Jonathan Leger – SEO And Internet Marketing Blog Internet Marketing Blog

Check the weather, but trust the birds.

I've got four dogs, and every morning I go outside to put the dogs into the yard, get them their water, etc. For the past few months (as is pretty typical this time of year in the Dallas area) it's often overcast and breezy. Sometimes the weather looks downright ominous.

For a while I would always check the weather at Weather.com to decide whether or not it was going to rain. If the probability was too high, I would keep the dogs inside. It was often the case, though, that it wouldn't rain even if Weather.com said it probably would.

At one point I made the correlation that when the birds were singing outside, chirping away and having a good ol' time in bird-like fashion, that it definitely would not rain -- no matter how bad it looked outside. However, if the birds were silent and the clouds looked heavy, it almost always did rain.

I still check Weather.com when it looks ominous, but it's the birds' opinions that I really trust.

The point of my story is that just because somebody claims to be an authority on a thing doesn't mean you shouldn't trust the knowledge you've personally acquired over the years. The web is chock full of self-proclaimed "gurus" on every imaginable subject (especially Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization!), and some of those guys do know a thing or two, but many are only as accurate as Weather.com (sorry Weather guys). They've got a few of the variables right, and won't always lead you astray, but if you base all of your actions on their information alone, you're probably missing out on a lot of success.

I'm writing this now because there are lots of "courses" out there that promise to teach you a step-by-step method for making money online or ranking in the search engines. I got a barrage of emails this morning from some marketers I follow about yet another "magic button" system that does all of the work for you while you sip martinis and eat bon-bons. Sorry if that last sentence wasn't clear, my eyes were rolling around in a reflexive response as I typed it.

I'm not saying there's nothing to be learned from some of these courses. There usually are some kernels of truth in them. The point in this blog post is that you should not take such information as absolute, unchangeable fact. What works today sometimes won't work next year (if it lasts that long).

So if in your personal experience you've found something else to be true, even if it completely contradicts what I or anyone else says, if it's working stick with it. Don't question the birds you've come to trust just because Weather.com says it's going to rain.

Keep up with what successful marketers and SEOs are saying, because it can often give new insights or add an angle to your own knowledge that you hadn't thought of, but if they claim that what you're doing won't last and yet it's been working for many months or even years -- who are you going to believe, them or your own eyes?

End the end, it boils down to this: check the weather, but trust the birds.