Seth Godin, one of my marketing heroes, wrote a book called “The Dip” which offers some wonderful insights into the question of when to quit and when to stick with any given endeavor. One of his premises is that you should immediately quit something and move on unless you have the chance to become the “best in the world” at that thing.

Of course, this is a heavy statement for most people at first take, since only a select few of we humans are truly the best in the world at any given thing. But, Godin goes on to elaborate: his definition of the “world” does not really mean the entire planet – or industry in which you compete, as the case may be. For him, the “world” means the sphere of influence in which we have chosen to operate. So, if you sell cheeseburgers in Milwaukee and they are pretty darn good burgers relative to those of your competitors, you may well be in the running to have the best cheeseburgers in the world.

With his assertion, Godin brings to light a powerful concept which you can turn into a reality for yourself with through good SEO. In the world of the Internet, you are at the top of your game – the “best in the world” – when you can get people to find your website through achieving top search rankings. If you come up at the top of Yahoo! or Google for a keyword that is relevant to your industry, product or service, you are in fact  “the best in the world.” Congratulations!

We are told in “The Dip” to stick it out through the hard times when it seems that we will never become “best in the world” – provided that we have set realistic goals for ourselves. In SEO-speak, this thinking translates to the following: choose keywords for which to optimize your site for which you have a reasonable chance of actually reaching a number one (or at least page one) ranking. If you have chosen well, then don’t quit until you win.

However, if you never took the time to do the proper analysis as to which keywords to choose to optimize your website and are now frustrated at your lack of SEO progress after much labor and many hours spent, you likely chose poorly. In that case, you should quit now – right now. Then, start over by: doing the work (the analysis), choosing the right keywords, and continue driving hard until you appear on the first page. That’s how to be “the best in the world.”