Take the Road Less Traveled to Improve Your SEO Results
Over the years of working with SEO students, I’ve noticed a set back to their progress. Once the student has gained a new SEO comfort level and becomes proficient at optimization, there is often a tendency to spend their time examining competitors sites. In some cases, it is like they are obsessed with the competition.
There is a certain natural appeal, I suppose, in “spying on your competitors.” But from experience, that student would be much farther ahead if they stayed focused on improving their own website presence. So in today’s post, I thought I’d pass along a few tips on some simple ways to unleash new creativity to improve your SEO.
Before we get into the tips, let’s talk about why creativity will benefit your efforts. The component of creativity can set you apart from your competitors. If your SEO work gets the attention of your audience before your competitor – your fresh, creative approach will set you apart. Even if they look at other offers that all follow the same common approach.
One important aspect of introducing new approaches is the important step of “testing.” After all, there are people who can easily come up with new ideas, but ideas fall apart if they never take the step of implementation and testing.
Tips for Creativity
So exactly what exercises or practices will help you to become more creative in your SEO work?
- Stop spending too much of your time looking at the competition. Worse yet, stop trying to copy the competition. Focusing on your own site is much more productive.
- Apply creativity to various aspects of your content marketing. Think about how you can tell your story differently. Learn to get more creative in all aspects of what you offer to your readers in their visitor experience.
- Get creative with your initial keyword research and you may discover huge opportunities that others miss.
- Look for the use of helpful tools, or apps that might enhance and add to the user experience. Be sure that you are using them right in your top performing pages.
There will be times you just feel completely stuck. On these occasions, you want to be the originator of something new, but you just don’t know where to get started. It can help to try a reverse approach to help you get started. In other words, try and visualize an image of what the finished creation might look like – without stressing about what the steps are to create it. Then working in reverse, build your list of steps or plot points backward to the beginning. This can work well with story creation or help to be creative with interesting plot twists.
If you find yourself feeling truly stalemated, try just taking a little break. Get out and do something you enjoy. Even though you are having fun, you can still think about new ideas and the ideas will come easier to you while you are relaxed.
It is good advice to always keep a small pocket notebook with you so that the instant you have a creative idea sparking, you can write it down and not forget it.
These are just a few simple tips to help you to become a trailblazer and establish a new foothold through your own creativity and innovations. Practice these often and you can set new paths over and over again.