5 Essential Skills I Teach My SEO Consulting Clients

check-mate-essential-seo-mental-skillsI’ve been privileged to work with many amazing businesses over the past year. Not to mention the marketers, business owners, web designers, and agencies who have inspired me with their dedication, action, and willingness to take risks. (If you’re reading this, know that I appreciate you and am grateful to you).

As an SEO consultant and trainer, there are many skills, philosophies and pieces of knowledge that I try like the dickens to transfer from my brain and instill into theirs. The longer I’ve been in SEO, the more I realize SEO is really a mental game – one that takes grit, faith and creativity.

I’d like to share with you 5 of the most important things I teach my clients about SEO.

  1. Differentiate Foundational SEO Basics from Shiny SEO Objects: fast site, great copy, careful keyword selection, substantial unique copy, off-page links, authority signals are foundational basics. Trendy tactics, low-cost solutions, many tools and software, and scalable linkbuilding are shiny objects.
  2. Reframe: With SEO it’s a 100% certainty that not everything is going to work. So how do you deal? You turn your frustration into a question—and then pursue the answer to your question like a dog with a bone. This is an essential skill for sustainable SEO success.
  3. Don’t Work in a Silo: If those who succeed at SEO learn to ask questions, then knowing WHERE to get help is a must. Who are your peeps? Where do they hang out? If you don’t belong to a trusted online or offline community with smart colleagues then get cracking to find one. How about a relevant LinkedIn or Google+ group? A blogger or authority figure you follow on Twitter? A mentor? Have you tried Googling lots of variations of the question?
  4. Be Willing To Do What It Takes – But Question Everything: this rule not only applies to SEO, but to marketing 101 basics (and really life in general): question everything, but don’t let that be an excuse to not do what it takes. If you want different results, you’re going to have to do something differently. With some people (none of MY clients of course), it’s like pulling teeth to shake action from them to make decisions and get things done. Get as satisfied as you can, then do what it takes.
  5. Back Everything Up with Action: we could shoot the SEO breeze all afternoon…brainstorm the best SEO strategy you’ve ever heard of that will knock all your competitors to Page 3 where they belong. Read the most brilliant SEO articles. But without backing up the talk with action, you’ll get nowhere fast. That’s why I train clients to plan -> implement -> track, plan-> implement-> track, over and over and over again.

And finally, the last piece of wisdom I impart is the whole goal of SEO anyway: more and better results.

Whether you’re totally new to SEO or you’re experienced and just need to know what that next level is and how to get there: “More and Better Results” is the goal across the board.

Here’s to you and developing these mental skills that will take you far – in SEO and in life. Cheers!

Your Turn

What are the SEO pieces of wisdom that have brought you results? Share in the comments below.

Photo Credit: whiz-ka

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Jenny Munn

Jenny is an independent Digital Marketer and SEO Consultant with more than 10 years of experience helping companies and content creators generate brand awareness, traffic, and conversions with SEO. She is a frequent speaker and is on the faculty for the AMA (American Marketing Association) and has taught SEO to thousands of marketers over the past 10 years.
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