SEO Habits And Why They Slip

Meredith's Husband 0:34

SEO habits and how to build them. So last week I talked about building an SEO habit specifically about blogging. This week I'm going to talk about any SEO habit, like whatever you feel that you need to be doing or you should be doing related to SEO, but you're not doing it. What are some things, some tips, some hacks that can actually help you? And this can be related to any part of SEO. It can be things like writing image tags, it can be title tags and description tags, or it can be doing blogging, or it can be doing keyword research or competitor research, or honestly, doesn't even need to be SEO stuff, it can be anything. If there is something that you feel you should be doing, and it's something you don't want to do, like for example, it's not fun, like SEO. Chances are good that because it's something you don't want to do, you put it at the bottom of the list, it moves from the bottom of the list to the next day and the next day and the next day, and you know how that goes. So if that sounds familiar, I got three things that I did that helped me help that continue to help me get around that

Start Ridiculously Small

Meredith's Husband 1:41

issue. And the first is to start small. And I don't mean start small, I mean start like ridiculously small. For example, if you there's something that you want to do and you figure it's going to take you two hours, I don't mean split it up into chunks of half an hour or 20 minutes or 15 minutes. Like let's take the example of writing image alt tags, which is a pretty common one, pretty monotonous, probably one of those things that a lot of people, it's at the end of their list. Uh, they don't obviously look forward to doing it. So let's, but it can be true for title tags or any other part of SEO, like I said. Uh, but let's just use that as an example. I don't mean take uh, you know, what you expect is gonna take you several hours and do it in half hour chunks. I mean like ridiculously small. Just step number one, open up your website. Okay, just go to your website and look at it. Okay, step number one. Uh maybe the next step is go to one of the pages that's gonna need those image alt tags and log into your website. Okay, that's a step, and that's like an example of starting ridiculously small. Okay, that's something you can do. You can sit down and just look at your website, okay. Meredith would say, if she were here, she would say, she would use the example of if you want to start going to the gym. You feel like you should, but you don't want to, so you never do. Uh, well, first step, take your gym shoes and just put them by the door. Okay. Step number one. Step two, the next day or some other time that week, put your gym shoes on and just walk outside. Come back in. Step number two. Step three, walk to the gym. Or, you know, maybe you can't walk to the gym. We live in Brooklyn, we walk most places. Uh, maybe just go for a walk around your block. Maybe then go to the gym. Maybe then go and just go into the gym, spend five minutes. Just kind of sit there, look around, take it in. Actually, Meredith would not say to do all this stuff. She would just say, put your gym shoes by the door. The rest of that is me going off on a tangent. Hopefully, you get my point. Okay, that's number one.

Schedule The Tiny Step

Meredith's Husband 3:42

Number two, start with planning. Your first step should be planning. And by planning, I don't even really mean planning, I mean just scheduling. Like for me, when I want to do something new that I know is going to take some time, the first thing I think about is, well, and I've learned this the hard way. Uh, well, I need to figure out when I'm going to do this. When am I going to fit this into my schedule? And it's important here to be realistic. Don't say, I will do this at the end of the day when everything else is done. If you're listening, Meredith, who am I kidding? She's not listening. Just don't do that. You need to be realistic. Can you sit down for five minutes or 30 seconds if you're just starting and you're just going to look at your website? When can you honestly sit down and just look at your website? When are you realistically going to do that? Don't say, when can I sit down and spend an hour or spend two hours doing this? Because even if you were able to do that, there's a pretty good chance you wouldn't be able to all of a sudden squeeze an hour into your day doing something that you don't want to do. Even if you were to do it, chances are good it's going to be painful while you're doing it. You're not going to enjoy it. And so guess what? You're not going to do it again. And I would combine this step with number one. So sit down, schedule. When can you do something that is literally going to take 30 seconds or a minute or five minutes? And then make it small and then build from there.

Count Small Wins As Wins

Meredith's Husband 5:10

And that brings me to the third point, which I think is kind of the most important, in that when you do that, you need to treat that like a win. That's a victory. When you sit down, if you set a goal, I'm going to spend five seconds looking at my website, and then you do that, consider that a win. My problem still, I struggle with this, is I say I'm going to do something really simple and then I do it, and then I still kind of feel like a like a failure. Like it wasn't like I just did something small because I couldn't do the actual work. And then so guess what? If something makes me feel like a failure, I'm not going to do want to do that again either. So the important thing here is to be able to, in your mind, say that that was a win. I decided I was going to do something and I did it. I accomplished it. And you can go to bed feeling good about that rather than there's still stuff on your list that you didn't get to. And this will help you to build confidence in doing what whatever your your next goals are going to be. And it doesn't need to be related either. Like let's say you want to focus on you want you want to start doing SEO. Okay. And you want to make a habit out of it. Now you can start to build confidence by picking another habit, some doing something else that maybe you enjoy, maybe you're good at. For me, like I kind of do this. I'm good at like sports and fitness. Like, and so I've noticed that when I start setting goals in that area, it helps me build confidence and understand how I can set goals and accomplish things in things like SEO. So my point is just you can start with something you actually enjoy. Actually, you're you look forward to how can you set a goal in that area? And

Borrow Confidence From Other Habits

Meredith's Husband 6:53

then you'll see how you set and scheduled and actually accomplished a goal. Then that's going to make it a little bit easier when you start doing things like SEO. All right. So number one, start small. Number two, begin by just scheduling it. When are you actually going to do it? And then when you actually do it, no matter how small it is, treat it as a win.

Share Feedback And Episode Number

Meredith's Husband 7:15

And the first habit that I want you to start building, tell me what you think of this podcast. This episode, there's a link below in the show notes. Follow that link. You can say, Yeah, I like this one. I didn't like this one. Actually, you'll need to put the episode number. Otherwise, I won't know which one you're talking about. This one, I believe, is going to be 213. And that's going to let me know what type of episodes you appreciate. And so I can do more of them. Okay, I hope this helps.