And finally, we hit the good part—making SEO work for you. Using everything we learned from the previous parts and applying them to the content you create. It’s taken a while to put all of the content together, but without further ado, here’s The SEO Struggle, Part Three: Making SEO Work for You!
Good SEO Doesn’t Have to Cost MONEY—It Just Takes a Whole Lotta WORK.
So let me tell you the good news—putting great SEO together for your site doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. But what it is going to take is a whole lot of time.
I’d picked this series back up from the unfinished pile after unexpectedly giving a talk on my SEO journey to my Black blogging peers and realising that I’d learned more than I’d really considered.
What some of the best tools are for SEO and where to find them. Effective ways to boost both your on-page SEO—or rather, the SEO affected by the way your webpages are put together—and your off-page SEO, or all the things outside of your webpages that affect their rankings.
I always thought I understood the SEO struggle, but it turns out that there was so much more to learn about it than I’d ever imagined.
The SEO Struggle: 6500 words (and counting) on why we need to do EVERYTHING NECESSARY for the world to see us the way we want to be seen.
It was October 2020, where after more than twenty years of creating content in the digital space, I finally understood why I wasn’t reaching my potential with my work. It was well-written, sure, and I was doing well on social media, but what I didn’t realise is that the world wasn’t seeing in my content the things I saw in it myself.
I didn’t understand that this was all under my control, and I could learn how to communicate better to search engines what my content’s about. There were repeatable steps I could follow to make sure my content had the best shot at getting favourable positions in search results instead of just putting it out there and hoping for the best. It helped me understand that I needed to do a better job using something I’d always assumed I understood already.
It was time to dive deeper into SEO than I’d ever gone before.
The name of the game is mediocrity. Mediocre blogs that don’t share anything worth reading; people who skip birthdays for mediocre events; mediocre personalities, expectations and lives. No one’s striving for anything amazing anymore.
And it boggles my mind—everything’s literally within reach, but when people find out how much work it takes to build a personal brand and cultivate it to the point where people actually want to read what you write, they just give up. They rather spend time telling you it “must be nice” than to build anything meaningful for themselves, letting themselves fail before they’ve really given anything a shot—and I can’t go for that.
I stopped listening to the haters a long time ago—no more of the people who thought I was “setting myself up for disappointment” when they hear my lofty dreams or peers willing to create content that was simply “good enough”; I’ve spent many years getting to know myself, and can tell you that if I don’t keep pushing to get better with every piece I put out, I may as well quit now, ‘cuz I know I won’t make it through.
But I get it—I get that some people only got in this hustle to get their money and go, not overly concerned about what they leave behind as long as they get their cheque. That there’s a literal army of bloggers who don’t give two cares about standing out, long as there’s a shortcut or two to feed their bottom line.
But there’s no cheat sheet that’ll tell you how to reach the top of the heap. No membership guide that’ll tell you when you’ve “made it”, and the perks you can expect at each stage of the game. This is something you need to build for yourself, doing it because it fuels you, pumping through your veins—those who’ve come out looking for an easy payday quickly realize this grind demands more than most are willing to give, and it’s the few who know they need more than money from it all who’ll still be here in the end.
Which is why I’m losing my mind trying to get back on my horse after what feels like an eternity spent without a solid blog post out.
Before heading out on a 10-day trip to Mexico to see my sister-in-law get married in a little place called Tequesquitengo, I could feel it creeping in on me from all sides—a heap of sponsored content that wasn’t going to write itself; plenty of action with the 9-5 that needed handling before I took the time off; and a very comprehensive to-do list that wasn’t going away without doing what I needed to do as a Dad and doing right by my family. It’s easy enough to call yourself a blogger—slap a few words together, add a few photos and call it a day—but putting out content that’ll do any better than the stuff you’d find in a local community newsletter is a full-time gig unto itself.
It’s a struggle, though—I’ve spent countless hours trying to find myself: working past the sponsored posts to examine some deeply rooted parts of my soul—my ever-changing life as a father, trying to do the best I can for my children without sacrificing the things that make me who I am. Further studies into life as a Black man in one of the most diverse cities on the face of the planet. I’ve been so caught up in the hustle that I’ve failed to feed my soul, and that’s something that’ll need changing if I don’t want to get reacquainted with burnout.
But knowing what I want to write and doing it justice are two different things—have I led the kind of life that makes me qualified to discuss any of it? Can I write the kind of stuff that’ll matter years down the road, or am I chasing an ideal I’ll never manage to touch, stuff that’s no better than any of my peers?
This is what keeps me up at night—knowing how badly I want to reach my potential, but not knowing if I’ll ever get there. Though I’ve written long enough and hard enough to be confident that my work can do great things, I still can’t convince myself it has what it takes to change lives. Or that it can do any more than simply take up digital space and do any better than the uninspired memes and uninformed opinions that already constantly plague us.
I sit here, and I’ve yet to be convinced that my work can outlast me.
And that’s what it really comes down to—I want so badly to create classics that the pressure I put on myself sometimes halts me in my steps… but we all know there’s only one way I’m going to reach my goal, and that’s to keep on writing.
So that’s exactly what I’ll do.
Be Mediocre if You Want—But Remember; Hard Work ALWAYS Pays Off.
These moments where self-doubt takes hold and I start questioning whether I’ll actually manage to make something valuable from my efforts, I have to remind myself of the things I’ve accomplished already, and how I would’ve called it quits a long time ago if I listened to everyone telling me what they thought I couldn’t do. That I couldn’t be successful if I strayed from the safe path—that a stable job, good family and debt-free existence were as far as my dreams should go. That I couldn’t exceed my life’s station—that a life without trust funds, Ivy League schools and family connections could only take me so far, and that I should leave greatness for those better equipped for it… it’s simply not meant for a lowly commoner like myself. Sure—I look at my peers who show up on the scene more often; the ones travelling across the globe and going to the hottest events… and while it’s obvious to me that this would’ve been easier when I was younger and childless, you don’t just quit because something gets harder.
You just get better at it and figure out what works for you.
So I hope you didn’t miss me too much, but the boy is back—you can only let a cloud hang overhead for so long before it’s time to get yourself together and move on; when it feels like the world’s trying to hold you back, that’s when you shine your boots, stand tall, and remind it that ain’t nobody got time for that.
But the hustle continues and I’ve still a million and one other things that I could be doing, so I’m gonna get back to it. If you made it this far down the post, kudos to you, and I’ll tell you this—if the 2016 we’ve seen so far is any indication of things to come, we’ve still got a very interesting year ahead of us!
Thanks for continuing to check the blog out and until the next,
Tell your wife, tell your kids, tell your husbands:
