful.
This is a tip I learned from one of our great contributors, Nick Stamoulis. If you go back and pay attention to your evergreen content, or content that covers a timeless topic, you will likely find that you�re still getting a few organic visits each month. This kind of thing won�t show up on your analytics if you�re only looking at the big numbers, but it�s fun to go back and realize that you�re still bringing in traffic from past articles and webpages.
- 301 redirects can be tricky.
When a company issues a 301 redirect, there is likely some web design work being completed or a domain transfer or merge happening. Whatever the case, users as well as search engine bots need to be pointed somewhere else. If you can make this happen without a glitch, consider it a success! This will help you keep your SEO link juice if done correctly, and people take it for granted because it is common practice. Unfortunately it�s easy to get wrong, so be happy when it�s all over and you got it right.
- Google analytics can be deceiving.
This is probably the biggest point to keep in mind. People often get worried because their overall organic traffic is down on Google Analytics. However, it�s important to look at all numbers for Google and see if numbers are down for everyone in general. This doesn�t mean that you personally did something wrong, it just means that everyone is experiencing a change in the way that people are currently searching.
- Authoritative sites give you a backlink.
People are always focused on the number of backlinks they earn, and in most cases they want these links from all unique sites. While this is still important, it doesn�t mean that you shouldn�t celebrate getting a link or a guest article on a very authoritative blog. Maybe you already have a backlink from that blog, but don�t forget that this earns you visibility. It�s not easy to write a guest post and have it approved to be published on a PR7 site, so make sure that this is something you don�t take lightly! After all, more visibility means more backlinks, which means better SEO, which means more clicks, which means more conversions.
How do you find the small SEO successes in your company? Has finding these small wins helped you in any way, or do you take the time to celebrate? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.
