It seems the search algorithm changes have been hitting harder than a Taylor Swift breakup song.
There has been a lot of talk about core updates, useful content, reputation abuse, etc. OpenAI is building a search engine, and Google’s generative search experience is likely to expand soon.
It’s getting harder and harder to keep up and many SEOs are having serious FOMO.
With all this discussion, one can’t help but notice some recurring themes. Search engines are clearly evolving (very quickly), but neither our mental models of searchers nor our SEO philosophy seem to have evolved as quickly.
Whenever a new change occurs, I first try to understand what the search engines are doing and why they are trying to do it. This can be difficult as it is often the opposite view of the owner of a site or business.
I’ve been playing the contrarian a lot lately, and I’d like to share some unpopular opinions that I think could help a lot of businesses, even if they’re a little hard to swallow.
1. SEO is now real marketing
With each algorithm and change, we move further away from the old days of fooling search engines and closer to having to do real marketing.
If you’re not thinking about user needs, personas, and intent, you’re already failing.
Too often, I come across SEOs and companies that have a backwards approach. They start by saying, “I have this. Get it to rank for this keyword.”
This is the wrong approach.
A better approach is to start with the keyword, understand the user’s intent and what they would find useful, and then build on that.
2. Spam/scams are not a business model
All SEOs, even white hats who don’t publicly admit it, engage in spammy tactics and what some call “programmatic SEO.”
Most have testing sites and side hustle sites. We’re all pushing the boundaries of search engines to see what works and what doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean these tactics are a good business model. They come with risks.
If you make a small affiliate site that you can throw away and restart later, that risk might be worth it. If you’re a company with employees who have families to feed, you probably shouldn’t be taking this risk.
3. Search engines don’t owe you traffic
It’s not a level playing field. Search engines are not a public utility and their ranking is not supposed to be fair and balanced.
Legally, your rankings remain the editorial opinion of this search engine. A search engine’s responsibility is to its users. If users aren’t happy, they won’t use the search engine (or click ads!) anymore.
Too often, people are quick to complain that Google and Bing have a “brand bias,” but they wouldn’t have that bias if their users didn’t.
As recent public disclosures showed, Google uses click data to train its systems, meaning people have to click on known brands or they won’t rank.
Our goal as marketers should be to become the brand, and I know it’s not easy. It takes a lot of work, effort and time, all of which today’s leading brands have invested in.
SEO is not an overnight success.
Dig deeper: What should Google rank for in search when all content hurts?
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4. Search engines care more about their own users than their business, website or revenue
Once we accept this, we can align our interests with those of search users.
Remember that real marketing line? We don’t just have to give our users what they want.
We also need to make sure we give the engines what they think their users want, and accept that those wants can change over time, so we don’t have to base our business model entirely on them. It is still important to differentiate.
5. Not all search engines want websites
The goal of a search engine was never to show the 10 websites that mentioned the search query and order them by which one had the most links. This is the best technology we had in the late 1990s.
Search has evolved, a lot.
When a user searches [how old is Taylor Swift?] they do not do it You want a link to a web page with a cookie consent notice, newsletter signup, alert notification enabled, and age verification (in the EU) that’s full of autoplay videos and overlay ads that hide the real answer buried five paragraphs deep. story of a fictional author who has been medically checked by a doctor for some reason because we misunderstood the EEAT.
They just want the number, which is 34 (or 10 if you’re still stuck with a 1999 SEO model).
There’s a great quote from Bill Gates from 2009 (when 20-year-old Taylor Swift was working on her “Speak Now” album) in which he said, “The future of search is verbs.”
What I meant by this is that people are looking to do a task. It instantly struck me that I needed to focus on websites that helped users do something, not those that tricked a platform into trying to rank information that I didn’t create, that I’m not an expert on, and don’t it is unique
Since that day, I’ve been trying to bring SEO back to “real marketing,” which always starts with user intent. As search gets smarter, this strategy becomes even more important.
AI can answer these simple questions (without having to have a random doctor in some country review it), but it cannot replace real human experience and knowledge. It won’t talk about the latest fan theories of a TV show, and you probably won’t trust it to buy a house.
6. On the abuse of reputation
If someone pays you to put it on your website, that’s not content. It’s an ad.
This ad can be very useful to your website users, but in the opinion of a search engine, yes no be useful to its users.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You can probably make money by promoting this content in your newsletter or in a widget on your website or social media accounts.
If it’s useful to your users, great, but don’t expect it to rank unless the search engines think it’s useful to their users.
So what do we do with all this?
In the days of our wildest dreams, these You Belong With Me SEO tactics could have flown. But from the infamous Florida!!! update, they are just creating Bad Blood with the search engines. Our current models feel like fifteen-year-old Cardigans: comfortable, maybe, but definitely not Timeless. We need to Shake It Off and stop clinging to outdated tricks.
A change is needed. It’s time to speak now in fearless pursuit of user intent. Our song deserves better than chasing trends. Let’s start again by focusing on what search engines think their users really want, not just trying to fill a blank space with off-brand content or Hits other than the searcher’s intent. This is a new era and we need a long-life SEO strategy that prioritizes user experience and builds trust. This is nothing new. Bottom line, it’s time to do some real marketing. Are you… ready for this?
I sincerely apologize for the last two paragraphs, but I couldn’t resist.
Yes, it’s a giant AI-augmented Taylor Swift joke. But it also shows why they like non-intelligent or keyword-stuffed content this paragraph is preferable to users.
Our next steps are clear. We need to focus on user intent i Search Engine Intent: What they think their users want. It’s also a good time to start diversifying our businesses to become less dependent on one source of traffic.
Search engines – and how they present results – may change, but one thing will always be the same: users will still need to do things.
As long as users have needs, marketers will always be needed to help them make those decisions or accomplish those tasks.
Is it SEO? Is it marketing? Say it how you want. 🙂
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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