SEO Best Practices vs. Real-World Implementation

"best practices" are killing your marketing strategy you've followed all the rules, implemented every tactic the linkedin gurus swear by (lol), and yet... your campaigns are falling flat, your leads are arent coming, and your boss is breathing down your neck why? because you're using someone else's playbook in your unique game -- last year, i tested A/B tested a series of emails, one with a button CTA and one anchor text CTA i found that anchor text CTAs outperformed form CTAs by 15% in terms of clicks… granted, it is a small sample, but it showed me that for this audience and segment, a simple text link converted better than a fancy button with with curved corners (that is supposed "best practice"...) -- every audience is different, every product has its own story. when using “best practices”, you risk forcing square pegs into round holes, clinging to a strategy that worked for someone else’s product. one solution is to focus on the fundamental "good practices" that is tailored to YOUR audience and YOUR product. 1/ 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮. what are your actual customers doing, not what a general "best practice" says they should do? look at your analytics. which pages are they visiting? what content are they engaging with? when are they most active? 2/ 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀. no, really listen. don't just send out satisfaction surveys — think in-depth win/loss interviews. talk to them. Join where they hang out (communities?). understand their pain points and their goals, their language. what would makes their job easier? 3/ 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁. take those "best practices" and put them to the test against alternatives. maybe your audience prefers long-form content over snackable videos. perhaps they engage more on facebook than on linkedin (the horror). you won't really know until you try. 4/ 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗴𝘂𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝘇. if something's working, double down. if it's not, have the courage to let it go, even if it's an industry "standard" 5/ 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆. markets change. audiences evolve. what worked last quarter might not work next quarter. -- don't settle for “best practices”, be specific and be you your good practice > the supposed best practice

Often, I get bucketed into the “SEO” marketing bucket. Let my try to explain why I don’t love that. What’s the difference between traditional keyword research SEO and what I do? Keyword research encourages you to be overly concerned with made up metrics. - Keyword difficulty - Keyword volume - Domain authority And that’s why most keyword-led content strategies are: - A massive Ahrefs export - Sort by most volume - Sort by lowest difficulty - Boom - here’s your strategy 🤮 What’s wrong with that? At no point did we stop to consider whether our customers are actually Googling any of this. You’re going to create the same corporate, copycat, commodity content as everybody else using that SEO tool. It will become trojan horse content, at best. In contrast, the way I work with clients at Growth Sprints focuses on customers & revenue, not keyword research. Real-world example: Let’s say you’re an ecommerce subscription software for serious brands. If I started with keyword research, I’d probably create the same copycat content as everybody else: “Best subscription software” “Subscription management software” “Subscription examples” “Subscription ecommerce” Basically just copy everything from Recharge, Skio, Recurly and everybody else and pray to the content gods that it’s 5% better. ORRRRRRR (and hear me out here) We spend a few days *thinking* about what our customers might be searching for. And we get creative. If your customer is a serious ecommerce brand, do you think they’re studying the legacy players and first movers? Birchbox? Dollar shave club? Trunk Club? I bet they are. So we confirm it with what I call the "3S" teams (sales, success, and support) and directly ask our customers. Then (and only then) do we look at SEO tools:   Turns out 100s of people per month are searching for things like: Dollar shave club revenue Dollar shave club business model Dollar shave club case study So can we make a bet on that? I think we can. Maybe we should. In the end, SEO is just one content distribution channel. The best content can be used company-wide. When we do it my way, we can win in search, but also in lead nurture, email, social and sales enablement. Agree? ⚡️

Not every SEO “best practice” is worth your time. If I had to pick one that’s overrated for today’s DTC brands, it’s keyword stuffing product pages. Here’s why: most buyers don’t land on a product page first. They start higher up the funnel, searching through category pages, guides, and comparisons. By the time they hit a product page, they already know what they want. So instead of cramming product descriptions with every possible variation of a keyword, brands should focus on: → Optimizing collection pages for buyer intent → Building content that answers “which one should I choose?” → Using customer language from reviews to make copy convert, not just rank I’ve seen brands waste months rewriting hundreds of product pages with keywords, only to see little impact. But when they shifted focus to category-level SEO and helpful content, traffic and revenue actually moved. The lesson: product page keyword optimization isn’t useless, but it’s not the lever most think it is. Prioritize where intent (and volume) really lives.

What We Think SEO Is vs. What SEO Really Is Most businesses are playing the wrong SEO game and wondering why they’re not getting results. Let me break it down. What Most People Still Think SEO Is (And Why They're Wrong in 2025) ➜ Keyword Stuffing Cramming keywords into every line like it’s still 2010. ➜ Chasing Shortcuts Looking for “quick wins” and overnight rankings spoiler: they don’t exist anymore. ➜ Backlink Hunting Obsessed with building backlinks instead of earning trust. ➜ Content Farms Pumping out shallow blogs just to hit a quota. ➜ Ranking = Success Focusing only on search position instead of traffic quality or conversions. ➜ Generic Pages One-size-fits-all content that speaks to no one. ➜ Ignoring Mobile Forgetting 70% of users browse on phones. ➜ Overlooking UX Poor navigation, messy layout, slow load times Google notices. ➜ Set and Forget Publishing content and never updating or improving it. ➜ Only Writing for Bots Forgetting the real human behind the search query. What SEO Actually Means in the AI-Powered Era (2025 and Beyond) ➜ User-First, Always Build for people first Google's AI now knows what good content feels like. ➜ Topical Authority Dominate your niche with deep, interconnected content clusters. ➜ Value-Driven Content Every blog, page, and post should solve a problem not just exist. ➜ Search Journey Mapping Understand where your user is in their journey and guide them. ➜ E-E-A-T at Scale Infuse real-world experience, expert insights, and social proof into everything you publish. ➜ Conversational Keywords Google’s AI understands context speak like your audience does. ➜ Visual Optimization Images, videos, alt text, and schema markup now play a bigger ranking role. ➜ Core Web Vitals & Beyond Speed, stability, accessibility UX is SEO now. ➜ AI-Integrated Search Readiness Prepare for AI snapshots, zero-click answers, and multi-modal queries. ➜ Content Refresh Loops What’s old must be new again. Update. Improve. Re-rank. Here’s the real shift: SEO isn’t about hacking Google. It’s about building trust, solving problems, and showing up with value consistently. If your SEO isn’t evolving, your visibility is disappearing. Need a smarter approach? DM me. Let’s make your SEO work with the algorithm not against it.

Your SEO agency is wasting your time. Here’s a deep dive on effective vs busy-work SEO👇 — #1. Here's the harsh truth: If your site has <1,000 pages, obsessing over technical SEO is like buying premium gas for a car with no engine. Yet agencies LOVE selling this... — #2. Why do agencies push technical SEO packages? Because it's:  - Easy to execute  - Easy to show "progress" with fancy reports  - Perfect for stretching into monthly retainers — #3. The ONLY technical SEO you need for a small site:  - Basic SSL setup  - Mobile responsiveness  - Page load <3 seconds  - Clean URLs  - XML sitemap  - Robots.txt That's it. One-time setup, done in a week. — #4. The "Ongoing SEO" myth: Agencies love selling endless monthly retainers filled with:  - New technical audits (showing same issues)  - Basic keyword tracking  - Minor metadata tweaks  - Never-ending "optimization recommendations" — #5. The REAL SEO work sequence:  - Month 1: Full audit + strategy + implementation  - Month 2-3: Content strategy + initial content  - Month 4+: Heavy content production + link building No fluff. No busywork. Just results. — #6. Why isn't SEO ever "done"? You're in a constant race against competitors:  - There's only ONE #1 ranking position  - If you stop pushing content and building links, your competitors won't  - Rankings aren't owned. They're RENTED  - The rent is paid in content and links — #7. Real Monthly SEO Work that MATTERS:  - Strategic content production  - Link building  - Performance-based updates  - Competitive improvements — #8. Red flags to watch for: Agencies that:  - Sell monthly technical packages to small sites  - Can't explain how work impacts rankings  - Focus more on reports than results  - Spread basic work across months  - Won't front-load strategy  - Can't show clear ROI — The bottom line: Stop paying for monthly busywork. Instead:  - Fix technical foundation ONCE  - Build comprehensive content strategy  - Execute on content + links  - Outpace competitors  - Track rankings, traffic, conversions Real SEO creates value. Busywork creates invoices.

I followed every SEO best practice I could find and got nowhere. So I started ignoring half of them and things actually improved. The best practice people waste the most time on is technical SEO and speed optimization for smaller websites. Technical SEO works better for enterprise level or large e-commerce sites. If you have a brand new website and you’re working on technical SEO or speed optimization, you won’t see exponential improvement in your rankings. It might help with user experience. But if you already have a decent technical foundation or decent load speed, making it incrementally better won’t net you huge results. The rule I do follow religiously is matching your anchor text to what the top sites are doing. Say we’re trying to rank for accounting software for small businesses. We look at the top sites and check their anchor text - branded, navigational, keyword rich. If it’s 80% keyword rich and 20% branded with no navigational links, we copy that same mix. Google already trusts that pattern. I realized best practices were holding me back many years ago. A lot of SEO best practices are like following a checklist. But you really need to be like a doctor. Figure out what the problem is, why a site’s not ranking, then come up with a unique solution.

A brand paid two agencies $120K over 2 years for SEO. Their total return? Less than $2K per month in organic revenue. An endless cycle of "SEO best practices" had milked them dry: - Technical audits with 50+ issues that supposedly needed fixing - Content calendars packed with informational blog posts - Meta description optimizations (not a ranking factor since 2004!) - Waiting patiently for 6-12 months to see "results" Meanwhile, they were hemorrhaging $5K monthly. 4 months after coming to us (and building a strategy that ignored all conventional SEO "wisdom")... SEO FINALLY became profitable for them. We built 40+ collection pages. Sent targeted backlinks to said collection pages. Organic revenue jumped from barely $2K (w/ negative ROI) to over $10K monthly. And instead of creating monthly reports that said: "Look how much traffic our blogs got!" We just had to say: "Yo look at the money in your bank account."

SEO Consulting Tip: Are You "Auditing Against the Audit?" Not all SEO initiatives provide the same value. Every website is different, and implementing "best practices" can range from simple to nearly impossible. Take image alt text, for example. While technically important, does it justify a six-figure engineering sprint when there are far bigger wins? Probably not. But does that mean it should be ignored? Also no. It still needs to be documented, even if it’s at the bottom of the priority list. ⭐ Why This Matters ⭐ Occasionally, clients bring in another SEO to review my work or the team I support. Am I worried? Not really. Because I ensure we audit against the audit. 💪 📛 Core Web Vitals still bad? It's documented in the roadmap with an explanation of LOE vs. ROI. 📛 URLs not ideal? The homegrown CMS makes them unchangeable until the next site migration. 📛 Internal linking could be better? Sure, but it's scheduled for Q3 after more impactful fixes. Any SEO can come in, run an audit, and find things that are "wrong." But without full context, it’s easy for leadership to misinterpret feedback. The solution? A well-documented roadmap. When leadership sees that you’ve already identified these "issues" and have them prioritized, it flips the narrative: ✅ You're proactive, not reactive ✅ Your work is validated, not questioned ✅ Outside audits become confirmation, not competition SEO is not just about fixing what is broken. It is about making informed decisions, prioritizing impact, and controlling the story.