How to Tell if You're Spreading Yourself Too Thin

A thought arose in my mind this morning as a consequence of a conversation I had with an SEO expert yesterday.

The question is (you guessed it) – am I spreading myself too thin?

The reason this question even arose is because of the schooling I was given about all of the issues with Pearl Lemon from an SEO perspective.

I HAD, up until yesterday, thought that we were doing relatively well with the growth of our website – but it became apparent that once I spoke to Arvind…there are so so many things wrong with the Pearl Lemon site.

It’s always amazing when you receive critical feedback.

I used to be afraid of it – but now actually it’s the opposite – I enjoy getting critical feedback because it’s the only way you end up getting better quickly.

And up until I spoke to him – I thought we had been developing pretty quickly.

You’ll have read about it in the previous blogs I’ve been writing – although when it comes to the SEO side I’ve been less forthcoming in regards to our growth and development.

We’ve put together an SEO timeline which I think is really going to come in handy when we’re explaining stuff to new prospects.

We’re getting the same thing done now for PR, and will be doing the same for PPC and Website Design.

Yet with all of this being said – the issues that Arvind identified feel so fundamental when it comes to the Pearl Lemon website that it was staggering.

He did what (in hindsight) appears to be so simple – took a look at some of the best performing websites in the industry and compared them to ours.

Then he was able to spot a multitude of things they’re doing that we’re not effectively.

And even on the basis of a small analysis – he was able to completely tear apart our website from perspectives of:

• Non existent topical relevance
• Non existent category structure linking
• Multiple technical issues
• Multiple link farms that seem to have become part of our backlink profile
• Poor links in general…

And yet there I was at the same time thinking – oh we’re growing – that’s fantastic.

And then (and he’s right) – it really put things into perspective as to how far we still have to go with our own growth.

This was what made me ponder….

I’ve been so busy trying to make inroads and resolve things with the lead-generation side of the business that we’ve missed massive opportunities here.

When you begin comparing the infrastructure of Thrive versus Pearl Lemon you go ‘HOLY SHIT’ there’s so much that we need to do it’s incredible.

Which is amazing to recognise – but frustrating it’s come to us from a third party rather than something that we’ve figure out internally.

With this in mind – we come back to the original point….

Am I (and are you) spreading yourself too thin?

If I chose to keep going deeper and deeper when it comes to the world of SEO – how much more progress could we make – and how much would it positively impact every website we work upon?

In any event – it’s amazing that Arvind has come to us with these insights and it’ll be a great lesson for our team.

One of the continual challenges we have as a team (and it’s been this way since we started working together) is that we don’t have enough proactiveness – and it’s something that’s hurt us with clients.

It’s something that we fight amongst ourselves internally to strive and do better.

And this is yet another example of a limitation as a company we sometimes have – that we’re not pushing the needle as far as we should.

What with the property, accounting, web-development and other sites we’re trying to build there’s evidently tons going on – and we’re trying to adjust.

It’s moments like this – where someone comes and looks briefly under the hood of what you’re doing and identifies some many opportunities to improve that it makes you wonder…..

Would I have found this myself if I spent more time just looking into this myself?

That’s the kind of hypothetical you never know.

I certainly do look to learn about SEO from time to time –

Right now I’m slowly making my way through Brian Dean’s SEO That Works 4.0 and when I learn something quick and actionable I share it with the team.

This is my process for growth at the moment.

People like Arvind show me further still that there is ALWAYS more.

I don’t ultimately think this will cause me to ‘do less’ but certainly it’s given us a great JOLT to the system and I’m excited to see what the SEO team make of Arvind’s comments…

And naturally building a working relationship with Arvind makes a lot of sense!

To the point of focus – what I can say this will do – is make us FOCUS heavily on our own SEO (and correspondingly changes we can make for our clients) over the coming weeks and months.