How to Avoid the 3 Top SEO Time Wasters

Too many people focus on the wrong things to achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success. They end up wasting precious time. Here's how to get the maximum ROI on your time invested in learning SEO.

1. Avoid Reading SEO Rants

Tracking rants and fights in SEO has never helped me get better rankings. Knowing the back-and-forth between two search engine optimizers is useless to my only goal, which is helping my clients get better rankings. I read a huge number of blog posts in a given year, but the minute something gets into the rant zone, I'm out. Plowing through comments about who is right and wrong on some issue won't help you grow your business. Don't waste your time.

2. Don't Follow the "Big New Thing"

Every minute you spend reading about the "big new thing" at Google or Wolfram Alpha, you're wasting time that won't help you actually rank better. It may be more exciting to read about the Twitter integration and how it might impact SEO, but because most searches don't bring back Twitter results -- except for celebrity bloggers -- why should you care?

However, there are some important changes. Track these!

Local Search Maps. Maps that spot the location of businesses now show up for many searches. Try these for example:

• "coffee shop"
• "plumber"

In my region of the country, I see local results even when I am not using my location as part of the query, since search engines determine my location automatically.

If Google decides to show local results above your listing, this can be a problem. If so, spend some time trying to figure out what causes sites to rank well in local search. Read:

• Local Search Ranking Factors, by David Mihm
• Location-based Microformats, by Tantek Çelik, et al.
• Local vs. Traditional SEO: Why Citation Is the New Link, by David Mihm

Google Product Search. A second threat to traditional SEO is the infusion of product images in search results. Many product-based searches are returning images instead of just links to websites. See, for example, searches for:

• "wireless speakers"
• "coffee makers"

Here are four helpful articles on this topic:

• Google Base Competitor Analysis, by TomTheDeveloper
• Optimizing Your Google Base Data Feeds, by Ryan Frank
• How to Rank Well in Google Products Search & a Big List of Places to Get Reviews, by Tom C
• Google Base Opens Up New Doors for Internet Marketers, by Ryan Frank

Feeling overwhelmed about Local and Base? Stop reading things that take your time away from improving your search results, and study the articles I've mentioned, since product search and local search will have a bigger impact on search success than Google Caffeine, Google Knol, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Social Search, and the "big new thing."

SEO writers may need to speculate and be on top of changes, but 99% of people doing SEO shouldn't pay any attention to new search trends or new search engines until they start making an impact.

3. Don't Waste Time on PageRank, Digg, Alexa, and Compete

Finally, let's talk about some popular time wasting tools.

PageRank. It seems like everyone is still obsessing about PageRank. (PageRank is in that little green bar in the Google Toolbar that indicates the supposed "value" of a site on a scale of 0-10.)

Here is an example of one of my client's rankings. The graph below shows the number my client's keywords on page 1, page 2, and page 3 of Google search results over time.

Now try to compare the graph to the site's PageRank:

You can't directly correlate the PageRank impact on page 1 rankings. I've seen the same lack of correlation across many clients. Here is a post that is short but sweet about PageRank:

• Cache Date as the New Google PageRank, by Aaron Wall

That is something you can learn from.

Digg. Of course it is quick and easy to submit to social sites like Digg, Mixx, and StumbleUpon, then ask your friends to vote for your pieces. But, frankly, it's a waste of time unless you have the "right friends," as SocialBlade's list of the top 1,000 Diggers illustrates. I suggest you use Digg and other niche social sites to find out what works and start developing content that you know will have an audience.

Compete.com, Alexa.com, and Quantcast. In our competitive frenzy to know if we're getting more traffic than our competitors, many small businesses use these tools. Here's why these tools are so often useless:

• Sample size. Most small businesses don't get enough traffic to get accurate results, since Alexa and other such tools only "guess" at traffic. Instead of Alexa, to analyze competitive data consider using Google Benchmarking and Google AdPlanner.
• Conversion Tracking. Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast don't report on conversions. So unless you make your money on traffic and impressions, you might learn that your competitor has more traffic than you do, but since you don't know how well that traffic is converting, this data is mostly useless.

Your time is an asset. Treat it as such and make sure that you are maximizing your time ROI.