SEO Theory - Revolutionary or Trash?

I've been looking over my SEO process recently along with other things to find ways that I can expand or improve. I also, simultaneously, went through a period of time where I binge-listened to Tony Robbins podcast.

I'm not sure which episode it was or if it was even from the podcast (though I believe it was) but I recall hearing Wayne Gretzky being talked about. Apparently, when he was interviewed about how he was good at hockey, he replied with "I go where the puck will be not where it is," or something along those lines. In which he anticipates rather than reacts to current situations which is a good thing to do with life in general.

Nonetheless, as I was looking over my SEO process I thought, what if we applied the same exact concept to SEO? I may be really late and a lot of you already do so, or, this may be a new idea. An example of what I just said is basically doing SEO in anticipation of the next Google update or even the next 10 updates.

That was just simply put, it can be expanded or even briefed down a bit more, but what are your thoughts on this?

I guess it's trash

moneymagnet246 said:

he replied with "I go where the puck will be not where it is," or something along those lines. In which he anticipates rather than reacts to current situations which is a good thing to do with life in general.

Nonetheless, as I was looking over my SEO process I thought, what if we applied the same exact concept to SEO?

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I understand where you're coming from. Anticipating the future isn't a bad idea - trying to get a jump on things. I think it makes sense for a lot of areas of business. However, with SEO, I don't know if it's a good idea. That's because there are so many unknowns about SEO, *right now*.

Google doesn't want us to know how their algorithms work, so most of what we're doing now is guesswork. Yeah, some of us do testing, but really, it still ends up being a shitload of guessing.

If I had to try to anticipate the future of SEO, I'd say that social media will be more important. Right now, Google has no control over social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Social media is all third party stuff, so Google would be foolish to try to incorporate social media into their algorithms now (because if Facebook, Twitter, etc made changes to how they did things, Google's algorithm would be f*cked).

But social is the future, so I have no doubt Google is working on how to incorporate social into their algorithms. The thing is, do you want to invest all sorts of time and money into social signals for your money sites, and (possibly) tens or dozens or hundreds of PBN sites, when you have no idea if that time or effort will ever pay off in the future?

For this to work, you need to be very, very successful already.

Like if you have 100s of successful recent SEO tests under your belt, you will have a very good understanding of what Google wants. Your intuition will be finely tuned and then it will be able to guide you very precisely.

Wayne Gretzky was able to do what he did because he had invested possibly 1000s of hours learning to do what he did. His senses were already very finely tuned to the sport, and his nervous system could guide him on autopilot.

Understandable. I suppose it all matters on how experienced someone is in SEO.

Shree said:

For this to work, you need to be very, very successful already.

Like if you have 100s of successful recent SEO tests under your belt, you will have a very good understanding of what Google wants. Your intuition will be finely tuned and then it will be able to guide you very precisely.

Wayne Gretzky was able to do what he did because he had invested possibly 1000s of hours learning to do what he did. His senses were already very finely tuned to the sport, and his nervous system could guide him on autopilot.

Click to expand...

moneymagnet246 said:

Nonetheless, as I was looking over my SEO process I thought, what if we applied the same exact concept to SEO? I may be really late and a lot of you already do so, or, this may be a new idea. An example of what I just said is basically doing SEO in anticipation of the next Google update or even the next 10 updates.

Click to expand...

For a couple years, I've predicted that Google would switch from demoting sites with spam links and end up devaluing spam links, essentially ignoring them. They've said that's how Penguin 4.0 works.

... and for accurately predicting that, I got what, exactly? I couldn't pre-emptively spam my sites because, under the prior framework, that penalized them.

Personally, I think predicting SEO is becoming even less useful with time, because "the algorithm" has become more and more fragmented. Different queries are ranked by completely different factors. When all is said and done, though, SEO will come down to technical proficiency, backlinks, and high-quality content, and search engine rankings will in general coincide with genuine non-search traffic.

Banditoseo said:

For a couple years, I've predicted that Google would switch from demoting sites with spam links and end up devaluing spam links, essentially ignoring them. They've said that's how Penguin 4.0 works.

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Thought the same thing a few years ago when I was doing SEO in a niche where it was simply common practice for new sites to jump in every other day, and pretty much spam the top 20 ranked sites with tens, even hundreds, of thousands of spammy blog comments (porn, viagra anchor keywords). And it worked. Negative SEO was absolutely true. And I'd say "how can Google not easily see a completely artificial scenario of one site getting thousands of shitty backlinks within a period of days, and not build it into their algorithm to simply take that type of behavior off the table?"

Banditoseo said:

... and for accurately predicting that, I got what, exactly? I couldn't pre-emptively spam my sites because, under the prior framework, that penalized them.

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Like @Banditoseo, I accurately figured that Google would work something out, but what did it matter that I was right? It didn't gain me anything. (And premptively for those who are going to jump in and say negative SEO is still real, yes, I agree - I've seen it first hand. But its effectiveness has been greatly reduced in the last year, and sometimes even backfires and helps the target site rank higher (in my opinion)).

Banditoseo said:

Personally, I think predicting SEO is becoming even less useful with time, because "the algorithm" has become more and more fragmented. Different queries are ranked by completely different factors.

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Yup. Desktop search isn't the same as mobile search. Different niches seem to have different factors weighed in to rankings. On and on. I'm a long-time software engineer, so I know a lot about programming, algorithms, etc. I would like to think my background gives me a big edge in SEO, but it really doesn't. Because Google intentionally keeps us in the dark about it's algorithms and methodology, I'm in the dark just about as much as a person with very limited tech knowledge. (It helps somewhat, but there are just too many unknown pieces to the puzzle to ever say much conclusively as far as what works and what doesn't).

Banditoseo said:

When all is said and done, though, SEO will come down to technical proficiency, backlinks, and high-quality content, and search engine rankings will in general coincide with genuine non-search traffic.

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Quality backlinks (off-page SEO) and quality content (on-page optimized SEO) are pretty much all we know for certain as far as ranking factors. Despite the existence of the mythical "Google's 200 Ranking Factors" list

moneymagnet246 said:

I guess it's trash

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Hi,
What made you say it's trash?