Commit to one link a day but don’t waste too much time
Link building is one of the most time-consuming processes
when it comes to SEO, mainly if you’ve been at it for a year or two and the
link building opportunities aren’t quite as forthcoming as they used to be.
It’s so simple to get lost in the hundreds of competitors links you’ve
downloaded, looking for that diamond-in-the rough opportunity, that you might
spend all day link building and only come up with a handful of quality links.
Unless you’ve got the in-house talent where you can allot one person to do
nothing but link building all day, chances are you can’t devote 8 hours a day
to finding one link. My advice to site owners that get overwhelmed by their
link building approach is to aim for at least one link a day (that way it
doesn’t get pushed to the reverse burner), but set a time limit. Give yourself
an hour or two first things in the morning to hunt for links. If you find one
(or five) that’s great and go for it! But if you don’t find anything worthwhile
once your time is up then move onto to something else.
Block out time to write.
In my belief, content is the thing that is going to push
your SEO to the next level. But so many site owners struggle with finding the moment
to write (not to mention coming up with topics) that their content creation
efforts often get stuck in the pipeline; a lot of great ideas but nothing in
fact gets produced. I find the only way I can make sure my own content
marketing campaign happens is I have to block out at least one hour each day
for writing—no meetings, no phone calls, no checking emails or social
updates—unless the sky falls leave me alone! I may not always walk away at the
end of my writing time with a totally finished product but at least I have
something to keep the process moving. I also like to use any additional time at
the end of my day for writing as well so I can get a little ahead. Even 30-45
minutes is enough to get at least a first draft of a new article or blog ready
to go.
Check-in and check-out with social media.
When my phone is buzzing off the hook or I’m getting a dozen
emails about comments on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook it’s very tempting to
dive headfirst into social media, only to reemerge three hours later having
accomplished very little. Instead, I prefer to check-in every few hours with my
social accounts and do a variety of actions in bulk. This might not work for
every business, especially if you are dealing with a customer service issue,
but for the most part your social network is okay with waiting an hour or two
to hear from you. If you don’t/can’t reply instantly it’s not the end of the
world! Unless your company is large enough to have a full time social media
manager, chances are a few employees might have access to a variety of social
accounts so if something does need to be addressed right away but you just
can’t knob it yourself a trusted employee could at least take the first step.
The thing to remember about SEO and social media time
management is that it’s very simple to get lost in the nitty gritty. You could exactly
spend hours combing through Google Analytics every day but save your hours for
when you really need to look “under the hood.” I have lost whole afternoons
looking for one quality link when my time could have been better spent writing
fresh content for the company blog, working on a guest blog post (or finding a
new opportunity), or even been on a view call with a potential client. And I
think we all know how easy it is to get lost in the depths of Facebook when we
start clicking around. Set a daily plan for yourself (flexibility is still okay
though) and try to reduce how much time one activity takes you every day when
possible.
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