SEO can be confusing and arcane, so SEOs often find themselves using analogies to explain the mysteries of the industry. Recognizing this trend, the good folks over at Internet Marketing Ninja recently put together an article featuring nine of their favorite SEO analogies that they have seen on various different SEO sites and blogs. The list features some excellent and entertaining analogies, but it does not include my SEO analogy of choice, so I have set out to bring the joy of this splendid simile to the great unwashed SEO masses and their considerably cleaner hospitality brethren.
What is this miraculous SEO metaphor, you ask?
Spoiler alert: Look at the title. In the course of my SEO journeys, I have encountered various personages (salesmen, clients, reclusive uncles named Švejk) with tangential connections to the SEO industry who require elucidation of the philosophy of SEO in what the settlers called “plain words.” Drawing on my boundless gift for mixing instruction with nonsense, I concocted the perfect analogy: SEO is like mowing your lawn. Am I mad, you ask? Far from it, my friend. Let me explain and expand…
“Why can’t you just do SEO once and then be done with it?”
This is a question that follows SEO specialists around like a confused chicken. When faced with this question, I remove my spectacles from my nose, wipe my forehead, and in my most unctuously ingratiating manner reply, “Why can’t you just mow your lawn one time and then be done with it?” And before my unsuspecting interrogator can reply, I respond to my own question.
“Because things change. Your grass grows. There is a drought. A car drives over your lawn. Squirrels do things (I don’t know anything about squirrels). In order to keep your lawn in proper order, you have to “maintain” it, which involves doing the same things (watering, mowing, raking, planting) over and over again in different situations. Treat SEO the same way you treat your grass. Google changes its algorithm 500-600 times a year. Technological disruption is constant (e.g mobile devices). Just because you decide not to maintain your website/SEO (lawn), does not mean that your competitors (half-witted neighbor Gary et all) won’t. SEO (lawn maintenance) is not carried out in a vacuum. Search rankings (Best Lawn of the Year awards) are the result of Google (the neighborhood council) comparing different sites (lawns) and ranking them in the order they feel is most valuable for their users (constituents).
Mow, Edge, & Trim the Competition
If your competitors continue to optimize their site and adapt to the changing search world while you perform ‘SEO’ once and then consider it finished, you will fall lower and lower in the rankings as your site becomes out-dated and irrelevant. SEO is a continual process that involves maintaining your online presence, and just like maintaining your lawn, it involves the repetition of certain tasks (such as link building, content creation, performance optimization, etc.) as situations change and evolve, as well as monitoring the world of search and technology to make sure that when game changers come along (mobile, leaf blowers), you are able to take advantage of these new technologies in order to stay ahead.
Now, I understand that some people live in a desert where there is no grass and some hotels are the only game in town, and I admit that these people and hotels probably don’t need to maintain their lawns or their SEO campaign as frequently as others, but for the rest of the world, if you want to not annoy your neighbors/not get fined by the municipal board/not have a failing hotel, I strongly advise that you maintain both your lawn and your SEO. Take it away, Harry:
