Stop Mucking About and Just Finish Already

Right, I will try to keep today’s blog post just like me - grumpy and opinionated.

Oh no, sorry, I meant, short and sweet (not so much).

I know my two recent blog posts about how I like to do keyword research threw up a lot of additional questions.

So, I will try to answer some of the more frequently asked questions over a series of blog posts.

But, me being me, you can probably expect one blog post a month.

Stop Striving For Perfection

We’re told to create “Quality Content”.

However, it can be difficult to gauge what is deemed as “quality”.

One person’s quality is another person’s garbage.

For me, it simply means that the actual content of your article provides a complete solution to the query posed in your title.

Whether English is your first language or not, it makes no hide nor hair.

Whether this takes you 600 words, 1,000 words, or 10,000 words doesn’t make one iota of difference.

Basically, as long as your article “does what it says on the tin” you’ve nailed it as far as I’m concerned.

Now, whether you want to admit to it or not, we ALL tend to strive for perfection when writing an article.

We want to make sure it’s just right.

We research, we write, we tweak, we delete, we start over again, and we repeat this process until we are happy with the final outcome.

In fact, there is a tendency to “feel” that the article is not quite right.

So, we agonize over what we should add, what we should remove, how we can make it better, etc.

We then talk ourselves out of publishing.

Take some time out.

Come back, and go through this same process all over again.

My advice, stop striving for perfection.

If the article “answers” the title query, provides sufficient information to satisfy a reader, just publish the damn thing.

If it’s Good Enough For Neil Patel it’s Good Enough For You & Me

I recall reading an article by Neil Patel (and watching the corresponding video) some time last year.

I won’t link to the article or video (I don’t want to get told off by the “Queen of No Fluff”, but as always, she makes a valid point).

We are researchers are we not?

So, if you want to read the article or watch the video, use your research skills.

I’m sure a quick journey over to the land of Google or YouTube will yield the results you’re looking for.

Anyway, Neil produced some stats on his best performing articles.

He had recently deleted over 1,000 articles from his main website.

Plus, he had converted many of his articles into other languages (I bet you’ve never considered doing that, have you?)

But, at the time he had somewhere in the region of around 4,500 articles on his site.

Interestingly, approximately 250 of these articles provided Neil with around 90% of his traffic.

And remember, this is someone who has over 1,000,000 visitors to his site every month.

Plus, this is an expert in SEO.

And yet, 90% of his traffic came from less than 6% of his articles.

This tells a story in itself.

You Don’t Decide What Ranks & What Doesn’t - Google Does

I know that I have spent a couple of days researching, studying, writing, fixing, deleting, rewriting a pillar post.

I produced an awe-inspiring 8,000+ word masterpiece.

I felt like this was my best work yet.

I have also stumbled over the line, somehow produced an incoherent, barely legible, pile of stinking dross in about 45 minutes to the tune of around 1,500 words (yes, I think and type fast).

I’ll give you 3 guesses which article is nowhere to be seen, has barely had more than 3 visitors, and which article is ranked number one and gets nearly 100 visitors a day.

You don’t need me to answer that do you?

Okay, I will.

Absolutely crap article, could’ve been written by a toddler, is the more successful article - by a country mile.

Final Thoughts

So, judging by Neil Patel’s experience, which is actually extremely common.

Most of your articles probably won’t be a home run. So, don’t sweat it.

And looking at my own experience, sometimes what YOU believe to be your best work is ignored by Google.

And what you feel is potentially your worst work, simply terrible, is placed on a pedestal by The Big G.

You can strive for perfection all you like, you can spend hours-and-hours debating whether you should publish an article or not.

However, if the article provides a solution to what you’ve alluded to in your title - you’re good to go.

Obviously, I’m not advocating that you start producing crap and forget about quality altogether.

NO.

I simply mean stop agonizing over whether an article is “good enough” once you’ve written it.

So, my advice, pure and simple - Stop Mucking About and Just Finish Already.

Thank You For Reading

Partha