Stop the hot & cold approach to SEO

In 2009, long before the popularity of Wim Hof or Andrew Huberman, I was living on a small farm in Northern California with a friend group of wellness maniacs who were heavily into hot and cold therapy.

The basic idea is that you soak first in hot water and then cold to stimulate circulation, lymphatic movement, and God knows what else.

Being a wellness maniac myself, I was totally down to try hot and cold and got pretty into it, especially thanks to the many hot springs around the area that offered easy access to hot and cold pools. (My most beloved hot spring haunts, Harbin, burned to the ground a few years ago in one of Nor Cal’s many out-of-control wildfires but has since been rebuilt and is lovelier than ever.)

But we also made our own hot and cold plunges.

At the time, I lived in a tiny, makeshift cabin with the unheard-of luxury of a bathtub, hot running water, and a tiny wood stove, along with a spring-hinge door that rhythmically tapped open and closed in heavy wind and walls so slapped together that, in the winter, I could look out through the wood slats to see if it had snowed during the night.

We added a 50-gallon Rubbermaid stock tank out front as the cold plunge, and we were in business.

Now, that area of California gets COLD. The outside stock tank would often freeze, and we’d have to break through the ice on top before we got in…this wasn’t hot and room temp. This was hot and cold.

I had one friend, Jameson, who was especially dedicated to the therapy and would come over so we could do hot and cold together. It’s not lost on me that while most 20-somethings were finishing up their graduate degrees or going on dates with their soon-to-be-spouses or even having their first kid or two, I was nakedly running back and forth between my bathtub and a stock tank I bought at the local hardware store.

You know, for fun. 

Now, hot and cold therapy is pretty safe. And we were young and healthy. But Jameson was (and is…we’re still dear friends) extreme.

This is the same friend who eventually convinced me to try hirudotherapy, aka medicinal leeches, and who I met through a mutual interest in the Primal Diet, a raw food version of today’s Paleo craze…different stories for a different day.

Jameson would stay in the hot water until he was sweaty and slightly overheated and then plunge through the ice into the cold and force himself to stay for minutes, an eternity in ice-cold water.

Today, some 15 years and a graduate degree later, I’m still not sure why the shock of very cold after very hot water causes lightheadedness, but it certainly does. Anyone who’s done hot and cold therapy has experienced the post-cold plunge sensation of a heavy head rush and a (usually) false sense of passing out.

These symptoms are greatly reduced by slowing down the hot/cold transition and some measured breathing, but Jameson’s approach was neither slow nor measured.

And so, one day, while getting out of the cold plunge, the usually false sense of passing out became an actuality, and he fainted right through my door, all 6 feet 3 inches of him sprawled across the threshold naked as the day he was born.

He quickly came to, and I was laughing too hard to be scared.

But it was a legitimate issue—he’d gone too far and taken himself out.

And you, my dear reader, may be taking yourself out with a Jamesonesque hot-and-cold approach to SEO.

The problem with hot and cold SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a fantastic strategy to enhance your website so it’s easily found by ideal patients on Google.

And while I’m an avid lover of SEO (thanks to the out-of-this-world outcomes our clients experience with SEO strategies…you can read more about those here and here), I fully admit that SEO has a lot of steps.

Not particularly complicated steps, mind you, but numerous.

This can lead even the most SEO-savvy marketer into a hot and cold relationship with optimizing their site…some weeks, they implement all the steps.

Other weeks, they feel burned out and don’t do anything. 

This back and forth is counterproductive and, most importantly, exhausting, a feeling we want to avoid during the Ironman that is owning a wellness business.

Slow, steady, measured implementation is the way to go. Don’t take yourself out by overdoing it.

By and large, applying SEO doesn’t demand a high-tech skill set, but there are many steps to optimize a site…searching for appropriate keyword phrases, link building, content writing, enhancing site speed, matching searcher intent, etc., etc., etc….not to mention what to do with potential patients once they find you!

But the reality is that unless you have a marketing team, it will take time and patience to both learn and implement these steps. It simply can’t happen quickly without mania-level burnout or missteps that might cost you more in the long run.

Balance is the best SEO solution

As you sit down to work on your marketing, keep Jameson in mind.

Too much too fast is likely to take you out.

Baby steps are not only ok, they’re encouraged.

Can’t find the perfect keyword? Don’t stress. Site still loading slower than you’d like? Read a help article and do what you can. Wish you could publish 100 blogs in one day. News flash: You’re not Healthline with a staff of 40 blog writers.

Slowly optimizing your site works. Quickly pushing yourself to be perfect knocks you out….and leaves you with a site that’s still invisible to Google searchers who need your help.

Need help with SEO?

Click here to sign up for our free (live!) SEO Marketing Masterclass where you’ll learn how our top tips for optimizing your site in a way that doesn’t make you crazy. And be sure to check out our 6-step SEO Marketing Guide made just for wellness pros.