The days of gaming search engines with technical tactics are long gone. As search engines become more sophisticated, marketers and their SEO tactics are falling behind.
Today, success in search requires a strategic mindset that can adapt to constant change and deliver genuine value. However, many marketers continue to view SEO as a checklist of tactics.
SEO Isn’t a Tactic
When SEO is seen as a tactic, marketers fail to adapt. They continue generating keyword-stuffed pages and manufactured backlinks that deliver little real value to visitors. While these pages may rank, those rankings usually do not generate conversions or sales.
When you invest in SEO, avoid outdated tactics and instead adopt the SEO mindset that has served us well for two decades.
The SEO Mindset
An SEO mindset involves problem-solving, adapting, and integrating SEO into all marketing efforts. Marketing teams with an SEO mindset delight at experimentation and discovering new strategies that improve organic visibility.
Unlike those who stick to so-called evergreen best practices, SEO-minded marketers know that SEO must evolve with algorithm updates.
For instance, 6 years ago Google launched BERT, a groundbreaking large language model. Unlike the old-school Google that relied on simple keyword matching, BERT brought a game changer: understanding search intent.
Imagine searching for “math books for adults.” In the past, you’d only see titles that matched those exact words. But thanks to BERT, Google now delivers results like “Technical Math for Dummies” and “Math for Grownups” because it understands your search intent.
Although this innovation happened many years ago, we still see SEOs primarily focused on keyword targeting. Marketers that consider SEO as a mindset were able to quickly adapt, and focus on intent-targeting rather than keyword-targeting.
Marketers who view SEO as a tactic, however, remain stuck in the past and focused on SEO best practices that no longer reap results.
SEO as a Tactic
Viewing SEO as a tactic means sticking to a rigid list of best practices like keyword stuffing, link building, and technical optimization. While these practices can work, a lack of adaptability limits their effectiveness.
Common pitfalls of this approach include:
1. Rankings without results
Traditional SEO best practices often emphasize keyword targeting and achieving high rankings. However, when web pages fail to deliver genuine value to users or target the right keywords, the resulting SEO content does not translate into revenue or conversions.
High rankings alone are not sufficient if they do not attract the right audience or meet their needs effectively.
2. Inability to adapt
The rapid pace of AI innovation has led to more frequent algorithm updates, with Google releasing nine significant updates in 2023 alone.
Each update alters the ranking criteria, necessitating adjustments in SEO strategies. If your SEO approach does not evolve in response to these changes, it will become increasingly difficult to achieve desired results. Staying static in a dynamic environment like SEO is a recipe for failure.
3. Wasting time and money
Old-school SEO tactics might boost rankings and increase traffic, but they often fail to deliver meaningful business growth, such as increased revenue. By prioritizing keywords over the users behind them, marketers risk ignoring search intent. This can attract users who aren’t genuinely interested in their product or service, ultimately wasting time and resources without achieving impactful results.
This isn’t a critique of tactical SEO, which was once effective. Instead, it’s a call to embrace a smarter, more adaptive approach to SEO.
Does Your Team Have The SEO Mindset?
To achieve sustainable organic traffic growth, it’s important to adopt an SEO mindset. If your SEO strategies fail to deliver conversions and revenue, it is time to evaluate your team’s SEO best practices.
If you think SEO is a checklist, you will not see results. Marketing teams must adapt to recent changes and integrate SEO into all aspects of their marketing strategy.
Let Fire&Spark help you adapt to evolving search trends…
- Schedule an SEO strategy session: Talk to a strategist at Fire&Spark about your organic customer acquisition campaigns and how to optimize for search intent, rather than keywords. Schedule a strategy session.
- Dive deeper into SEO for Revenue: Fire&Spark’s SEO for Revenue Guide explains how to update your SEO strategies to optimize for sales and conversions, not just rankings and traffic. This mindset shift is crucial for adapting to changing search trends. Get the guide.
