How Your Business Can Thrive Without SEO & Social Media

Today's post is an answer to a question sent by Paula in this recent post. If you know me, you know that I've never invested time into growing my social media following or improving my social media marketing skills. Plus, a few years ago, I dropped any and all search engine optimization work and now I don't do any of that either, for any of my businesses. If you've ever wondered why that is and how it actually turns into an advantage for my business, here's the answer: [blank_space height='2em'] Here's the only clever social media thing I do (mentioned in the video): WP Sharely.

What "No SEO/Social Media" Looks Like

The amount of effort I invest in SEO and social media isn't exactly zero. It's just very close to zero. I've found a comfortable minimum of investment that takes almost no extra time.

The Extent of My SEO Work:

• I use the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress to make sure my sites have sitemaps.
• Also using the Yoast plugin, I create a good title and description for each post and page.
• I update posts and pages that get a lot of search traffic, every once in a while.
• I make sure that my secondary pages (notifications, confirmation pages etc.) are set to no-index.
• Using Wistia, I create a video sitemap for my video content.

The Extent of My Social Media Work:

• I add a social media optimized image, title and description to (most of) my posts, using this Thrive Themes feature.
• I post my content to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin. I use Hootsuite to do it quickly.
• I use WP Sharely on some strategic pages to drive more social shares.

Some of the Social Media and SEO Work I DON'T Do:

• Build links.
• Keyword research.
• Measuring keyword density or other on-page SEO factors.
• Following and unfollowing people as a Twitter strategy.
• Posting a lot of "viral" and engaging content on Facebook/G+ in an attempt to drive up engagement.
• Writing click bait, social bait or link bait.
• Creating any kind of content that has a purpose other than being infromative and useful or selling my products.

Like I said in the video, I'm not implying that the things I don't do are bad or that no one should do them. It's a matter of priorities and focus. As you can see from the lists above, the SEO and social things I do are those that take up the least amount of time, but still get me the bare minimum of results. Over to you: what's your social and SEO strategy? Do you have other low-investment steps you take or favorite tools to help speed things up? Let us know by leaving a comment!