My SEO Philosophy
Anyone who knows of me and my career can attest to the SEO philosophy I extol and above all else practice.
In this section of my site I’m going to try to explain exactly what my SEO philosophy is and why it works. I’m not going to discuss paid-ads or any other form of marketing which may be tangential or related to SEO. So, sit back, buckle up, enjoy the read – it just might be informative.
Search Engine Business Motives
A question must be posed to those considering SEO or, for that matter, any form of internet marketing which hinges upon search engines – What is their motive?
Search engines attract people to themselves because they are effective at feeding back relevant search information – be it paid ads (AdWords at the top) or Organic results. It really is not essential to them, their whole business model hinges upon sound results. What this means in a nutshell is that they are at best neutral towards SEO, but not positively disposed towards it.
The reason is elementary, if consumers type in search queries for one product and get results for another – due to any form of manipulation – that victimizes search and is a problem that needs to be solved.
In the relative early days of the web, this wasn’t much of a problem, but as the web grew and ecommerce grew in particular, it became a huge one. History has shown us all major search engines take an aggressive stance against manipulation of results – period. They want results to be – relevant.
Relevance
The next question I ask myself – and you should ask yourself, is, what is relevance?.
Pictured right is an Ammonite, it is a Fossil, Stone, Early Life Form, Mullosk and many other things all in one – as most things are. So in which of these categories is it most relevant? The answer is “It’s Conditional”
This condition hinges upon the searchers query – they may be seeking ammonite fossils, fossils, early ocean life or perhaps a type of silicate only found in the ammonite fossil of this vintage. This is why relevancy has to be ‘true’ and ‘real’ not manipulative.
Manipulative search is any search where the relevancy of the searcher is not the prime reason for its implementation. If you keep your understanding this simple, you are perfectly in line with the search engines.
Content
Today (2025) SEO’s will tell you (depending upon who you ask) that dozens and dozens of small minutae of factors or KPI’s are to blame for a site ranking or not. My perspective is a bit different as I apply a weighted approach to SEO. I think a sites content, relevance and proper targeting of it’s core audience matter a lot more than minor things like alt-texts being wrong on imagery or the occasional on-page error.
I also think any company selling on-page optimization as an ongoing service is not one I would ever want to deal with. You can think of on-page like the architecture of a building and the content like it’s contents. If you seek to build a strong, long-lasting building than it makes little sense to start stuffing it with furniture before it’s architecture – and structure – are completed.
If you take my understanding of SEO you will quickly understand why I emphasize the things I do and why I focus my efforts where I do – upon the sites content. This is because most of the time, I’m dealing with sites which have relatively minor on-page or on-site SEO errors.
A Durable Edifice
When most people come to me or talk to me about their online ad spends, they are usually talking on a monthly basis about an entirely ephemeral expenditure – spent, gone, over – rinse, lather, repeat. It’s a monthly ROI debate/struggle, and it’s unending. This is not a mistake, this is a business model – for search.
ROI from quality SEO means ROI from high-quality content – period. Ideally, that content takes on different forms and resides on the website – video, graphics, writing, etc. What this does is
Increasingly we are seeing social media as a key determinate, not necessarily of search rankings (due to the no Follow backlinks it generates) but due primarily to the social sharing of the website and traffic it can generate if used right. It may seem paradoxical to put social media under the heading of SEO on my site; however, I view the two as a necessary duo for new businesses to get traction for low-cost and to eventually build a durable edifice.
Think about the subscriber basis to YouTube channels, or the loyal followings some businesses have on social media purely based upon information they share.
Though this is not SEO directly, the tremendous number of Backlinks it generates contributes greatly to the site’s Domain Authority and therefore is, in an indirect way, a mighty KPI of SEO.