12 Signs That You Suffer from SEO A.D.D.
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Dev Besu’s “Just Do It Philosophy in Search Marketing” inspired me to figure out what I could do to improve my time management. I sat down and I started planning out what I should get accomplished throughout the rest of the week. I remember writing down the word “Today,” and the next thing I knew I was reading through The Mad Hat and Sugarrae’s awesome rants. After I was done, I tried to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Then it hit me. I realize now that I suffer from SEO A.D.D.
One of the biggest problems with working in the Internet marketing world is trying to focus on one thing. All day I am constantly pulled in different directions. Whether it is Twitter, Facebook, or checking my RSS Feeds, I’ve got serious SEO A.D.D. and I don’t think I’m the only one. You may be suffering from SEO A.D.D. if you have any combination of the following symptoms:
- Your morning routine consists of: reading old Twitter messages, updating Twitter, reading your Facebook stalker feed, updating Facebook status, and then going back to Twitter to see if there are any new updates.
- You spend more than 2 hours in the morning reading RSS feeds, and then you check them every couple of minutes throughout the day.
- By lunchtime you realize you have yet to accomplish any real work.
- You check your subscriber numbers more than once per day.
- You open up your analytics to get a quick visitor count for yesterday, and you end up spending an hour going through every little detail of each visitor.
- You find yourself checking to see how many Sphinns you have for your latest submission 4-5 times an hour.
- You stop everything you’re doing to help a friend index his porn.
- You update Twitter and chat on IM during meetings and on conference calls.
- It’s 3pm and you glance over at your to-do list and the only thing checked off is the nag email you sent out this morning.
- With every new email you get, you instantly stop what you are doing and read what it says. You might start to reply, but definitely won’t finish in one pass.
- You monitor domain auctions and propose a new online business plan to the guy/gal sitting next to you at work every day, even though you own over 20 domains with inactive websites.
- You lie in bed at night and realize you have yet to work on a single client’s account.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hmmmm…. yeah, I think I understand. I have a case of that too. However, what it sounds like this may be is a Social Media Addiction and not so much ADD.
Maybe your next post should be 12 steps to recovery from Social Media Addiction.
Shana
January 16th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Check on all twelve. Lately if I mark one thing off the list per day it’s a victory. How about when it makes you mad if you miss a whole page of twitters…
January 17th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Think I can name at least 5 people that positively have some form of this …..including Shana
It’s 1 AM … Me too? Naaah
January 17th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Haha… great post! In the past, I could have checked some of these, but not these days. I just turn away from B.S. I even wrote a post on my blog how to resist such temptations. I don’t have a FaceBook account and I will make sure that I never will (what’s the point?). I never even visited Twitter. RSS feeds here and there, that’s it.
P.S. Hey enable a “subscribe to comments” option - you almost lost 1 visitor.
P.P.S. Nice design!
January 17th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Thanks for the feedback guys, and my apologies that you suffer from this ADD, too.
@extreme webmaster - There is a comments RSS at the bottom, but I’ll make an effort to get it where people can actually see it. Thanks for the complements!
January 17th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
LOL! What a great post. Can REALLY identify with 1,3,5 and 12.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Wow that is so me its scary. Great article though.
Bud
http://www.budcalabrese.com
January 17th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Really, what’s so difficult to understand? There is a basic human need reflected there. You have an unmet need that is some how satisfied by the twitter/facebook/email/sphinn/stumbleupon distractions. And you are not alone. In fact, it’s a widespread phenomenon. And scratching that itch is a hot new trend. The sites satisfying the need to scratch it are raking in the dough. They are drawing profits away from day jobs and TV and University studies and job searches and activities of daily living… into their own coffers. Hey, YOU need dough, right? There’s the solution right in front of you! Get in on that action! See a need, fill a need! You’ve already got the passion. You’re already skilled in the space. Shave off some of that diverted attention span of the masses for yourself, and get your piece of the pie! All you need is a web site. Which starts with a domain.
So, my advice to you is, just go get a domain name and you’re on the road to success!
January 17th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
@johnandrews Thanks for the words of inspiration! You make a great point, but I also think that is part of my problem. I see so many opportunities to make money online, that I can’t focus on just one of them! I just need to pick something, and stick with it.
I just checked out your blog - great stuff! I’ve got you bookmarked and am looking forward to reading your words of wisdom.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Thanks for mentioning my posting on your blog! I certainly have SEO ADD and several other forms of ADD to boot. But at the end of the day, it boils down to passion for the business. If you eat, sleep and work hard at SEO you’re bound to succeed :). — Dev Basu
January 18th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Oh you are very true but again really it is difficult to keep all in mind but we should follow at least some points.
Thank
January 18th, 2008 at 8:05 am
@Dev Basu - No problem, I thought it was a great post. It has inspired me to get better organized and to try focusing. I think you have the formula right, though, as long as you are passionate about it - you can succeed.
January 18th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
[...] 12 Signs That You Suffer from SEO A.D.D. | Gonzo SEO You may be suffering from SEO A.D.D. if you have any combination of the following symptoms: (tags: SEO A.D.D.) [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Hi everyone, my name is Pete and I’m a social media addict… and I suffer from most of the SEO ADD symptoms as well
I’ve found things getting worse lately when I’ve been staying-up until ridiculous times of the morning just to keep-up with what everyone else is doing on the other side of the world (I’m down here in Australia).
My biggest problem is that I don’t know if all this is necessarily a bad thing - I’ve been seeing some good results from the hard work (if you could consider sitting tapping away at a keyboard ‘hard work’)… So I don’t see there to be an end to this addiction.
Think I just need to buy some shares in a major caffeine company to recoup some return on investment
January 20th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Soooo true … it helps to get stuff done when you’ve a VPN connection that blocks everything except the network/server you’re working on. And thanks for the link
January 20th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I don’t remember having you interview me to help create your list
January 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
@Pete You’re very brave for admitting that in front of so many people. Let’s hear it for Pete, everybody!!
@Sebastian I actually tried doing that with a Firefox plugin. Needless to say, I ended up removing it ASAP.
@Jon Henshaw LOL
January 21st, 2008 at 1:58 am
[...] been covered before - but I just wanted to highlight how a few simple steps have reduced my RSS habit to less than 20 minutes twice a [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 10:45 am
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