Summer has arrived here at the Jersey Shore, and arriving with it are hordes of landlubbers eager to learn the art of surfing. Some will get it, and some won’t, but those who stick with it will learn valuable lessons that can be applied to all facets of their life. Here’s just a few ways the lessons I’ve learned chasing waves can be applied to your SEO content strategy.
Get Your Local Spot Dialed
Your local break is where you’re going to be surfing most often, so that’s where you’re looking to catch the most waves. For the purpose of this analogy, waves equal customers. Get to know your local break. Swell direction, wind speed and direction, shifting bottom contours, and tide factors all work together to dictate how the waves will break on any given day. Once you’ve developed an intimate knowledge of how waves move through your local break, you’ll be better prepared to pick them off.
Surf Around The Crowd
Especially when you’re first learning to surf, you need to be catching as many waves as possible. You’re not going to be able to do that at the top spots, where you’re competing with more and better surfers who have that spot dialed. Find the less powerful wave down the beach with only a handful of competitors sitting on the peak, and work on your foundations there. In SEO, this means finding unique keywords to optimize your site with. Instead of targeting “New Jersey Car Dealership” for your business, start smaller; for example, target “Mazda dealer serving Eatontown” instead.
Give The Wave What It Wants, When it Wants It
Pay attention to current trends in your market. Good surfing means reacting eloquently to what the wave offers. You can’t cut back on a barreling wave, and you can’t get barrelled on a mushburger. It’s best to keep one eye down the road, and learn to recognize opportunities as they’re developing. Gather speed as you go along, and when you spot that bump in the face down the line, start your bottom turn. That way, when it transforms into a meaty section right in front of your face, you’re ready to crack it with everything you’ve got.
Give Respect to Get Respect
Play fair. You’ll get more waves in the short term by dropping in on other surfers and otherwise ignoring etiquette, but keep that stuff up and sooner or later the long arm of the law will come crashing down, and you’re not going to like the consequences. Similarly, “Black hat” SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and link farming may drive more traffic to your site at first, but eventually Google will catch on, and your site will suffer in the rankings. Putting in the time to build a solid reputation is the best way to ensure you get what you want, both in surfing and SEO.
Find Your Niche, And Be Patient
Taylor Knox is not an air guy. Filipe Toledo is not a big wave surfer. Greg Long can’t do a cutback like Kelly. You need to find what you do best, work towards becoming the best at it, and then show everyone else why you’re the best at it. That takes time, and some tinkering. So follow these rules, work hard, and be patient, and you’ll find yourself surfing your way to the top of the rankings in due time.
