Why most experience bad SEO
Education
For newcomers, there is no real standard SEO degree, certification or formal schooling. SEO heavily relies on self-learning, research, interpreting analytics into insights, and discovering strategies on your own. On the side of Google, they give advice but they never truly share how the algorithm works, otherwise everyone would win. Instead, lots of SEOs flock together on platforms like Reddit and share their insights and strategies with eachother.
Stuck With Basics
Now, what tends to happen is learners first go to Google and find courses on SEO, which there are – not saying they don’t exist. But these courses are usually the same fundamental SEO basics everyone knows about. Meta tags, canonical links, image optimization, blogs, landing pages, you’ve heard it all. It’s the same regurgitated talking points which in their minds creates the belief that’s all there is to SEO. And so they go on their own page or they acquire a client, apply the basics they learned, and scratch their heads when they don’t see much results.
At this point, the SEO either gives up and quits, or they stay curious and continue discovering.
Scammers
On one hand you have legitimate learners wanting to know the craft. On the other hand, you have a certain crowd of people who just want to make a quick buck. When the lack of knowledge of advanced strategies for SEO creates a general belief that SEO is easy. This creates a surge of agencies spam outreach to companies offering a premium for SEO, promising to be number one or top five in a short amount of time.
This is where you hear the same horror stories from business owners who signed with an SEO agency.
- They signed a contract with an agency or a freelancer.
- After several months or even years, they still see no progress from their SEO efforts.
- The agency goes dark and hardly providing any updates or interact with the business owner.
- They fire the SEO or agency, and walk away believing they were just scammed.
All of this creates a negative sentiment towards SEO, even though SEO is a legitimate subset of marketing.
SEO Is Legit
SEO is a subset of marketing. It encompasses aspects of copywriting, market research, Digital PR, building business relationships, web development, data and analytics, and so much more. In order to be great at SEO, you must still know at least some amount of general marketing.
Real life marketing correlates so much with how SEO operates in the digital world. Think about it:
- Google is the road.
- Your website is your building.
- Your page title is your giant sign outside.
- The Meta description is the pretty decor around your establishment.
- Backlinks are your PR like news networks.
- Google Business Profile is your business card, flyer, brochure, whatever.
- The blogs are your public events you either host or attend.
It all correlates together!
Gatekeeping
This is the problem…
The SEOs that stayed curious and found strategies that work. 🤫🤫🤫. They tell no one! I’m guilty of this, too and it’s the dirty secret of why it has a negative reputation.
When top SEOs gatekeep real working strategies, it creates a difficult barrier for most beginners and intermediates to cross over. This creates the cycle of regurgitated basics, turned into scammers, turned into bad rep while the good ones continue to gatekeep – it’s a mess… But it’s for good reason 💰 💵
Who To Trust?
This is something that happens in many industries. When you have a guy who’s been in that industry for many years, they attain a level of seniority. For some, this creates a sense of entitlement making them believe they are some guru in the industry. Which can lead to them becoming lazy and stop continuing to learner further.
In some industries like tech, it can be a little bit different. In the world of tech, you’re often forced to learn the new technologies. And the more years you have in the industry becomes a strength as often believed. In tech, the longer you stay in the industry, when new technologies come out you can understand them better, because you understand where they came from.
One example of this is Microsoft Windows. If you have been a Windows user since the 90s or even Windows 7, you know by heart how the operating system works. As the operating system evolved, you evolved with it by learning the new stuff while the old stuff still works. So the combination of new and old knowledge, makes you even more knowledgeable.
In the case of SEO, it can be a bit different.
Generally speaking, SEO does have fundamentals. But in the way these fundamentals are used or evolved, can change every year or even every other month. The Google algorithm is constantly changing throughout the years. When this happens, your SEO progress can either remain neutral, improve, or decline – most of the time you decline. This forces SEOs to discover new strategies to help recover their rankings.
The SEO who has been in the industry for 10 years, he’s out there busy going on podcasts and doing TEDtalks bragging about what he knows. Meanwhile, the other SEO who’s been learning for 3 years, he’s busy learning all of the new information.
So then this is the question.
Do you trust the SEO with 10 years of old knowledge?
Or do you trust the SEO with 3 years of new knowledge?