SEO, like a CPA
Sometimes I sit in meetings with other agencies or in-house teams who ask me things like:
“Is that okay for SEO?”
Or
“Which would be better for SEO?”
To be honest, there usually is an answer to these questions given the context, and that answer is pretty objective… but I always find myself wanting to clarify that if and when there is a core business reason for doing things a certain way, SEO can usually be managed in a way that supports that decision. We don’t wandecideabout the way to maximize the thing before we know what the thing needs to be…
This is true when talking about lots of different aspects of web design and content. Languages, navigation, tags, forms, videos, gated v. not gated, word count, etc.
The analogy I use for this is thinking about SEO as though you were a CPA. Even the world’s best CPA needs to do (most of) their magic after the fact. Accounting and taxes really shouldn’t be a reason to spend your money a certain way… but rather a way to optimize the decisions you had to otherwise and already make. When you decide you want to retire by a certain point in time, only then do you judge the mechanisms by which you save toward that goal. In my mind, SEO is the same.
Most times, there are business pressures, resource limitations, and other reasons to make a decision that should first be weighed and measured, and then SEO seriously considered. (Today’s example of this is the decision to use an automatic translator app for the 5 languages we need online because… the company doesn’t want to manage 5 distinct copies of the website forever)
Most of the time, people regret making decisions for SEO, and they would have been better off making their decision, and then running that decision through a list of questions like - “Given this, how do we maximize search?”
Boiled down, there are many different purposes these web assets serve, and a business should never be managed through a single lens.
(I want to make a distinction here that a CPA can tell you where you may have gaps. Too much exposure. What to do next… and SEO similarly. The point of this analogy is to illustrate that you shouldn’t let your CPA drive your core business decisions. Use them for maximizing the business in whatever form that needs to be. Same for your SEO partners)
When it comes to optimizing things, inbound traffic, ads, etc. - optimization isn’t the thing… The thing needs to be on purpose, and then we maximize it by way of optimization. Make sure SEO doesn’t become the reason you do anything… but a lens through which you maximize it. If you can take this approach at scale, I am convinced it will win.