SEO Is Not a Black Box

“Oh I know, SEO is such a black box”.

Almost every cross-functional partner I’ve ever worked with

There, I said it.

I remember the first time someone told me SEO is a black box. At the time I think I agreed with them. So many levers and so much unpredictability – how could you possibly account for them all?

And it seems like we weren’t alone – over 97 million results return when you do a Google search for “SEO black box“:

But the more companies I’ve seen, especially companies of the same flavor (whether that’s media companies or large, brand-first, fast-growing and international tech companies) you realize that most of the companies of the same type have all the same SEO problems.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

Maybe Tolstoy was on to something. In my admittedly limited experience, here are some examples of what I’ve seen:

Media companies – struggle to make the dollars work, scale SEO through freelancers, and police tagging while maximizing pageviews and ads. This is all while you’re simultaneously fighting for page speed optimizations through AMP etc.

Tech companies – can never do hreflang straight out the gate. Ever. Have many disparate systems. They also move fast as a whole, but generally move slow when it comes to Web. Web is typically a total after-thought in product-strong companies. Localization is also usually a nightmare.

But here’s the funny thing about SEO – is if you do it right it usually works. But then why does it sometimes not work? I have 2 main hypotheses:

Reason 1:
The opportunity was incorrectly assessed

This can happen for a lot of reasons. It can happen because you, the SEO thought your site deserved to rank when it didn’t. It can happen even when you’re actually very experienced, but the company’s priorities are not aligned with what the strongest SEO opportunity is, so instead you now have to try and rank for keywords not tangentially related to the job to be done your company actually does. It can happen because the landscape (and therefore opportunity) has changed.

One of the biggest blessings in SEO is being strong and confident enough to have optionality. To tell potential clients that SEO is not the right lever for them – or to show your team the SEO landscape and explain (as clearly as you can) that it is not realistic to own this category based off the current state of your site, it’s competitiveness or the ecosystem. To lighten the conversation, you can explain what it would take in years, infrastructure and strategy for SEO wins on your site to be feasible. This is a better path than buying in to a timeline or project that simply will not work.

SEO is not the right path for each and every initiative, and that’s OK. It’s better to call this out before wasting time/resources

Reason 2:
You’re still not doing it right

Ideas are worthless, it’s all about execution.

I used to really admire people with lofty ideas. Then I realized many people have lofty ideas and aspirations, and can certainly be RIGHT about their plans and ideas, but the greatest leaders I’ve seen in my career are the leaders who can get mountains to move, people and roadmaps to align, over and over again until executing to plan is the expectation, not the exception.

And yet so often we can pat ourselves on the back for being “right”. But we are not paid to be right, we’re paid to be effective. And the truth is – executing is hard. Even if the plan is right – there might be something you didn’t anticipate. A new javascript framework to learn, mistakes in the code, a regression you didn’t catch, things you didn’t find on staging. Concessions or shortcuts made by engineering because you weren’t specific enough in your requirements. All of those things can make the execution wrong.

If any of those things happen, or nothing is happening at all (been there) that doesn’t mean SEO didn’t “work”. Yet still, a lot of companies are left wondering WHY “SEO is not working”.

The truth is 99% of SEO problems are people problems

I don’t think most SEOs will run in to an incredible amount of SEO problems that no other SEO in the entire world knows the answer to. I’m a strong believer that most SEO problems are actually people problems:

• They’re a prioritization problem – SEO and web fell below the line
• They’re a resourcing problem – there’s not enough engineering hours for all the asks they field. Not enough writers or content budget for the articles you need
• There’s a trust problem – your cross-functional partners do not trust you / your boss/ your team, your experience or therefore, your plan. This means you’re spending your time slowly building trust, not executing audacious plans (yet!)
• It’s an experience or execution problem – the plan, or its execution was simply wrong.
• It’s a organizational problem – you’re in “marketing” when your SEO opportunities are actually based within eng. and product
• It’s a communication problem – the trade offs of what the company would get in Y if they gave you X was not communicated or understood so you’re back to the prioritization issue, which is often the #1 issue

I don’t like the idea of calling SEO a “black box” because it offsets blame. It blames it on the nature of SEO. Like we, as an industry just can’t help it and don’t have any control or say. But that’s not true, while you might not have control of the resourcing you wish you had, or a team that puts SEO first, that doesn’t mean you can’t / shouldn’t know what the SEO problem actually is. Even if the SEO problem is well honestly our product just sucks at XYZ and doesn’t deserve to rank.

When I’m asked what the #1 SEO blocker is, I don’t think its fair to say (for forever) “I don’t know” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. One of the most wonderful things about the SEO industry is the eagerness, and willingness to share knowledge and information.

Ask. Learn. But please don’t let people call SEO a “black box” because I think it discredits the industry as a whole and perpetuates the “snake oil salesman” stereotype. Sure SEO changes, but all fields change. This is the nature of being human, our ability to change, iterate and improve. The answer to “why is SEO not growing fast enough/winning this word” etc. is not usually because, “SEO is a black box”.

SEOs don't manipulate Google, they manipulate websites. There's a *lot* of work that makes sense to do on websites, which makes search engines' jobs easier, and can help to position a page so that it's relevant to a larger number of users' needs.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 21, 2019

On an end note – I’ve been loving Traffic Think Tank. They’re a paid online slack community and by far are one of the most helpful and supportive communities I’ve ever seen for SEO. Even though it’s paid (bummer) I think its a good barrier to entry and really puts an emphasis on learning/sharing. You can check it out here .

Other communities to note (free):

• Online Geniuses
• Big SEO

Disclaimer: of course, each site is different so you really need to implement on your site to know for sure, but I really think SEO works, most of the time 🙂 And when it doesn’t, it always makes for good war stories and/or conference fodder.