Webmasters: Be the Tortoise, Not the Hare

This is something that I have to remind myself about, quite often.

Exposure on the Web can be a race at times. It’s a race to get content online. It’s a race to get search engines to index and rank your content well. It’s a race to convert visitors into buyers. I could go on and on.

Within all these individual races that we participate in, with our Web properties, we need to think more like the Tortoise and less like the Hare.

Why?

Sure, the Hare can outrun anybody, but he also get’s distracted and loses sight of his main goals.

A Hare that can stay focused can be a dangerous opponent, so don’t throw that approach completely out the window if you have the ability to run fast AND be consistent at the same time.

But most of us don’t.

Most of us have a lot of different stuff (Web properties) that we are trying to take care of, and racing fast with any one of them will make us lose focus on the larger picture. Racing fast with one project might also burn us out, creating a situation where we neglect the rest of the properties due to racing too fast with one.

It’s best to take it all slow and steady, don’t run so fast that you need to stop and sleep for too long just to rest up again. Do everything with a mode of consistency.

• Consistently post new, thoughtful content to your sites
• Consistently keep social media channels updated
• Consistently work on SEO effort such as link building and networking with other webmasters

You get the idea. Don’t run super fast by writing or adding 10 new posts to a site in 3 days, and then needing to take a nap under a tree for a few days (like the Hare, maybe exaggerating slightly) just to recoup.

Why shoot for consistency like this? The people and machines that look at your Web properties like consistency. Your site visitors like consistent content. Search engines like consistency in how content is added to a site.

Aiming for consistency will help keep you in front of those targets in the way that they like to be catered to.