The Golden Hat

There are two things in my life that I am particularly passionate about right now.

Endurance Running and Search Engine Optimization

Along the way I’ve come to realize that the two interests, though at first unrelated, have similarities so striking that I now see them as inseparable. I doubt that I can become exceptional at one if I don’t also have the other. I can explain it best with a thought provoking example. It’s the classic scenario of an engineer turning to nature for inspiration and innovation.

I remember once reading about a mechanical engineer who took a vacation to the Far East. During his trip he was hiking up a mountain side and nearly took a thump to the head as a passing owl blazed by his head in a defensive gesture suggesting that the hiker was stomping through his territory. What interested and inspired the engineer though wasn’t that fact that he evaded certain injury, but that he didn’t hear the owl coming. He wondered how the owl was able to swoop down on him undetected and without a sound yet at such speed.

The engineer’s curiosity eventually led him to read and learn about the design of the owl’s feathers and their delicately frayed tips. It was through his experience and observation that he came to understand Nature’s awesome design. The engineer then went on to develop cooler and quieter running fans for PC’s by integrating design elements that mimicked those of the owl’s feathers; solving a computer hardware issue that had long gone unresolved.

I’m not saying that I’ve made such a profound observation. However, I’ve seen how life’s dealing of unrelated events can come full circle and result in brilliant harmony to the observant.

So how are my two passions similar? What does endurance running have to do with SEO? It turns out a lot!!! Here is a quick list with some examples:

1. Running marathons requires commitment to training and gradual improvement in overall endurance to realize a long term goal. Anyone that knows SEO also knows that overnight results just don’t happen. To realize long-term, sustainable organic growth an SEO campaign must consistently optimize and improve several components both on-site and off-site over several weeks and months (or years!). The life cycle to optimize a site is a long one. To endure a 26.2 mile running race requires the same commitment.
2. Marathon training requires the testing and calibration of different techniques, especially if you want to make substantial improvements over time. Sure, anyone can “optimize” their website by improving the meta title and meta description, building a few external links, and adding fresh content on a regular basis. Although you’ll likely see results they probably won’t be enough to consistently place you among the top 3 pages of the SERPs. If you want to break into the top positions then you MUST do more. You must turn to technical issues effecting site crawlability and rankings. Look at duplicate content issues, utilize the proper robots.txt protocol for your site, clean up broken pages and pass link value with 301 redirects, etc.. The same applies with marathon running. If you want to break into the top percentile of runners you MUST incorporate speed training on a weekly basis, do hill work (uggghhh it’s terrible, but worth it!), rehab injuries immediately, and stretch and ice on a regular basis. You can’t just add content and call it a day, much like I can run the same route at the same speed each day and expect to win.
3. Marathoner’s are a bit messed up in the head. Yeah, that’s right. There’s something weird going on in my noggin. What do I mean? Well, just think about waking up at 5am on a Sunday morning to go run 26.2 miles. Get it? It’s a strange addiction to personal challenges and the willingness to die for a $5 medal at the finish line. That’s not an exaggeration. At every race I’ve been in the ambulance crew has always been busy. All of the passionate SEO’ers that I’ve met have a similar mentality. At odd hours of the night and on weekends they work through a challenging environment to obtain a goal. They know that they must take several steps to get there. They also know they could screw up along the way and not reach their goal. But they take that risk and accept the consequences and go for it. I don’t win any money for finishing a race. I do however get extreme satisfaction. The same goes for my SEO work. I usually don’t have anything tangible to walk away with. Just a self-congratulating “job well done!”

I’ll be writing plenty more about this topic and I hope that SEO’ers and marathon runners alike decide to follow. For the time being though I want you to think about what you’re passionate about and consideration the interrelated nature of them. How does one inspire the other?

My blogging is done for the day. Time to go lace up the shoes

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