TheVigilante
Banned - Multiple Rules Violations
- Aug 31, 2010
- 15,002
- 16,107
Brilliant thought put up by Andrew Charlton
SEO is not black and white.
Yet we’ve all been guilty of proposing solutions as if there’s no uncertainty. We need probabilistic thinking in SEO; an acceptance that our landscape is unpredictable, and although we might know the chances of a successful outcome, we cannot guarantee it.
Most decisions in SEO involve hidden information and outside influence. The most obvious of which is Google’s algorithm, which updates regularly and is, for the most part, a black box.
Sure you know from Google that page speed, HTTPS, and mobile-friendliness are all positive ranking signals but what about the variety of other signals you just don’t know about? Add on top of that the complexity of a whole series of search algorithms that apply various weightings to each signal depending on the nature of a search query and your certainty should go out of the window.
How to think probabilistically
Humans are deterministic by nature. It’s instinctive for us to believe something is good or bad and true or false. Someone is either your friend or not, the food is either good or bad and you either like something or you don’t. We don’t tend to say that there is a 70% chance that someone is your friend – that would be weird.
In SEO you might say particular activities are ‘best practice’ or that they’ve been successful before, so they’ll work again. In a perfectly predictable world this would be okay. But it’s not. The influence of luck and hidden information mean you can never be completely sure of the outcome.
You need to think like a professional gambler and treat your decisions in SEO as bets. What is your best guess that your recommendation will result in a successful outcome?
Source: https://bertiecharlton.com/probabilistic-thinking-in-seo/
SEO is not black and white.
Yet we’ve all been guilty of proposing solutions as if there’s no uncertainty. We need probabilistic thinking in SEO; an acceptance that our landscape is unpredictable, and although we might know the chances of a successful outcome, we cannot guarantee it.
Most decisions in SEO involve hidden information and outside influence. The most obvious of which is Google’s algorithm, which updates regularly and is, for the most part, a black box.
Sure you know from Google that page speed, HTTPS, and mobile-friendliness are all positive ranking signals but what about the variety of other signals you just don’t know about? Add on top of that the complexity of a whole series of search algorithms that apply various weightings to each signal depending on the nature of a search query and your certainty should go out of the window.
How to think probabilistically
Humans are deterministic by nature. It’s instinctive for us to believe something is good or bad and true or false. Someone is either your friend or not, the food is either good or bad and you either like something or you don’t. We don’t tend to say that there is a 70% chance that someone is your friend – that would be weird.
In SEO you might say particular activities are ‘best practice’ or that they’ve been successful before, so they’ll work again. In a perfectly predictable world this would be okay. But it’s not. The influence of luck and hidden information mean you can never be completely sure of the outcome.
You need to think like a professional gambler and treat your decisions in SEO as bets. What is your best guess that your recommendation will result in a successful outcome?
Source: https://bertiecharlton.com/probabilistic-thinking-in-seo/