No, not Frodo. His will shredded like wet toilet paper. Gollum took the lava bath, destroyed the ring, and saved everyone from a 36" Dark Lord. Does he get any credit? Nooooooo. Nine-fingered Frodo is the hero. The ladies all swoon at Legolas and Aragorn. But not poor Gollum.
Internet marketers, and SEOs in particular, are a lot like Gollum: We're shunned. We don't get much sunlight. Our diet is awful. And we never get the credit for business success.
It's our fault. We're good at building rankings and building traffic. But we're terrible at demonstrating the value of our work. So we fling ourselves into the lava. Every single time.
60. “Our site had a serious duplication
issue last month. That meant more
indexed pages, but poorer rankings.
As a result, sales fell 1%. Next
action: Fix the duplication issues.
Potentially dump guilty parties into
Mt. Doom.”
61. “The last blog post we did was
featured on Overlord Weekly! We
gained 25 inlinking domains. That
hasn't kicked up the rankings yet, but
it will. Next action: Figure out why that
particular post attracted so much
attention and adjust our strategy. Also,
let folks know by publicly thanking
Overlord.”
Who really saved middle earth? No, not some pretty-boy hobbit.
Gollum did! He took the hot lava swan dive, right after Frodo gave in. Without him, everyone ends up worshipping a 3-foot-tall Dark Lord. Embarrassing.
We SEOs are a lot like Gollum.
Stuck in the dark.
We’re shunned and avoided.
Our diet sucks.
And we never get the damned credit for anything.
None of my clients wanted to be compared with ravening hordes of goblins and uruk, for some reason. So, I'm going to use a fake company: — Nazgul Bicycle Shop — as an example throughout this post. Nazgul is the world's largest bicycle shop chain. We do 10% of our business online, and the rest off.We're best known for our chainrings. There are 9 of them. Plus one forged in darkness... Never mind.
The report card should show the actions taken, the quality of those actions, and the result.