Whalespeak

SEO is full of Black Swans. If you’ve read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s incredible book you’ll know just what that means, but if you haven’t just think of them as massive, unpredictable events that have profound effects.

Traffic spikes are Black Swans. So are #1 rankings in Google. SEOs are always chasing them, and like the deluded traders in Taleb’s book, they are always developing systems and rules for creating them.

Search engine algorithms are black boxes. SEOs do some work, the algorithm works its magic, and rankings and traffic come out the other side. SEOs then work by induction to determine the algorithm, but if you know anything about induction you’ll know how unrewarding it can be.

People love certainty and they’re prepared to bypass reason to believe in it. That’s why so much stock market software exists that promises big returns, and it’s the same with SEOs that promise high rankings or big traffic.

The alternatives are not pretty. Tell your customers that you can promise nothing and see how happy they are when you bill them. Tell SEOs that their strategies are based on faulty reasoning and they’ll ask you what the alternative is.

There are two meta-strategies that I think will work well here. Number one, educate your clients. Show them what SEO is and tell them how rankings in Google are generated, then they’ll be less quick to buy search marketing snakeoil.

Number two, cover as many angles as you can. Look at on-site optimisation, look at link-building, look at ads, look at social networks, video etc. It might be one thing affecting your placement, it might be one hundred, but keep your hand in everywhere, keep every plate spinning. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you know how SEO works because you’ve had a few successful campaigns.