The Anti-SEO Manifesto

Is SEO important? In the digital marketing world, it gets way too much attention. Especially for newer businesses. The promise of "SEO" is if you get your keywords, alt-tags, header hierarchies, meta descriptions, blog titles and slugs just right and you'll get higher search rankings, more traffic, and boom, instant success. Well, here’s a reality check: Focusing on SEO is a waste if your business sucks. Focus on what truly matters: delivering a killer customer experience through genuine, high-quality business practices. Then, and only then, are you ready for more website visitors. Are these mutually exclusive efforts? Not in theory, but practically, yes, pretty much. Because of the false promise that SEO practices hint at, it can really suck the attention away from the more important things that have to come first.

As a professional marketer, I'm regularly surprised by how often businesses think they can game the system by mastering or outsourcing SEO and suddenly their problems will vanish. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work like that. Overemphasizing SEO can misdirect your energy, screw up customer relationships, and burn through cash. 

SEO isn’t a magic bullet. It’s simply meant as an expression of your website's content, not the foundation. Business owners get duped into thinking keywords and backlinks will save them. Sure, those can help visibility, but if your business can’t deliver, all you’re doing is showing more people how much you suck.

The Real Foundation of Success: High-Quality Business
Imagine a physical storefront. Would you rather have a beautifully decorated store with friendly, knowledgeable staff, or a dumpy one that attracts lots of foot traffic but fails to convert visitors into customers? The same principle applies online. A clean, user-friendly website with excellent service beats high traffic any day. If you're asking me why your website is having trouble bringing in visitors, and by extension, leads, I'd put good money on SEO being far down the list of issues to tackle.

High-Quality Content Starts with a High-Quality Business
High-quality content (which is what search engines are looking for) isn’t just pretty words or flashy graphics. It’s rooted in your business’s authenticity, its ability to deliver on promises, and its commitment to customer satisfaction. A good website isn't just a static billboard; it's a living, dynamic extension of your business. It reflects your business’s health and ability to deliver. Empty AI-written content with stock photography is exactly what Google is trying to protect searchers from. 

Building Trust and Credibility
Trustworthy content builds long-term relationships. It’s about real value, addressing customer needs, and delivering on promises. Authentic content positions your brand as a reliable source, which is far more effective than tricking people into clicking with clickbait. Visitors don't necessarily stay or turn into customers. Short visits hurt your ranking. Sites that fish for searchers with keywords that don't retain eyeballs will be punished. Obviously right?

Enhancing User Engagement
Engaging content keeps users on your site longer. They don’t bounce; they stick around and convert. High engagement tells search engines your content is valuable, boosting rankings. More importantly, it ensures visitors leave with a positive impression. But what is "engaging". Think of browsers as self-interested. They want to be served. They don't really care about your founders story or your mission statement or your testimonials except in how those related directly to the prospective customer's life, aspirations and identity. That means you need to be an expert in who your customers are and what they care about, and then service that. That's what "engaging" means. It's serving.

Boosting Conversion Rates
Quality content effectively communicates your value proposition. It persuades and informs, leading to higher conversions. When visitors find well-written, relevant content, they’re more likely to become customers. Persuasive content builds trust and establishes your brand as an industry authority. The problem is, you're not as persuasive as you think you are. Don't be sneaky, just be honest and be yourself. It's easier to be vulnerable and relatable. Don't try and be a guru, just be helpful. Don't sell, guide.

Encouraging Social Sharing
"Valuable" content gets shared. It expands your reach and attracts new audiences. When your audience finds your content useful, they share it, driving organic traffic and enhancing your brand’s visibility. Great! That helps your SEO too. You didn't even have to think about SEO. All you had to do was try and be useful, or at least entertaining.

Strengthening Brand Authority
​High-quality content positions your brand as an industry leader. Thought leadership content differentiates you from competitors and attracts a loyal following. Consistently providing valuable insights builds a reputation as a trusted authority. Valuable insights are not going to telling people about your offer over and over. A "valuable" insight is some new piece of information, or a new way of looking at things that changes how your audience relates to the world while reinforcing their sense-of-self.

Increasing Audience Retention
Quality content encourages repeat visits and builds loyalty. Satisfied users return for more valuable information, increasing customer lifetime value and ensuring a steady stream of traffic that values what you offer. Remember, the internet is an information medium. Education and entertainment is the currency of the land. Serve with relish.

The Risks of Misplaced Focus on SEO
Over-focusing on SEO without ensuring your business is ready can backfire. Here’s how:

Highlighting Operational Weaknesses
Aggressive marketing can draw attention before you’re ready. If your operations, customer service, or product quality aren’t up to par, increased visibility can amplify these flaws. A spike in orders can overwhelm your customer service, leading to long wait times and unhappy customers.

Case in Point: The Resort with Empty Promises
A friend of mine once booked a stay at a resort that advertised itself as "accessible." She's got mobility issues, so this was crucial for her. But when she arrived, it turned out their idea of "accessible" was a joke. It ruined her vacation, they got a scathing review, and she got a refund. The staff was nice, but the damage was done. That resort’s SEO might have been great, but their inability to deliver on promises cost them big time. This was a problem that stemmed specifically from over-representing their capabilities or features online in an effort to beat the competition. Even if it meant basically lying! Here's a good marketing tip: Don't lie.

Misaligned Expectations
Marketing campaigns that overpromise and underdeliver damage your reputation. If your marketing sets unrealistic expectations, it leads to customer dissatisfaction and negative reviews. Promoting a product as a "game-changer" without ensuring it meets this standard results in disappointed customers and bad word-of-mouth.

Case in Point: The Overbooked Restaurant
There’s this busy restaurant in my town. Always packed, but every time I went, it was a disaster—understaffed and overwhelmed. Last time, I walked out before even ordering. If I were to search online for restaurants, I’d be pissed if this place showed up in the top results. They can’t handle more customers; why the hell would they spend resources attracting more? They have an Operations problem, not a Marketing one. 

Financial Strain
Significant marketing spend without a solid ROI strains finances. If revenue generated doesn’t cover marketing costs, it leads to budget cuts in critical areas. Investing heavily in creating rich content to appease "the algorithm" that fails to generate sales can leave your business in the red. Quite reliably, vanity plays a big role in the metrics game. Knowing what to measure and prioritize is not arbitrary. Some things work and others don't. Knowing the difference is all about knowing your customer. Remember, there is generally overlap between customers and followers, but they are not the same thing. A popular influencer that consistently delivers "engaging" content to a large audience is not necessarily in a position to advocate for an enterprise cybersecurity solution, or even a brand of coffee scrub. Dominance in one area does not always translate to being an authority in another. Your customers know the difference. You should too. You can't trick people. You can't wave your hand like Obi-Wan and say "If I make 3 posts a day for a month I will get more customers". There's more to it than that. Same with SEO. Copying your competitor's keyword strategy may get you some more visitors, but if you're not ready to show those visitors why you're better than your competition, it will be a short-lived and fruitless win. 

Brand Damage from Poor Execution
Poorly executed marketing harms your brand image. Unprofessional content, poorly targeted ads, or technical glitches reflect poorly on your business. A website crash due to high traffic frustrates potential customers and creates a perception of unreliability. I love the cliché, "let's not put the cart before the horse". It's a classic for a reason. In my business, it comes up often. There's an order to things. The premise of this entire article is that SEO is pretty much one of the final things to put effort into, definitely not the first.

Case in Point: The Band That Sucked
Years ago in Toronto, there was a band fronted by a wealthy heir. They spent a fortune on marketing, recording, big shows, and high-budget videos. All that money did was show more people how bad their music was. They did not go on to any success by any metric. Having great music isn’t enough to get the attention of the masses (marketing is very important in music), but the attention of the masses without great music is catastrophic. Many business owners live under the illusion that the more people learn about their business, the more business they’ll get. That math only works if you have a compelling offer and a trustworthy apparatus. Seven billion people can know about your business and you get zero customers. In fact, that’s more likely than not. You have to rock! Again, you can't trick people into thinking you're good. People aren't as dumb as you think. In fact, the opposite is more likely true.

The Path Forward: Quality Over Quantity
Prioritizing high-quality experiences and genuine customer satisfaction trumps chasing SEO rankings. Before you even think about driving more traffic to your website through organic search, here’s what you must do:

1. Clean Up Your Operations

• Evaluate Customer Service: Ensure your customer service is top-notch. Train your team to handle inquiries, complaints, and feedback efficiently.
• Streamline Processes: Make sure your business operations are smooth and capable of handling increased demand.

2. Perfect Your Product/Service

• Deliver Quality: Make sure your product or service is high quality and meets customer expectations.
• Gather Feedback: Regularly solicit and act on customer feedback to improve your offerings.

3. Build a User-Friendly Website

• Design for Users: Create a website that is easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and visually appealing.
• Optimize Performance: Ensure your website loads quickly and is free of technical issues.

4. Create Authentic, High-Quality Content

• Be Real: Produce content that is genuine, valuable, and directly addresses your audience’s needs.
• Consistency Matters: Regularly update your blog, social media, and other channels with fresh, relevant content.

5. Foster Community Interaction

• Engage Your Audience: Encourage comments, feedback, and interaction on your website and social media.
• Be Responsive: Actively respond to customer inquiries and comments to build a loyal community.

6. Align Marketing with Capabilities

• Be Honest: Ensure your marketing accurately reflects what you can deliver.
• Set Realistic Expectations: Avoid overpromising and underdelivering to maintain trust and credibility.

7. Use Data to Guide Decisions

• Track Performance: Use analytics to monitor how your website and marketing efforts are performing.
• Adjust Accordingly: Be ready to pivot based on data insights to continually improve your strategies.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Over-Promising and Under-Delivering: Don’t make claims you can’t back up. It damages your credibility. The internet has enough scams already. That's why the algorithm exists: To attempt to weed out scams and other low value results.
• Ignoring Customer Feedback: Failing to listen to your customers can lead to stagnation and dissatisfaction.
• Neglecting Mobile Users: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly. A significant portion of traffic comes from mobile devices. Bad layouts in mobile smell funky and people leave.
• Overlooking Site Performance: Slow loading times and technical glitches can drive visitors away.

Summary Checklist

1. Evaluate Customer Service
2. Streamline Business Operations
3. Deliver High-Quality Products/Services
4. Gather and Act on Feedback
5. Build a User-Friendly Website
6. Create Authentic, Engaging Content
7. Foster Community Interaction
8. Align Marketing with Capabilities
9. Use Data to Guide Decisions

Ensure your business is ready for increased visibility, and harness the benefits of marketing while avoiding pitfalls. Focus on quality content, align your messaging with your capabilities, and use real-life (not fantasy) to guide decisions. With these efforts, plus some minimal SEO tactics, you'll be ranking high on page one in no time.

SEO is not about keyword stuffing and AI-generated blog posts and lengthy alt-tags on stock photos. It's exactly the opposite of that. SEO is merely a reflection that you're doing a great job at the hard work of being a business owner. That's how the algorithm is designed to function, and it will regularly punish the imposters and exile the fakers while sending searchers to the tried, trusted and true sites. Is there nuance and a variety of advanced tactics to help with this? Yes! Is it likely that your business should be prioritizing advanced SEO practices today? I'll leave that to you to decide.