3 Lessons SEO’s Can Learn From Asteroid DA14

We all heard about Asteroid DA14 last week, even if you’ve already forgotten the numbers and letters in its name. On February 15, 2013, the asteroid passed Earth at a distance of only about 21,000 miles, which is a lot closer than our moon. We knew it wasn’t going to hit us, but it was still a grim reminder that there are other asteroids out there that could.

So what has Asteroid DA14 got to do with SEO?

Any near miss has potential for plenty of lessons to be learned. I came up with 3 main takeaways for SEO’s based on our planet’s most recent asteroid scare.

1. Avoid Collisions

You may be thinking, what kind of collisions do SEO’s encounter? Well, we virtually collide with big search engines when we don’t follow their rules. Although asteroid DA14’s collision with the Earth could have been catastrophic, a search engine is going to feel little impact when a SEO’s website loses its good ranking. The day continues on for the search engine while the site is left to pick up the pieces of its shattered rankings. So follow Google’s guidelines closely and authenticate your website to strengthen your rankings and avoid collisions.

2. Steer Clear of Too Much Heat

Asteroids can’t handle much heat. One trip too near a sun and they fragment into a million little pieces. SEO’s have to keep clear of black hat SEO in order to avoid the heat of Google’s disapproval. Instead, we have to institute productive systems that generate visits to our sites. A persistent focus on fundamentals of SEO allow us to maintain a frequently visited site without the worry of using untried techniques that might take us too close to the sun. Profit is the ultimate goal of most websites that use SEO, so don’t get so creative in your strategies that you lose hold of basic SEO wisdom.

3. Keep Moving Forward

Although we were all worked up about the passage of DA14, the asteroid wasn’t worried – it just kept moving along its trajectory. Like the asteroid, SEO’s must always be moving forward, looking around the next curve, searching for the next great innovation. In an ever-changing market, the rules of SEO constantly evolve, leading us to endlessly speculate about the coming shifts. We have to keep taking in these changes as they occur so that our sites continue to excel in the rankings and avoid penalties.

What’s your take on asteroid DA14? Can you come up with any other asteroid-related lessons for SEO’s?