Earlier this week, I broke down Alex Hormozi’s “how to win at anything” youtube video in this blog post here. But what if I took Alex’s step by step winning strategy and applied it with SEO tactics by Brian Dean so that more business owners can win in SEO? 

Yes.

To guarantee your success in SEO and build you a robust SEO strategy that can outrank your competition, let’s sprinkle in the expertise of Brian Dean wherever we can. If you didn’t already know, Brian Dean is an internationally recognised SEO expert and founder of Exploding Topics & Backlinko, a place for next-level SEO training and winning SEO strategies!

WIthout further ado, let’s start by mirroring Alex’s steps and couple it with Brian Dean’s expert SEO tips for winning at Search Engine Optimisation.

Step 1: Start SEO when you are most busy so you stick with it all times

This one is a no brainer when it comes to SEO or anything else you want to win in. If you want to win by outlasting (as Alex teaches), start when you are most busy – aka – today and stick with it till the end. 

Want proof that this is 100% true when it comes to SEO?

A few of my clients who joined Strategic SEO Academy stopped all their SEO work around the halfway point when they got more busy in their business. If they had pulled through till the end of the program and did their part of the work (even at a slower pace), they could have gotten tangible results like many of my more motivated clients.  

It is also the reason why I am closing down my Done With You SEO Program and offering Done For You SEO Agency Services instead. I know that once I start, I will not stop. And the results I produce for my clients are now 100% in my control.

Quick Tip: Start when you are most busy so that you don’t stop.

Step 2: Imagine the least successful version of your website & brainstorm what you will do to lose

This is simple – to build the least successful version of your website for SEO, you need to pick just a handful from each of the 5 steps of SEO. And you can make your website lose on Google in no time!

How to lose at step 1: Learning SEO Fundamentals

• Start SEO efforts without fully understanding the basic fundamentals of SEO. These fundamentals of SEO I teach in my free SEO fundamentals mini course will make or break your SEO efforts. 

How to lose at step 2: SEO Keyword Research

• Skip strategic keyword research or do your SEO keyword research wrongly. In this case, you don’t know which keywords you should be writing content on. 
• Pick the most competitive keywords to write content on from the start.
• Pick keywords that nobody is searching for to write content on. 
• Miss out on highly profitable keywords in your niche. 

How to lose at step 3: SEO Content Creation

• Outsource your website content to someone who does not have experience writing.
• Outsource your website content with poorly done keyword research.
• Come up with mediocre SEO article topics. 
• Write SEO content yourself if you don’t have time or experience to write quality content.
• Outsource your website content to a good writer but give them poor article structures and guidelines to follow.
• Publish content that is too wordy and difficult to read.
• Publish content that is too confusing to understand.
• Publish content with loads of grammatical errors.
• Publish boring content that sounds exactly like your competitor.
• Publish wordy content that only your friends will bother to read.
• Publish insufficient content that lacks information your readers are looking for.
• Publish mediocre content that lacks quality.
• Publish boring content that will put your readers to sleep. 
• Publish content at snail’s pace, maybe around 1 article every 6 months.
• Publish content with little to no relevant and engaging pictures.

How to lose at step 4: Content Optimisation (On Page Optimisation)

• Make your website confusing to navigate.
• Don’t link out to any other websites.
• Add in many outdated & broken links to your content that frustrates readers.
• Don’t include call to actions.
• Upload huge images and useless plugins to slow down your website
• Include irrelevant pop ups and ads that look like spam all around your website.

How to lose at step 5: Link Building (Off Page Optimisation)

• Invest time, effort and resources into backlink building when you already failed somewhere between step 1 to 3.
• Engage Fiverr freelancers to build you 100 “high quality” backlinks at cheap prices.
• Change your website URLs for no logical reason without 301 redirects.
• Pay other spammy, poor quality sites to link to your website.
• Pay SEO agencies to build links from their own generic blogs that were built for building links.
• Fail to attract any quality backlinks from relevant websites consistently.

How to lose in SEO regardless of the step you are in

• Give up midway saying that you don’t have time or that SEO is too difficult for you
• Take the wrong action repeatedly without learning & changing the action you take
• Get impatient and try black hat SEO tactics like private blog networks and link farms
• Try your luck by engaging an average SEO agency you find without fully understanding what you are paying for, what their scope of work will be and whether the return on investment will be worth it for your business

Step 3: Invert what you need to do for you to lose (to win)

If you want to win, Alex Hormozi explains that you simply need to do the opposite of whatever you will need to do to lose.

So flip each SEO step to lose and here is what you need to do to win:

How to win at step 1: Learning SEO Fundamentals

• Start SEO efforts after fully understanding the basic fundamentals of SEO. 
• These fundamentals of SEO I teach in my SEO Made So Shockingly Simple Mini Course can make or break your SEO efforts. 

How to win at step 2: SEO Keyword Research

• Make sure you do your strategic keyword research correctly. Know exactly which keywords you should be writing content on. 
• Consider engaging an SEO expert to check on your keyword research or do your SEO keyword research for you.

How to win at step 3: SEO Content Creation

• Come up with outstanding skyscraper articles based on effective keyword research and competitor research. 
• Outsource your website content to an experienced writer only after strategic content creation planning.
• Give writers clear and detailed guidelines for SEO content. 
• Write SEO content yourself only if you have ample time and expertise in writing.
• Ensure content is readable, easy to understand, free from grammatical errors and unique. 
• Ensure content is of the correct length, neither too wordy nor lacking essential information. 
• In other words, ensure your content is engaging and outstanding. If you need more guidelines for creating outstanding content, read and follow chapter 3 of Brian Dean’s blog on-page SEO guide here. 
• Publish content regularly, at least 1 article a week until a first set of 7 to 12 articles is published. 
• Publish content with relevant and engaging pictures.

How to win at step 4: Content Optimisation (On Page Optimisation)

• Make your website easy to navigate.
• Link out to other relevant, top quality websites.
• Ensure all links are updated. 
• Include call to action buttons where relevant.
• Ensure the website has fast page load times. 
• Avoid irrelevant pop ups and ads that look like spam all around your website.

How to win at step 5: Link Building (Off Page Optimisation)

• Invest time, effort and resources into backlink building only after you are sure that you did steps 1 to 4 well. 
• Engage a SEO expert to check for gaps in your previous steps if you are not sure.
• Use legitimate backlink building strategies such as one of these 15 local link building strategies here. Or engage one of these 9 best link building agencies around the world.

How to win in SEO as a whole

• Don’t give up. SEO is a long game. You need at least 3 months to 1 year after you publish and optimise your content (and begin your link building efforts) to see results. 
• Make sure you are taking the correct, strategic action when it comes to your SEO. Keep learning and adapting your strategy based on your business needs, SEO results and industry. 
• Never engage an agency without understanding the core principles of SEO yourself. Ask the SEO agency the right questions and see if they give you the right answers. 

Step 4: Break down your big SEO steps into basic level baby steps 

Breaking each big SEO task down into basic level baby steps will ensure that you can get through the tasks and make progress in your SEO.

• Example: Break down doing keyword research correctly into:
  • Coming up with a list of keywords in your niche.
  • Checking keyword demand first.
  • Measuring the amount of competition for each keyword.
  • Choosing a mix of profitable and educational keywords to write content on.
• Example: Break down doing coming up with outstanding content into
  • Coming up with winning skyscraper article topics.
  • Creating outstanding articles. 
  • Deciding whether to write or outsource your content.
  • Sending the writer a high quality content brief to begin writing or writing one yourself.

Step 5: Practice these broken down SEO steps over and over

This one needs little elaboration. Doing each SEO step once will not help you win in SEO. You need to practice these SEO steps over and over (correctly) until they become second nature to you. Until you feel very confident at each step. 

To make sure you are doing each SEO step right, consider engaging an SEO expert. You can enquire with me here.

Step 6: Create motivation by comparing yourself to top ranking SEO blogs

Look for top ranking websites in highly competitive niches to benchmark yourself against. Start with the SEO niche – you can benchmark your content against some of Brian Dean’s SEO guides on backlinko.com as shown in the 2 top ranking examples here: 

• The complete guide to Off Page SEO
• How to rank higher on Google in 13 steps

If you cannot see a parallel because of industry differences and best practices, benchmark your content against the top ranking competitor in your industry in your city. 

Sometimes even your competitor’s content in your city is mediocre. In this case, you got to expand your search globally! 

Compare yourself against top ranking websites in your industry (globally) or located somewhere in the USA or UK where English is the first language. Choose sites with the most impressive content and take inspiration from what they are doing right. 

You will set the intention and spark the motivation within to be better than them and you can generate lots of creative ideas on how you can even be better than them. 

Another underrated way you can get to visualise and then create a top ranking version of your website is to speak to your customers and potential customers: Ask them 

• What they like. 
• What info they find is missing.
• What can improve their experience on your website.
• What gives them trust and credibility to engage further with you. 

Note down what they say and test if they can navigate to different pages, blogs, products and services you offer on your website easily. This way, you can picture and create a top ranking version of your website for your target audience searching on Google for you. 

Step 7: Measure your success by whether you completed all of the above SEO steps to win. Google will reward you! 

Instead of obsessing over your Google rankings, obsess over getting step 1 to step 6 above right. 

Keep repeating the steps and improving as you go each time. 

Always seek feedback on what could be better. 

And most importantly, set realistic expectations and be patient.

If you have completed all the steps to win successfully, Google will reward you in time to come. 

Get More SEO Help

If you would like me to help you unlock the next steps to take for your SEO growth, you can enquire with me here.