Incentives beat intentions, unfortunately
Recently a guide on how to manipulate Reddit got a lot of traction. I understand what the intentions of the author were: Make things better. But I don’t agree with the approach and methods used to do it.
This is not an ad hominem case as this is not an individual problem.
Firstly, Google is blamed for creating incentives to spam Reddit. However, the article itself promoted incentives to do the same with the actual manual on a silver platter.
Publicly sharing the techniques to spam Reddit is promoting to spam Reddit even more, no matter how you put it. And it was never wise to fight fire with fire.
Also, people generally like Reddit and find the answers helpful. It’s no coincidence that they have these numbers:
I’m not saying there is no spam. But we don’t know the denominator here. If you seek a needle in a hay stack you will find one.
Secondly, Google is blamed 100% for the consequences of the Reddit spam. I don’t agree.
If you would look at the chain of responsibility through the eyes of several great philosophers, like Kant, Aristotle or Sartre, you would come to the conclusion that users taking advantage of the spam techniques are to blame first, then the platform (= Reddit) and then Google (= the middleman).
FYI: Others cheating doesn’t give you permission to do the same. Enabling and incentivizing these tactics is not a free ticket to cheat, either.
Look into the mirror: If spammers wouldn’t spam there would be no problem, so the root cause is our sometimes unbearable human nature.
The blame is (also) on us, not (just) the others
It’s more comfortable to blame others than to check on ourselves.
“Google got worse” is one on the trendiest topics of 2023 and 2024.
“Before Content Marketing was a thing, idiots did not publish content. You wouldn’t write encyclopedia articles without knowing anything. Now, we created a perverse incentive for any idiot to write about anything. We sit in a mountain of garbage.”
– Peep Laja, CEO, Wynter
What if Google didn’t get worse, but the ratio of good to bad content shifted?
If you fill a glass with more water (bad content) than wine (good content), the relative amount of wine in the glass decreases, even if the quality of the wine itself is good. It becomes harder to serve good content.
Google is responsible for their search results, but we are responsible for the mountains of garbage we produce.
A German study presumably claimed Google got worse. Their argument, only focusing on a small query subset in a specific niche, is insufficient to make such claims. It’s not even what they said but what people want to believe.
According to Statista, users are once again slightly more satisfied with Google search. And yes, according to the 286-pager on Google being a monopoly, Google tried to devaluate search quality to test the impact on revenue. But that test only lasted three months.
No one can predict if there wouldn’t be a negative impact on revenue in the long term, which is all that matters.
Let’s assume for a moment that this was true: Google got worse and our domains were demoted in favor of some big digital publishers. How would the confirmation of this bias actually help me?
It doesn’t.
Yes, I can and should be vocal about it. But a lot of time and energy goes into being negative. Negativity is like a candy rush. It distracts us, so you need to avoid it.
Author Ryan Holiday hit the nail on the head with this quote:
“In our own lives, we aren’t content to deal with things as they happen. We have to dive endlessly into what everything “means,” whether something is “fair” or not, what’s “behind” this or that and what everyone else is doing. Then we wonder why we don’t have the energy to actually deal with our problems.”
We need this energy wasted being negative in working on achieving positive outcomes, like crafting the best content out there or being the most helpful resource for our target audience.
Loopholes are risky short-term arbitrage opportunities, not long-term safe bets
A loophole is not a real competitive advantage, but a short-term arbitrage technique that brings a lot of risk with it. If revealed to the outside, there can be grave consequences.
I loved this from Alex Birkett recently LinkedIn:
“Shortcuts in SEO often bring a sugar high, but they also come with a crash. […] If you treat it like a get-rich-quick scheme, you’ll need to ‘fix the plumbing’ later.”
Some things, like reputation, are not worth risiking, no matter how much there is to gain. Think of Sports Illustrated for example.
Building a good reputation takes years. Setting it on fire can happen in seconds.
Main takeaways:
Stop cheating or manipulating and start building something extraordinary.
Start taking responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others for your failures.
Save your energy to fight for positive outcomes, instead of wasting your energy on a negative candy rush.
Communicate und understand SEO as a growth engine, not as routine maintenance/polishing the edges
The grand finale: SEO has gotten a lot bigger.
Keeping SEO small and limited might be a way to avoid change. Could this be why many SEOs were reluctant to admit that Google uses user signals in their ranking algorithms?
Less change = SEO is smaller = more comfortable + less risky.
As outlined at the beginning, change is an opportunity. We walk into the fire of discomfort only to step out of it stronger, wiser and better.
SEO in 2024 is nothing like it was in 2004 or 2014. The fundamenta principles are the same, but we are driving a much different vehicle now with much more horsepower under the hood.
SEO is the wrong word for what we are actually doing
Digital publishers often get two-thirds or more of their traffic through SEO. A lot of companies rely heavily on organic traffic.
Some examples like Hardbacon had to file for bankruptcy as a result of the HCU and other updates. Some are or were on the cusp of it, like HouseFresh, Retro Dodo and Healthy Framework.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. But 70% or more of traffic share vs. other channels doesn’t sound like optimizing to me.
Optimization sounds like squeezing the last 5-10% out of what you already have. Limited and marginal.
The problem is that we all have different understandings of SEO, so we are not talking with each other but past each other.
To some, SEO means fixing mistakes/bugs. To others, myself included, SEO means (almost) limitless growth.
Fixing and optimizing is not enough:
🔨 Fixing = keeping the bare minimum in place and unlocking the existing potential.
✨ Optimizing = using the full existing potential.
🏡 Building = unlocking new growth = increasing the potential.
To visualize the idea further, see the following graphic:
Fixing is like you are repairing a broken window in your one-room apartment.
Placing nicer furniture in that room is optimizing, you make it more appealing.
The missing piece, then, is building new rooms if you actually want to live in a 10-room mansion.
Here are some things you need to communicate, understand and execute SEO as a growth engine:
A business mindset, the right metrics and language a C-level member will understand.
An updated SEO mindset, as ranking is not the end but a means to an end (= creating a high-value touchpoint with your target audience).
The ability to play well with others, to make them embrace SEO, not despise it because you let them starve all the time by being greedy and only taking, never giving.
Finding your (real) competitive advantage.
Finding your (real) competitive advantage
The last bullet point is especially important. It’s something that is missing quite often, from my experience.
Why should I buy from you? Why is your content the best in the world? The answer has to be the opposite of the “jumping the line” techniques criticized earlier.
The obvious question is how you get or find your real competitive advantage. It’s part of a good strategy. A strategy is always unique to a company.
In “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt says the kernel of a strategy involves three pieces:
Diagnosis.
Guiding policy.
Coherent actions.
To find a competitive advantage, you need to ask the right questions, like:
What are my unique abilities/assets?
Which of these abilities/assets matter to my target audience?
Which of these remaining abilities/assets differentiate me from my competitors?
A SWOT analysis can be a helpful tool here. An alternative to getting started is to list all the abilities and assets that make your brand you and then answer the last two questions.
Examples of abilities or assets could be that you:
Have a higher editorial output (quantity/quality).
Employ SMEs in several fields, while others only cover one.
Are uniquely fast in execution in relation to your company size.
Have proprietary data that you can use for original research and data journalism.
Are the manufacturer of a product (= having technical knowledge others don’t have).
Main takeaways:
SEO is not just “a channel” it’s often the growth engine for most companies.
Communicate it the right way: Limitless growth > marginal improvements.
Favor building than optimizing and fixing.
Come up with a unique competitive advantage that you can leverage in your SEO strategy.
We have work to do
I hope a lot of what I said is something you heard at least once already. But like Christian Morgenstern said (translation by me):
“Sometimes you see something 100 or 1,000 times until you really see it for the first time.”
We don’t want to change. Change is inevitable, though.
We don’t always learn from the things that never change. But they let us predict the future.
We like to skip the line and to go faster than is actually possible. Too fast often means fragile. You don’t want your SEO to be fragile, but to be unbreakable.
We want it as easy as possible. Some things, however, are not easy. Like author James Clear said, “The cheat code is the work you’re avoiding.”
We have work to do.
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