Definition

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of optimising a website to improve its ranking and visibility on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The goal of SEO is to increase organic traffic to a website by improving its ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords and phrases.

Google’s dominance.

Google may not be the richest company in the world, but it is arguably the most powerful. Aside from an almost $200 billion annual profit, Google holds the keys to the most comprehensive knowledge bank in history. In 2021, the number of active users surpassed 4.3 billion. That’s over 54% of the world’s population. There are over 5.4 billion searches each day on Google and every search is tracked, logged and analysed. With all this data on search behaviour, Google knows more about us than we know about ourselves.

As an SEO, I’ve seen how Google operates. Occasionally, we see reports highlighting how they manipulate search results for profit, and sometimes, we see lawsuits protesting their ‘abuse of trust’. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported how Google actively dictates what we see in the search results. These are all things that SEOs have known for years.

Google’s email platform, Gmail, has over 1.8 billion active users. Google themselves admit they read emails and sell data for profit. Google owns YouTube, which has almost 2 billion active users. All this behaviour is logged, tracked and analysed. There are 2.5 billion smartphones powered by Android. This provides data on locations, videos, photos, text messages, telephone calls and more. With the emergence of AI, people will soon be telling Google owned software all their innermost thoughts, fears and desires. With such a vast knowledge of human behaviour, Google has the power to control the thoughts and actions of more people than anyone in history.

The tide turns.

I wouldn’t call myself a conspiracy theorist, but in the field of SEO, I’ve been competing with Google since 2003. I’ve seen their rise to power and watched them dominate the digital landscape. In the early days however, things were different. Having two college kids wield so much power was refreshing. The whole ethos appeared anti-establishment and they even had a motto, ‘Don’t be evil.’

The World Wide Web itself was relatively new and its inventor, Tim Berners Lee had given the whole thing away for free. This included HTML and the entire infrastructure of hypertext and Web pages. No patents, no royalties, it was his gift to the world. Now Google offered a way to access this information in the most benevolent way imaginable. It was exciting. A new way forward for the digital revolution.

But, it wasn’t meant to be. As the money rolled in, the dark forces circled. I can’t claim innocence to this either. When I discovered SEO, I discovered a way to manipulate Google’s search results for money and I made as much as I could. All SEOs were gaming the system using tactics that were not necessarily for the benefit of the user. This led to an intricate game of cat and mouse between Google and SEO, which ultimately led to the disillusionment of both parties. It was bound to come to a head and in 2012, Google went nuclear on SEO.

A major algorithm update effectively wiped out the SEO community overnight. It was named Penguin and cries of ‘SEO is dead’ echoed across the Internet for years. Google had won the war against SEO and went on to become more corporate and power hungry than ever. An interesting divergence emerged, however. The old way of SEO was dead, but using the same principles we could learn more than we imagined by studying how Google tailored its search results.

SEO was now a highly effective tool for building brands. By analysing the inner workings of the Google algorithm, we can reverse engineer what it takes to become a brand, and this is far more powerful than manipulating search results. If you look at the Forbes Billionaires list you’ll see it is dominated by brand owners.

Brands are ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear. Branded technology holds our attention for almost every second of the day. We may be a long way from a dream of one world, one people, because the only future I can see is controlled by brands. Brands are concerned with one thing and one thing only and that is making money. In 2015, Google changed their motto from ‘don’t be evil’ to ‘do the right thing’, and ‘do the right thing’ means making more money.

The future of SEO.

I’m assuming you’re reading this because you want to be more successful in your career. You may be starting a business, or own a business that you want to grow. You may be an employee asked to learn about SEO, or you could be looking to get into the SEO industry. Either way, presumably the ultimate goal at this stage is to make more money.

That’s a perfectly reasonable motivation for wanting to learn about anything. However, to succeed in SEO you need more than a thirst for money. You need a thirst for knowledge. You need a burning curiosity to wonder how things work. SEO evolves alongside technology and is a study of how humans think and how they adapt to changes in the environment. In the years following 2012 there was a debate whether Google had killed SEO, but the truth is SEO will be around much longer than Google. In a digital world almost everything is a search engine and as long as humans need to find things, there will be opportunities for SEO.

2023 saw artificial intelligence rise to the forefront of search technology. It’s easy to see how this will dramatically change the digital landscape. However, AI needs to find things the same as humans do. An SEO’s job is to figure out where it looks, and ensure our client’s brand is at the top.
It’s having a passion for learning that has kept me ahead in the SEO industry for over 20 years.

Having analysed thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of websites ranking on Google, I’ve seen how the landscape has shifted more towards brands than SEO itself. There is a reason why brands prosper more than normal businesses and on the website, I’ll outline the entire process.