17 Day Diet and SEO: Surprisingly Similar

Radical results.

That’s the 17 Day Diet promise.

“Dr. Phil,” “The Doctors” and “Good Morning America” seem to have bought in.

The plan has four food cycles of 17 days each. It also recommends walking 17 minutes a day and other normal activities that are somehow enhanced with the number 17.

But what’s with the 17 stuff?

The diet’s creator, Dr. Michael Moreno, claims changing the routine every 17 days prevents the body from getting used to the diet and avoids the dreaded dieter’s plateau.

Here’s our favorite quote from the good doctor.

“There’s scientific evidence that has been researched,” Moreno said.

Really? As opposed to evidence that has not been researched?

We digress.

When you look at the diet more closely, you can see it’s really just a numbers game.

There is a shock and awe phase that pushes you to lose 10 to 15 pounds in the first 17 days by eating just 1,200 calories a day.

That’s called starvation as most people burn more calories than that just by sitting on their asses.

Will you lose weight short term? Of course you will. But you’re also actually slowing down you metabolism, making future weight loss even more difficult.

Moreno admits much of the weight lost in the first cycle is water weight. Cycle 2 of the diet adds more calories and exercise and promises to help you drop another five to six pounds. Cycle 3 adds more healthy food choices and cycle 4 is a maintenance program to help you keep off the weight you have lost.

So basically, what it comes down to is eating low calories and exercising.

Um. Say it with us: “Duh.”

But this is what we encounter so often with Search Engine Optimization.

We can’t tell you how many times we’ve spoken with a client who says their company has paid for search engine optimization and it doesn’t work.

Really? Search engine optimization doesn’t work, eh?

So, obviously, our next question is what the client got for their money for search engine optimization.

Ninety nine times out of 100, they got listed in a couple of directories and a couple article submitted for a quick and temporary boost – very similar to the results you’d expect from a fad diet.

First, the campaign was not designed to last. Second, the client quickly dropped back in search engine result pages to where they started or worse.

Just like losing weight can be broken into a simple formula:

Diet (Calories Consumed) – Exercise (Calories Burned) – Normal Metabolic Burn (Calories Burned) = Calories left

If the calories left are positive, you’re going to gain weight. Negative, you’ll lose weight.

For SEO, it looks something like this:

Content Produced (Quantity and Quality) + Information/Code Structure + External Links – Competition Strength (Quantity and Quality of web pages that mention a key phrase) = your ranking.

If your ranking is positive, you’re most likely going to climb in search engine result pages. If it’s negative, you’re going to drop. The more positive, the faster/higher you should climb and vice versa.

A lot of companies in the Search Engine and Internet Marketing industry try to make it a “lose weight fast” type of magic.

It isn’t. Just like true weight lose, it requires commitment, effort and careful measurement.

There are no shortcuts.