When you get tired of running…catch your breath, and then run some more. After that…run more…and faster.

Fact: There is no lasting silver bullet in SEO. The more an SEO huckster alludes to there being one the less credibility they should have in your eyes.  So if you are trying to market toy haulers, homes or energy drinks, the only way to the top is the hard way.  So grab your tools and get to work.

Consider this…when someone says they have an SEO silver bullet, they are basically saying that they are smarter than the hundreds of PhD’s they have at Google working to prevent such a silver bullet from materializing and being exploited. When one does materialize, these same PhD’s work day and night to eliminate that loophole.

…But that guy with the funny haircut, pomade, hipster shoes, the big collar and big watch is smarter than those Google PhD guys.

So, content is enough, until it isn’t.  If your industry is competitive (and what industry isn’t?), then you’ll still have to do the hard work of optimizing, leveraging, sharing, spreading and otherwise getting every drop of SEO value out of every blog post, video, press release, page and social media drop you make.

So why not start from the beginning?

Here are some great ones from 2011:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_best_10_ted_talks_of_2011.php

Here is the skinny on updates:
Google updates are largely targeted at loopholes and shortcuts SEOs take to get ranked.  To be fair, each update brings with it some collateral damage of clean sites. But, if your site gets smashed by an update you probably (1) were cheating, (2) had a lopsided, shortcut oriented approach or (3) just weren’t doing enough of the right things to merit ranking highly.

So what is a company to do?  Many SEO companies relentlessly chase the algorithm…

Our approach…
We pay attention to Google updates, but we try to avoid having to “chase the algorithm”  and being held captive by the latest and greatest SEO loopholes (which Google will quickly close).  In the long run, whether you sell insurance or cage free eggs, it is better to do SEO correctly, taking the time to build content, rankings, traffic, audience engagement, social media reach, public relations and such the good old fashioned way…by actually doing it (as opposed to putting up a facade that will trick Google for a few months but will leave your site high and dry later).

Google is smart.  They will close the loophole your SEO is using.  Then what?

Amazing stuff

Auto email removal

Cable converter

Cash bonus

Claims you can be removed from the list

Collect child support

Compare rates

Compete for your business

Dig up dirt on friends

Free grant money

free installation

Free investment

Free leads

‘Hidden’ assets

Multi level marketing

Promise you …!

Removes wrinkles

Reverses aging

Stock disclaimer statement

stop snoring

Tells you it’s an ad

-Educational degrees held by the source

-Where those degrees were obtained

-Citations of the source in scholarly or technical works

-Number of publications associated with a source

-Number of social network connections and/or followers

-Whether or not the source is employed by and/or graduated from a well respected and/or highly cited institution

-Social networking information such as a number of posts relating to the source and/or a particular topic addressed by the source

-Number of patents held by the source

-Number of links to content associated with the source

-Number of articles citing work associated with the source

-Ratings and Reviews associated with the source

Yes…it’s getting more complicated.

1-At the end of the day, it is relatively easy to design a beautiful site. Guys who can do this are a dime a dozen.

2-To build a highly functional, powerful database driven website is not as easy as getting a pretty site…but by itself, it still isn’t all that tough for people who know how to do it. It is harder to find people who can do this, but they are out there.

3-The difficultly begins to creep in when you try to build a beautiful site that is also functional.  You have to make compromises to achieve function, which often come at the expense of aesthetics. So execution gets tougher.

4-Now where is where the equation goes from Algebra to Calculus…Add in the need to convert and to get users to take specific action along with a site that looks good and is highly functional.  Then you are having to balance beauty, function, how much info you give, how much info you ask for, decision paths, user source, user intent, randomness, etc.  So maybe you want to sell tents, storage or just get people to read your blog on economics.

5-#1 and #2 are doable.  #3 is where it gets tough.  #4 is where you really either have to be that 1 in 10,000 savant with tons of experience, or you have to be willing to do tons of A/B testing.  There are people who can nail all of these parts, but they likely earned that ability through rigorous A/B testing of many websites over many years.

Summary:  Set a goal to design a good looking, powerful site with the end goal in mind (conversions).  Then test, adjust, test, adjust, etc.  Unless you are the exception, don’t seek to have a perfect launch…just launch something great and then constantly improve.

As an afterthought…This freshness issue and the need to provide fresh content is going to add a ton of work to the plate of SEOs unless they do the work to build true social media communities.  Just a warning.

So focus on finding a group that understands search engine optimization (SEO), rather than all of the nooks and crannies of your industry.