Here’s the thing. I don’t think I’m very good at SEO anymore.
But let’s take a step back, first.
Once upon a time, a lifetime ago…
I first started out in SEO nearly 20 years ago. And while it’s been quite some time since I worked “exclusively” in SEO roles, there was a time there where – at least for a while – I can quite honestly say I think I was among the top SEOs in Australia.
(sidenote: James Norquay, wily SEO that he is, took advantage of that with a little piece of egobait back in 2011 where he included me in his top SEOs in Australia list)
I say this, not under any misapprehension that I was especially clever; but what I was, was very, very lucky.
I got my start in SEO at wotif.com under the leadership of Matt Varley… who is still, to this day, the smartest SEO I ever worked for, or with. In 2006 there were honestly few places better in Australia to learn SEO than at Wotif, under Matt “Mojo” Varley. This was before Expedia bought them out. We competed with, and beat, all the big international players. I personally ranked our sites in top 3 spots (mostly first!) for highly competitive terms like “London Hotels”, “New York Hotels”, “Bangkok Accommodation”, “Sydney Hotels”, “Cheap Flights to London”, “Cheap Flights to New York” and more.
In my consulting days, I helped mom-and-pop businesses compete with the big players too. I still remember the joy from one of my early clients when I managed to get their brand-new site ranking #2 for “car hire australia” and “car rental sydney” in just a few months of taking on the gig.
Following that I moved onto Compare The Market, where I headed up SEO (and later, more broadly, Digital) for them, and we crushed it. From car insurance, to life insurance, to credit cards, home loans, travel insurance, home insurance, health insurance… we ranked in top positions for all of them.
All this is to say: I think I was good at what I did. I say that without any sense of self-deprecation, which is weird for me. But I honestly, truly, think I played with some of the big boys of Australian SEO, and held my own.
Old man shakes fist at cloud
But even as far back as 2010 (and again later, in 2012) I started experiencing some frustrations with the world of SEO… or, more accurately, SEOs.
My whole concern was around how complicated SEOs seemed to be making SEO.
And to my mind, that was… pointless. SEO, at its core, seemed simple. And note, that’s not the same as easy… but the principles seemed simple. As I said back in 2012:
Now can you see why I despair sometimes? The fact is, SEO is nothing new. At its core, it’s simple marketing.
I thought it fascinating that Rand Fishkin went so far as to describe the changes in this video as:
“As SEOs, for a long time you’ve been doing the same kind of classic things. You’ve been building good content, making it accessible to search engines, doing good keyword research, putting those keywords in there, and then trying to get some links to it.
But as SEOs, we never really had to think as much or as broadly about, “What is the experience of this website?”
That statement boggled my mind. As SEOs, if you weren’t thinking of people’s experience on your site, you weren’t doing your job properly, in my opinion. Again, bring it back to the three principles: if people had a bad experience on your site, they would hardly want to spread the word, would they?
Each time a major release like this, or the Caffeine update was pushed out, or the rise of social factors, or Vince, people rushed again to confirm that SEO was more important than ever. And I’m not denying that it is. SEO is integral to a business’s success. But if you had been following the three principles, rather than chasing the latest random algorithm, your site would more than likely have weathered the changes just fine.”
We’ll get back to present-day soon, I promise… hang in a bit longer.
As the years went on, I clung more and more to these guiding principles. SEOs talked about keeping up with Google, or trying to get to where Google wanted to be. I looked at it differently:
- I didn’t want to get to where Google wanted to be. I wanted to get to where my customers were. And happily, so did Google. But that meant I could do my marketing with a focus on the customer, rather than the latest Google hack. And this made me so much darn happier than running on the latest hack treadmill.
- People called me Pollyanna for taking this stance. If anything though, I think it was my cynicism that led me to it. After all, I reasoned: Google wants to make money. They won’t make money if their users aren’t happy. Because if users aren’t happy, they won’t come back to Google. So if I make their users happy, I make Google happy. If I make Google happy, I rank. Ergo: make users happy.
This “grumpy old man” mindset started bleeding into my everyday. When I was a young SEO pup, I read SEO blogs voraciously. I hung on the SEO rockstars’ every word. But I started asking a question of myself when I read new SEO articles, and that was, “Will this information really change how I do SEO in my day to day?”. The answer, almost always, was “not really”. And I grew disillusioned with the scene.
This continued.
Nearly there…
Even today, many of the “top SEOs” on Twitter are what I call “observational” in nature. They “observe” what’s happening in the SERPs, and report back on it. Lots of visibility index charts. Lots of “I’m digging into sites that did X or Y in the HCU”. Lots of “observational analyses” after the fact.
The SEOsphere spreads the heck out of these. And I scream, endlessly into the abyss: “But will this information really change how you do SEO in your day to day?”. And people look at me like I’m an old man, out of touch with how SEO really works these days.
Google told us. SEOs just didn’t listen.
Ever since Danny Sullivan became SearchLiaison (and even before that, Matt Cutts was largely pointing us in the same direction), he’s been pleading with us to stop focusing on the small SEO things, and just focus on building your business. But, SEOs being SEOs, they read all that and then start talking about how “Did Google just say diversified traffic sources is a ranking factor?”
And it’s truly bizarre how we don’t see the forest for the trees.
Honestly, my credo at the moment? Outside of having a good, crawlable website with no major tech impediments, my advice to business owners these days is that the best way to do SEO is to forget Google exists. Just don’t think about them. Focus on building your brand. That’s how you win.
Interestingly enough, one of the smart SEOs who I do still listen to these days is Mark Williams-Cook, who recently posted a super-interesting talk he gave at SearchNorwich. Mark and his team at Candour came across a Google endpoint that leaked 2TB of data and classification signals for ~90 million queries. This is… something. In some ways, I’ve found it even more interesting than the Google leak from earlier this year. Things like query classifications, consensus scoring, site quality score and brand metrics are all mentioned.
And I honestly, hand on heart find this all interesting. I really do. I watched the whole video, and think Mark’s done some amazing work, and communicates it all in an incredibly smart way.
But, when I ask myself, “Will this change the way I do SEO in my day to day?”…
Coming full circle
The answer, largely, is no. And that’s not meant to be a slight on Mark, at all. It’s just… no, I don’t think it will. Because I’m laser focused on building a brand. I’m laser focused on meeting consumer needs.
If anything, Mark’s video has given me more ammo to go to the C-suite who sometimes balk at brand investment, which is awesome. It’s kind of like having a “I told you so” card, but actually being able to back it up.
So, I find myself in an existential crisis, here.
I know this kind of information should change what I do as an SEO. But it simply won’t. I’m focused on building a business. Not how to work things to please Google.
And I realised: I don’t think I’m good at SEO anymore.
