A cycling friend, Beverley McInnis, is someone I now call a “Sister in Sickness,” one who is not afraid of pain, of working hard to accomplish what it takes to be a competitive athlete. After a session she conjured up and deemed “Twisted Hill Repeats,” Bev said the following as encouragement to work through the resulting pain:

“Just remember … pain is growth.”

Reaching the Top of Onyx Summit

I internally thanked her for the twisted hill repeat workout and the reminder after cycling up to Onyx Summit at 8,443 feet near Big Bear Lake this week. We climbed over 4,000 (correction) 6,000 feet in 62 miles. It was’t an excruciating workout, but given cold winds, it did require some hard work – the pain part. Actually, it was quite fun and rewarding – the growth part.

Pain is growth. Is that the formula for reaching the top?

Putting in time on the bike – hill repeats one day, long miles another – prepared my husband and me for such high altitude climbs in thin air. Our preparation and performance (pain and gain) are minuscule compared to that of the racers in the Amgen Tour of California, a recent 8-day stage race that brought professional cyclists from all over the world to test their strength and vigor over 804 miles.

Watching the pros work through the pain as they finished stage 6 in Big Bear after 135 miles and 12,000 feet of climbing was a huge motivation for me as an amateur cyclist and as a search marketer.

Bike racers will tell you they train themselves to work through the pain.

No Pain. No Gain.

This axiom relates to more than cycling and getting stronger on the bike. “No pain. No Gain.” aptly explains the multiple hours of training and the disciplined execution of skill required to:

• Win races amidst the top contenders in professional cycling;
• Reach page 1 of competitive search engine results (SERPs).

Those who win in SEO know a podium performance doesn’t happen overnight. Workouts include writing copy, cleaning up website errors, monitoring analytics, staying ahead of the competition, acquiring natural links and more. SEO requires “Twisted Hill Repeats.”

There are those, however, who want to bypass the hard work and buy links (like taking EPO) to catapult their performance. If you rely on paid links, you’ll end up like Floyd Landis and lose the equivalent of the Tour de France yellow jersey.

Long hours plus non-stop effort is the formula for reaching the top naturally in the sport of search engine optimization (SEO).

Peter Sagan gives it all for the win at Big Bear Lake

Websites that reach Top 10 of the SERPs for their target keywords, are race winners. They have put in a lot time, (long miles) working on the building blocks of SEO. Blog posts one day, long hours building relationships and links another, prepares them for climbing into online visibility.

Winners are willing to work through the pain, get down in the drops and give it all they have to be #1 across the finish line.

Winning Requires a Training Plan

A training plan is essential to winning if you’re racing against high-end athletes or in a competitive market niche.

Amazingly, I’ve heard the following too often from Web agencies who don’t fully understand that SEO must be part of a long-term integrated marketing plan:

Agencies with this approach don’t understand how much SEO is like cycling. Making it to the podium against a competitive field takes considerable planning and time – putting in base miles.

Competitive cyclists spend much of their racing career adhering to a training plan. It’s essential.

• Most have a coach who guides them and holds them accountable, providing feedback and structure.
• A coach’s training plan is a critical component to success.
• The coach monitors the athlete’s performance while keeping a keen eye on the other racers, monitoring their training as well.

Why would going for the win in SEO be any different?

Winners in the SERPs need either an in-house SEO or an SEO coach, someone who has raced before and knows how to create an appropriate roadmap based off their goals, a consultant and confidant who is monitoring the competition along the way.

Crashing & Wanting to Quit

Dominique Rollin Crashes, Gets Back Up with Attitude

Race hard and give it all you got, and you may crash. Winners get back up and don’t quit. They persevere.

Bike racers and website / business owners will, inevitably, suffer from setbacks and crashes.

• Some will quit.
• Some will win or be part of a winning team.
• Others will change direction.
• Others will move to new teams.
• Winners will check in with their coaches and stay on their training plan.

Website owners competing to reach the top of online visibility have, potentially, more to lose if they quit. Many may crash due to Google algorithm changes. As Donna Fontenot noted in a post talking about the challenges faced by search geeks:

“There are still nose-to-the-grindstone, focused people willing to at least try to discover answers to ranking changes within the convoluted Google SERPs.”

The sport of SEO requires focus and nose-to-the-grindstone. Those who prefer to shoot from the hip in their marketing efforts won’t end up on top.

The formula for reaching the top is simple:

You have to want it (badly), stick to a training plan, work through the pain, and don’t quit!

Just remember … pain is growth!

Thoughts about Optimizing Life: Dana Lookadoo

Formula for Reaching the Top – Pain is Growth

Cycling and SEO have many things in common. They are both competitive sports requiring strategic discipline and perseverance. The athletes are cyclists and SEO consultants. The adrenaline rush of cycling and SEO spurs these athletes to strive for top-place finishes. Experience and speed wins in cycling and in SEO – when it comes to being #1 across the finish line and in the search engine results (SERPs).

Fabian Cancellara is #1

Fabian Cancellara, a pro cyclist, is a trending topic as of April 11, 2010. He  won Paris-Roubeax, one of the toughest pro cycling races, aka “Queen of the Classics.”

Fabian Cancellera is a Trending Topic

Why? He’s #1 in the minds of cycling fans and sponsors who are tweeting about him on Twitter. Google determined the query “Fabian Cancellara” deserved real-time search results as shown above.

It’s unlikely that Fabian is aware that he prompted real time search in Google SERPs. A quick look at FabianCancellara.com indicates he or his website developer don’t know much about SEO. He does, however, know what it takes to be #1 in the highly competitive sport of cycling.

Fabian Canellara won Paris-Roubaix this weekend, riding away from the competition. His victory follows his winning the Tour of Flanders the previous weekend. These “Classics” are known as two of the toughest bike races. Both are riddled with sections of cobblestones for approximately 260 kilometers.

Fabian Cancellera Wins Paris Roubaix

How Fabian won this cobblestone trophy is one of the reasons he’s trending, why he’s a winner.

He had his eye on his key competitor, Tom Boonen, and took advantage of a lapse of attention to ride away and crush the field. He rode solo for 48 kilometers. No one was able to catch him.

Experience Wins

Strategic thinking often comes with age and experience. There is no replacement for “time in the saddle” – a term representing hours on the bike. There is no substitute for having ridden various types of terrain and having worked on various types of websites and marketing campaigns.

One must experience multiple conditions and situations to instinctively know how to outwit the competition – on the bike and in the SERPs.

In his post-race interview after winning the Tour of Flanders, Fabian said, he learned from the mistakes he made in other races. His experience helped him win.

Experience is also key in SEO, to know how to implement various tactics, especially in highly competitive markets.

Let’s look at one more parallel between cycling and SEO – speed.

Speed Matters

Bike racing, when you break it down, is about getting yourself to the line in the shortest possible time. Speed matters.

Paris-Roubaix Results - Speed Matters

Fabian won by two minutes over Thor Hushovd in Paris-Roubaix. Other races may be won by only seconds, e.g. Greg Lemond won the Tour de France by 8 seconds in 1989.

It takes speed to win.

Fabian Cancellara rode away from Tom Boonen in the Tour of Flanders. Both were race favorites.  Tom Boonen, in pursuit, was going 55 kph, a ferocious place to try to catch his rival. What could he do? Cancellara was in better shape. Simple put – Fabian was faster.

Reduce Weight

Cyclists go to great lengths to reduce weight. Toward the end of the Tour of Flanders, Cancellara threw out a gel pack and all his food in order to lighten his load. Why? He had a 1-minute gap on Tom Boonen.

He later said he had,

“… a lot of things on his mind, all those small details. You never know what is going to happen and … you need to go as fast as you can to the end.”

Small details.  How does this apply to SEO?

Website Speed Matters

Speed matters for SEO as well. On April 9, 2010, Google announced, officially, that website speed is a factor in search rankings.

How much does speed matter? If you are closely match to your competitors, you will want to do everything possible to lighten the load, throwing out anything extraneous that could slow you down.

Do minor adjustments to make your site lighter and faster matter?

Speed wins if your competitor is almost as fast as you, and you are both vying for first place!

Audience First

Fabian Cancellera Holds Angel

A real winner thinks about audience first.

Cancellara waved his tiny golden angel trinket to the television camera before crossing the line in the Tour of Flanders.

He held out the same angel as he went around the track at the finish of the Paris-Roubeax.

Why would he carry the extra weight of the angel if he was thinking about small details and throwing out gel packs?

Fabian had his primary audience in mind – his wife and daughter.

Always keep your focus in cycling and in SEO.  Remember, audience first!

SEOs can learn a lot by studying winners like Fabian Cancellara. He shows us that experience and speed wins.

What else can SEOs learn from cycling? Share your thoughts. Your insights may be part of an upcoming series.

Thoughts about Optimizing Life: Dana Lookadoo

Experience & Speed Wins in Cycling & SEO

Adrenaline Rush - Cyclist Heart Rate flickr photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15257553@N05/2110134576/

Cycling (the discipline of riding one’s bicycle enough to consider the sport a habit) and SEO (the process of optimizing one’s online presence for search engines and people) have many parallels. Both “sports,” by nature, include:

• Discipline to be consistent, focused on one’s goals;
• Awareness of one’s surroundings, what others are doing, how they are doing it;
• Technical Skills to know what to do, what tools and equipment to use, when to perform;
• Riding solo during times of pin-point focus;
• Socializing with like-minded people to build relationships, to share, help (and link) to each other;
• Competitive drive to push hard;
• Adrenaline!!!

Cycling and SEO can each produce an adrenaline rush during times of intensity. Such were my thoughts after a couple recent stints of intense SEO focus followed by a high-intensity workout on my fixed-gear bike.

I won’t explore the parallels of discipline, awareness, and technical skill. However, I will explore the following commonalities …

Riding Solo

Intense focus requires an SEO consultant and an avid cyclist to ride solo, at times, with little socializing.

Years ago, my cycling coach gave me a piece of valuable advice. He said,

“If you want to be a competitive racer and win, you have to like riding by yourself. Your friends will not be on your training plan.”

How true! As an only child, I grew up entertaining myself, so I easily learned to embrace riding solo when needed on various training days. The tradeoff:

I had to learn to say “no” to group rides and hanging out with friends or chatting along the bike trail when it was necessary to “go it alone” for long-term gain.

Dana Lookadoo learned to train "Riding Solo"

SEO also requires time of research, analysis and focus when one is working alone with spreadsheets, keywords and search engines. Not only does this require a high work ethic, but there may be little time for socializing. SEO, at times, can feel like riding solo!

I’ve experienced this lately but realize it’s temporary and sometimes necessary. The tradoff:

Personal emails may go unanswered, forum posts unread, fewer Twitter and Facebook updates.

Riding solo can be a little painful yet a necessary discipline at times. How does that saying go?

No pain, no gain!

Socializing

Cycling and SEO also require times of socializing. As a “herd animal,” I thrive on engaging with other people, both online, offline and on-the-bike (and so do many of you)!

• There are times when a cyclist cannot get the intensity needed to be competitive unless he or she rides in a group.
• Deep friendships can result as well by sharing long rides with friends.
• Cycling is also a great way to network and meet other professionals. (Dare I say it’s more bonding than playing golf?)
• Social media engagement is key for building SEO-related relationships and friendships, including increasing one’s visibility.
• Engaging in relationships on Twitter, Facebook, forums and other sites builds awareness, knowledge, and opportunities for building links. Twitter is more than an online water cooler and now a key way SEOs keep abreast of the latest findings in search.

There is a time to ride solo and a time to socialize …

Competition

Few parallels need to be drawn between the competitive nature of cycling and SEO. Racers and website owners work hard to place in the top 10. A podium finish in the top 3 is penultimate!

Most cyclists and SEO consultants will participate in activities that are competitive even if one is not racing or focusing on top SERP placement. I’ll share two competitive situations this past week:

1. A guy passed me on my recent high-intensity, solo bike ride. He passed me! This is not always a big deal, but the adrenaline was pumping. I sized up his muscles, his riding style, pace, and his bike. He was bigger, looked stronger and had a nice wheels. I figured I could use my experience and momentum to pass him and pick up the pace. I caught his wheel, got into a solid groove and rode by. Shortly after, he passed me again. I recovered, caught my breath and passed him again …
2. During my recent highly-intensity SEO stints, I sized up the other websites who were ahead of us in the search results, analyzed their strength, their messaging and their authority to determine if we could pass them. I spent hours determining what keywords and marketing copy would work best to outperform and beat them in the search results. We shall pass them …

Passing the Competition

Adrenaline Rush

Ahhh … the adrenaline rush from intense focus!

Ahhh … the competitive nature of cycling and SEO!

Hard work can be healthy and often has benefits that outlast the chemical rush.

My recent bike ride (race) was extremely intense. My legs burned with lactic acid. Adrenaline rushed through my system, especially as I beat the guy to the top of the hill. After coming down the other side, we finally spoke. He said,

“Good ride. I didn’t realize I was going to race!”

I replied, huffing and puffing,

“Thanks! I’m on a fixed-gear. I have to use momentum. You were a good carrot!“

A hard workout on the bike will produce more than adrenaline rush. You will gain stronger muscles, enabling you to perform better and prepare for podium finishes.

Adrenaline Rush of a 1st Place Podium Finish

A highly-focused SEO initiative can produce the same longer-term results. You produce focused-pages of quality content that gain strength and momentum. Continued effort will improve ranking, conversion and overall site authority. Your site will perform better, and you’ll have the ability be top 10. Plan and work it for the long-term gain. Aim for the podium, to be #1!

The intensity can be painful, but the adrenaline rush of passing the competition can’t be beat!

Are you are a cyclist or an SEO consultant? If so, then you know the adrenaline rush. You also know the competition is your carrot!

Thoughts about Optimizing Life: Dana Lookadoo

Adrenaline Rush of Cycling & SEO