One of the most frustrating parts of working in search engine optimization is the time it takes for your efforts to bare fruit. In fact, many of my ecommece buddies have given up on their home-grown efforts, and hired an SEO thinking that it would speed up the process. While there is real value in hiring a professional SEO, this is simply out of reach for many smaller merchants.

As you’ll read throughout this blog and many other blogs there is a countless number of ways to improve your search rankings, and improve your website too. Sometimes, the number of things you should be doing get in the way of growing your business! For example, when I first opened my furniture website I spent countless night-time hours researching different website tips, and studying my own SEO practices. What I lost sight of is that my website needed to grow and improve. I was so busy with learning and researching, I didn’t work on adding new products, writing more product descriptions, improving the images on the site, working on the navigation of the site… all the things a site visitor looks for!

What I slowly came to realize was that there were too many things that need my attention, and not enough hours… what a cliché, huh? Anyway, I decided to create two lists… One list was “Things To Improve Website” and “Search Marketing”. I created goals for myself, so that I could get a little of everything done each night, and slowly grow all aspects of my business.

For example, the “Things to Improve Website” list included all the things I mentioned above. I would pick one thing to work on during the week from that list. Then I would take one thing from the “Search Marketing” list and work on that too. By setting small benchmarks each week, I was able to organize and balance the work I was doing on my website.

Here’s what a typical week looked like….

MONDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Send out 10 emails requesting a link exchange.

TUESDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Improve meta tags on category pages.

WEDNESDAY: Improve images for 5 products. Send out 10 emails requesting a link exchange.

THURSDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Check Alt-Image tags, submit site to 3 new directories.

FRIDAY: No working tonight, my eyes are burning and my wife is pissed.

SATURDAY: Check rankings on main keywords, see if Redbox has any new movies out

SUNDAY: (See Friday)

I would highly recommend writing a small schedule for yourself for a week, and see if that helps you achieve more. This is especially beneficial for the small merchants that slave away at a 9-5 during the day.

Good luck! Please leave comments highlighting your weekly tasks so others can see.