Have you been reading SEO blogs recently? I’ve been a regular reader of some of the world’s most popular blogs onsearch engine optimization. Not only blogs, but e-books, courses, you name it. And they all all do one mistake I really, REALLY hate:
Nobody gives you an action plan. You have a bunch of posts/advice on SEO tools, for example, reasons why those tools are useful and so on. But what about some help on how to implement them in your every day business? Nobody gives you that.
SEO folks also don’t realize that some of the advice and tools they give are not really easy to implement. Of course, this is not the case in all industries. Take people search engines and the people search industry, you just type a name/location and view the results, not much thinking. Simple, right? Wish it was that simple in SEO 
Example
Rand, one of the co-founders of SEOMoz, recently wrote an EXCELLENT post on ranking signals hiding beyond the surface. This is the reason I love SEOMoz, they’re always on the cutting age of things. This post (like most Rand’s posts) made A LOT of sense. He gave a lot of suggestions you could implement on your own like:
- Get no-follow links from trusted sources
- Get mentions of your domain/brand name on places you can’t get the link. It’s probably not worthless to do this
But how many people went and actually got those suggestions and implemented them in their to-do plans? Probably less than 3%.
Implementation Intentions
There’s a well-known concept in the study of procrastination called “implementation intentions”. This concept basically claims that certain things happen in the time between youdecide to do something and actually DOING that thing.
Example: I’ve decided to write this post. But this isn’t enough for me to actually start and finish writing it. What I need to do is to plan how am I going to IMPLEMENT my decision. The concept of implementation intentions (based on many studies) says that you are most likely to do a task when you decide when, where and how you are going to do it.
For example, let’s say your intention is: Get #1 for ‘seo tools’. Based on this intention only, you aren’t very likely to follow up on your goal. Instead, start by setting up implementation intentions. ‘ I’m gonna rank for x term’ does not guarantee you are actually going to START doing that. Anyway, back to our example:
When are you going to start ranking? Set up an exact time and date when you are going to do this task. For example, I am going to build links to rank #1 for ‘seo tools’, every Mon-Fri from 9 till 10 AM (working 45-90 minute periods and then taking a short break of 15-30 minutes is great).
Where are you going to do the process of ranking for your keyword? By ‘where’ I don’t mean on what location (your computer). I also mean defining what programs you’re going to use, dedicating yourself to not multitasking and so on.
HOW? This is probably the most important question. ‘Ranking for ‘seo tools” is a VAGUE GOAL. Leaving 5 comments, building 3 forum profiles per day and making 5 guest posts per day is specific. Of course, this is just an example, I can’t guarantee you’ll be #1 for a keyword by leaving comments and building profiles ))
))If this didn’t make much sense to you, feel free to read this Wikipedia entry on implementation intentions.
Action Plan
Wouldn’t this post be ironic if I didn’t give you an action plan?
a) Choose one goal in your SEO plan and apply implementation intentions. Choose how, where and when you are going to do that goal. Specific works and produces action. Vague stuff makes you think, and thinking is NOT acting.
b) To make it public, share your goal in the comments below!
Good luck!
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