Every SEO has their strong points and their weak ones. For me, subjects like content creation and keyword research have always come naturally, but others like methodically using analytics data to improve and running manual link building campaigns have always been a struggle. Today, I'd thought it would be interesting to get a bit self-critical and talk about those items on the SEO-to-do-list that cause us the greatest struggles.

Perhaps if we indulge our catharsis, we can grow stronger.

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In the comments below, feel free to describe your struggles - what gives you the biggest headache, which tasks you dread during the workday, and what processes are ripe for outsourcing?

As a start, I'll provide some of the checklist items that I find most cringe-worthy:

• Guessing at which website is going to be included for duplicate/licensed content when most of the standard metrics would indicate a near-tie (PR, inbound link counts, competitiveness of current rankings, etc)
• Determining which page to get links from when offered multiple pages with similar external metrics
• Identifying the cause of a rankings/inclusion penalty (Yahoo! is actually the hardest one, as they seem almost arbitrary at times, but Google can be a formidable struggle too)
• Measuring the success and value of a link building campaign
• Explaining why PageRank in the toolbar isn't a good metric for success (to a non-SEO)
• Competing against low-quality Wikipedia pages in the rankings

OK, now it's your turn :-)