Every year, you’re inundated with new search engine optimization (SEO) tactics, strategies and controversial experiments. From “SEO Made Simple” to “SEO Demystified”, you may have read a lot of SEO guides in order to understand SEO and implement strategies to grow your blog. However, none of them have helped you achieve your goal. This is because fundamentally, SEO is not about implementing strategies and waiting for them to work.

SEO is taking action to make things work on your own.

As beginners, it’s not about creating the best content and winning the game. It’s understanding what you actually need to do and taking action based on these targets. In this guide, you learn how SEO has evolved and how you can evolve too, by taking actions that are actually necessary for your success.

Scale Your Blog SEO: What Does It Mean?

Long story short: it means effective usage of time. Scaling an online business refers to growing exponentially with the investment of the least possible effort while saving your real-world asset called time.

Let’s face it: 99 percent of bloggers fail in this new digital era where Google truly dominates the real world. What is the real reason behind this?  One and only reason – SEO.

Don’t these bloggers do SEO? They do but they fail, each time. The cycle will only end when new bloggers figure out how to build: build experience, build true leverage and build online visibility.  In the current situation, more people are online than ever, while 99 percent of businesses are shifting online and growing at rocket speed. Competition is harder than ever before and you absolutely have no time to sit, waste time and grow gradually.

It’s time to fuel your engine, start driving and up your speed in the SEO game to save the most of your time and make full use of the least of your time.

The Problem With Blog SEO

We all know that we need to optimize our blog for search engines. It has a clear-cut definition: Blog SEO is the act of optimizing your blog for search engines in order to get higher blog rankings. Every individual blogger wants higher rankings on the SERPs, to which SEO is essential. I’m sure you’ve come across tons of blog SEO guides talking about keyword research, on-page optimization, link-building and crafting the best blog content.

These guides usually have generic basic SEO knowledge and miss one of the most important factors that I believe we should use in every aspect of life: logic. 

And, the thing is – these so-called guides are not SEO fundamentals. They’re SEO basics. Yes, there’s a difference.  It goes like this: you learn the basics as fundamentals, start executing without proper understanding of actual fundamentals and then you fail. The very next day, you receive another mail from your mentor who is talking about a new hack, new technique and quick-traffic ideas to grow faster. And you’re exhausted. Because none of it works. Trust me, it is never going to work unless you’ve got a proper logical grip on the fundamental concept you’re trying to execute.

Simply, when you fail to rank, your so-called mentor shifts your viewpoint from ranking on Google to getting initial traffic.

Then, it goes like this:

• How to write quality blog posts that rank on Google?
• How to get your first 1,000 visitors?
• How to use Pinterest/social media to boost your traffic?
• How to use Quora to gain millions of traffic?
• And a lot of same-category false hopes

And again, none of it works. Right now, you don’t need traffic. You need a position on Google. That’s it. Organic traffic coming from Google is always the highest-quality traffic. And remember, a truly successful blog needs quality blog traffic consisting of real-time humans that matter and not just simply traffic. The only way to achieve this is to leverage true SEO fundamentals with a logical approach that gives you the SERPs position and traffic you need with the time that you have.

Redefining SEO Fundamentals: Stepping Up and Scaling Your Blog SEO in 2021

In 2021, most of the SEO guides you’ll find are either talking about basic to advanced keyword research that explains how to find competitive and high-volume keywords. They also talk about how to write SEO-optimized content that provides value to the readers to rank on Google and after that, a list of ways to promote your latest content to get initial traffic, which probably gets you less to no traffic.

It’s time to redefine this process. It has never worked nor will ever work. It’s time to leave behind this kind of old-fashioned advice and up your game. Blog SEO isn’t about getting initial traffic. It is about ranking that results in long-term passive traffic.

I will take the basic things that you’ve learned over the years and will add an actionable layer of true SEO fundamentals.

1. Content Psychology

You cannot simply do keyword research to get some content ideas and start writing new, to-be-published blog content. You cannot afford to waste time. Why does your content exist in your blog? What is the exact reason behind creating that great article on that targeted keyword? Maybe you want more organic traffic? Maybe you want to let your existing traffic engage with your content? Maybe you want to monetize that traffic?

Does blindly writing content that has no future help you grow your blog? No. We’re told to do keyword research while looking at the vanity metrics, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you always need to create content based on low competition and high-volume keywords.

These kinds of keywords usually force us to create content with no end goals. We just spend hours finding out these kinds of keywords and then we start creating visionless content with the hope that it will get ranked.

Now, do you think that you’re alone in finding keywords based on vanity metrics and trying to get ranked? Not at all. Thousands of people are doing the same thing and the tactic has also failed for them.  You can surely rank for a lot of keywords based on vanity metrics, but in reality, a lot of real-time hidden competition is there.

That is why content psychology matters. You can rank for a keyword-based on its metrics shown on your preferred SEO tool, but that does not mean you simply start working on it. You need to give a psychological approach to your research.

Mistakes to avoid: Not all keywords are the same. Stop truly targeting keywords based on vanity metrics and stop wasting time blindly creating great articles on them.

2. Google’s Motivation

Google has reshaped this world over the past few decades and has streamlined every task, every interaction and every move we make online.

It works this way:

• Some query pops up in people’s heads
• They search it on Google
• Instantly receive solutions to their query

In the end, Google’s ultimate motivation is to make users’ lives easier than ever and give them the exact information that they want at that moment. And this directly ties to the next element of SEO fundamentals.

3. Search Behavior

You need to leverage how real human beings behave in the search engine. Why are you searching this on Google? What circumstances in your life have led you to search this on Google? Search behavior matters and you need to align it with Google’s motivation to get higher rankings.

There are two types of search behavior:

Active Search Presence: People who are looking for instant solutions to their queries are identified as people with active search presence.

Passive Search Presence: People who are absolute searchers who passionately seek out information are identified as people with passive search presence.

It’s that simple. And it should directly influence your content strategy.

4. Blog SEO Is Timing

Google ultimately wants to serve these search behaviors by giving them the most useful information as fast as possible and as easy as possible. And the best thing? You can target active readers by writing passive content and convert them into passive readers. It is all about writing content that converts. A lot of experts will tell you to write high-quality content with lots of valuable information to win the game and drive your rankings on Google. But in reality, SEO isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon and you need to take each step with proper planning that’s aligned with your end goals.

That means you don’t need to give your 100 percent in the beginning. You need to go steadily and use your energy at the right time in the right place. Instead of writing and publishing stellar content in your earliest days, dive deep into keyword research and search behavior. After all, keyword research is directly tied to a user’s search behavior.

Mistake to avoid: Stop blindly wasting time on creating great articles. Time is your most valuable asset and you need to allot it accordingly.

5. SERPs Is a Numbers Game

The most horrible SEO advice I’ve ever received is to regularly publish new quality blog content.

Then this happens:

1. How to never run out of blog post ideas?
2. 99+ best blog ideas to create in 2021?
3. How to consistently write quality blog posts in less time?
4. The list goes on…

 It just won’t work. They tell you to publish regular SEO-optimized blog content consistently and over time, it will start ranking.

They tell you to produce and publish, to produce and publish, and you will get your momentum to get ranked on Google within a year. But, the truth is, simply publishing three or five articles in a week and sticking to this schedule won’t work in 2021. They say you need to invest a lot of time to get ranked, at least a year, due to tough competition. And you believe it. You’ll publish and promote in your small network of bloggers. Or maybe you do outreach, where the reply rate is truly 0 percent, and start writing another new article. You’ll repeat this cycle for a year or more with the hope of realistic growth and some realistic reply rates giving you back some links.

While consistency may fulfill your hope (of getting some backlinks that can accelerate your initial momentum). But in reality, it just won’t happen. That is why 99 percent of bloggers are failing. 

Having consistently great content isn’t enough. It’s not about how many quality articles your blog has. It is about how many of your articles are ranking on Google.