Short and sweet one today.
I love cycling.
Not only is it a great form of exercise, it’s sociable and a great way to clear your head.
Us Brits are pretty good at it too – Wiggins, Cavendish, Froome, Hoy, Trott…
But what does SEO have to do with cycling?
Quite a lot.
Last August I did a charity bike ride – cycling 300 miles in 24 hours from Newcastle to London – cycling day and night. Needless to say there was a lot of training to be done. As I steadily pushed up the distance, it got harder and harder. One particular weekend when I cycled from Suffolk to Banbury (a round trip of 250 miles) I reached the point that I wanted to stop. Give up. But I knew I couldn’t. If I did:
- My training schedule would have gone out the window
- I would have fallen off my bike because my shows clip to my pedals
And that’s why it’s a lot like search engine optimisation.
Google is forever changing it’s algorithm, which means you must constantly tweak your SEO strategy.
A part of that will be link building, but once started you can never stop.
You need fresh, high quality links to keep your website ranking well.
But don’t just rely on links. You’ve read the horror stories of people having their websites wiped out with algorithm changes, well if you don’t want to be one of them it’s essential you use a range of techniques to make sure your business doesn’t die over night.
Pay close attention to your on screen SEO (title tags, alt tags etc.), make sure your website copywriting is natural and not stuffed with keywords and use your social channels as much as possible.
No one has a definitive answer to how to stay ahead of the SEO game, but one thing is for certain, it’s for life and constantly changing.
So if you want to be a success on line ‘keep pedalling’.
P.S. In case you were wondering, I completed the marathon ride in 23 hours and 15 minutes, raising £1900 for Make A Wish Foundation UK.