Despite being my most apt skill and one I’ve filled every role in, SEO is still a difficult topic to convey.
What SEO meant 20 years ago and what it means today has changed so much that the two barely resemble one another. The problem (I find) is that the people I meet who might become my clients, they aren’t up to speed – nor are half of those scam… oh I mean’t educating them about how to rank.
Important Points
Unlike many in this space I am fairly spartan with the tools I require to do my job. Google Trends, Docs, WriteSonic and a handful of other apps make up virtually everything I need.
This is critical to understand because unlike many others I am not trying to get paid to appear to do something – but deliver nothing – and measure my P&L statements by the duration of time I can keep a client.
The key to understanding SEO is right here on this site and it’s the simple business reality that search engines make money when users find relevant content. When users do not find it, they tend to go elsewhere and this would be catastrophic for the search giants, therefore they work tirelessly to make paid ads appealing and ranking in organic search the realm of the relevant.
Every year I hear stories of businesses shelling out tens of thousands per month for custom solutions or the latest and greatest “Magic Recipe” SEO and yet the results just never seem to come in. Not so with my methods, which don’t come with a tail-light warrantee and a bill every month.
First though, let’s talk about AI and Mechanistic SEO and what that has to offer.
AI & Mechanistic SEO
When I or someone else refers to Mechanistic or Mechanical type of SEO what we’re referencing really are exploitable (via code usually) issues that have been found and could be used to boost a sites temporary rankings. Though passe today as an activity, the wordsmithing of the last two decades has left this petrified carcas hanging around with many entrepreneurs looking for someone to tell them what they want to hear – sorry, there is no magic bullet.
Similarly, AI based SEO is not a magic bullet and ultimately may prove fatal to our entire cottage industry – such as it was and is.
I use WriteSonic and Google Gemini for processing large volumes of content I’ve manually produced to fix grammatical errors and more. I also use AI to do technical research to give me statistics and solve equations – it has many brilliant (just to steal a UK adjective) and has its place – no doubt. However, many people are being sold on tools and platforms which they will regret when they realize the shallow nature of the benefit of AI based content – which is, in most cases, merely spun into existence albeit at a higher-level than simple bots or scripts of the past.
Where AI can and will help millions of businesses is in the arena of competition to get messaging out to consumers and to do – already difficult – jobs, much faster.
Keywords
For those who know me and my SEO process with clients, they will know I am fairly against drawing up a list of keywords and saying ‘okay lets target that’ – why?. The reason I’m so against this is because it simply doesn’t work, its an obsolete paradigm. Yes, you must have the word automotive in your businesses description, but stuffing a site with keywords today is a surefire way to alert Google (Who is now smarter – duh) and others that you’re trying to be manipulative, which is a surefire way to see your site’s rankings plummet.
I do collect keywords lists from clients however and I believe I would be foolish not to. My reasonable however is not to simply stuff these words into text and perhaps video files – it’s to learn about the business, industry and locality that the business wants to target. Today, SEO is specific to locations – it’s no longer a craps shoot.
Key Topics
So, what are key topics anyway? Well, if you run an automotive garage a key topic might be ‘Transmissions’ or ‘Engine Grinding Noise’ or – and this is often the case – ‘Engine Failure <town name>’ or ‘<Town Name Mechanic>’
What Key Topics are, are lists of topics that can have stories written about them, which are relevant to the business in consideration here. This is how search functions today – Person A is in town B and searches service C they get results D, if we apply the same logic in another town, we get totally different results.
It is for this reason that I work with all of my clients to develop a sound and reasonable list of topics to draw upon for content creation.
Research
A huge part of what I do for my clients is to conduct research for them. The kind of research being conducted varies subtantially and calls upon all the mental metal I have to get the results they need.
I am a huge proponent of mixing Google Trends with Google Gemini for the purpose of being able to draw a mental picture of the swing of the marketplace – up or down as well as the specific topic being considered.
It may make a lot of sense to write a biopic on the donor of a rose garden to a municipality in mid July in Rhode Island or Connecticut, but the same topic in December or January is a major search faux pas.
The key to good research isn’t that it’s documented prodigiously or that it’s done in a slow, methodical way – the key is that it’s results are correct.
Often times I have seen research work-product that, though technically accurate was an absolute waste of money. Akin to replacing a homes heating system when it’s old one worked fine and was safe anyway – research, but always apply common sense to the end product.
Relevancy
The most important part of my process is the emphasis upon relevancy. You will hear me and see me continually focus only upon area’s where I can gain improvement – hopefully quickly. Often times this is frustrating when the vagaries of how sites are being judged must be gleaned from outside.
I tell clients to implement a very simple system, very simple, have staff ask if they found their way to the business via the website and document daily, weekly, monthly how many did – actual customers. Note: I did not say clicks on the site, visitors, users or some other euphamism for “might have been a person, maybe a bot, who knows?” – that is basically what irrelvant SEO is selling you.
The best way to judge an internet marketer is the same as any salesperson – the bottom line.
Time
A lot of people outside of the murky world of SEO look at it and wonder why it’s costs are so high at effective agencies – and there are some awesome agencies out there. The root of that can be summed up in a single word “Time” – those agencies invest enormous time per-client and they produce custom solutions.
I find that to be effective in this industry it is impossible to function any other way. The fact is SEO work is very difficult, time consuming and it requires years of experience to be able to really take a site in a short time-period and help ramp its rankings up and ultimately bring it more leads and sales as a business.
Talk is cheap as they say, but results, they cost money!
Final Thoughts
I debated whether or not to create this section of this website, but though – why not? – it can’t hurt. My improvisional style on display here is not the style my clients get when they go with me or my employers who’ve hired me. I am an adaptable person and I attribute that as a form of resiliency formed out of necessity in this business. We are now entering a time where computers are no longer going into businesses and displacing old systems – they are becoming the very businesses themselves and displacing the workers – even the highly skilled.
For those in the market for an SEO advisor, webmaster or combination of things, feel free to message me anytime on this sites contact page.
Thank you for your time.