Wearing the Search Hat
“Go google how to SEO and then do it to this phpGenesis website.”
With this command, my career in online marketing began...
My older brother Jamon told me this in our small Pacific Northwest office where he ran his web agency. phpGenesis was a home-spun web framework that Jamon had created in the early days of his company. Within this in-house framework were the hallmarks of OG web programming, including the three kings of SEO: meta titles, meta descriptions, and even those hangers-on “meta keywords.”
I wasn’t a programmer; my focus was literally everything surrounding the code. Perhaps this isn’t quite accurate — I had spent hundreds of hours diagnosing and fixing syntax errors and copy-pasting various scripts into websites, but coding was never the goal — just a means to an end.
Meeting Mr. Black-Hat
Ever the conscientious type, my brother had steered me away from “Black-Hat” SEO tactics. I was able to watch Rand Fishkin of SEO MOZ discuss legitimate ways to gain organic traffic and implement them on our website builds.
One well-known old technique in the black-hat category was to put white text on a white background in order to get major keyword density on a page, without visitors seeing that text. Early Google wouldn’t know the difference as the text was indexable as HTML code, but users had no idea. This practice was penalized when found, but it was a “cheat code” for old-school SEO until then. Other practices like “link farms” have come and gone, but there’s always been those looking to beat the system.
As I’d had some success getting to the top for local results, I had a little bit of a resume upon arriving in the midwest. One business that I worked with had already built a pretty major presence online and had an in-house SEO expert. This search-maestro was the complete package and fully capable in the area, but leaned a bit on black-hat tactics that would first bring major success, then drop results down dramatically to be built back up. It was foreign to me to even consider those tactics, as the tech leaders I followed all discouraged it.
I saw the results from a mixture of clean SEO & some questionable tactics. It certainly worked, but there was that volatility. The engineer was highly talented and valuable to the company, but the tactics didn’t sit right with me...
Context is King
This is a short quote that stuck with me for years.
“Content is King.”
Working in a fishing industry online content business, I repeated this quote often. Content is king...as in - build things that people want to view and they will come. It worked and still works.
Do you remember the days of searching Google only to find listing after listing?
Directories that did not apply to your search at all? The world of content-creation was exploding and thankfully a push towards applicable content became more serious than ever.
A small change of one letter to this quote brings to mind one of the most important aspects of search going forward.
“Conte(x)t is King” means that not only do you need to produce quality content, but the content should also fit the “intent” of the search.
For instance, I’m writing this article mostly as a reflection of SEO over the last two decades, and how I see the future of the industry. If a user was looking for tips on how to use Keyword Planner, this article would not fit the intent. Still - just now, I’ve used that in my article. Search of old may pick up on that and serve it as a result to a long-tail search. In 2025, user intent and page metrics matter most for building traffic.
Evergreen SEO Tactics
There are always techniques and tactics that work for algorithms now, which can stop working in the long run. Keyword stuffing has long been frowned on, but it really took a serious hit in 2022-2024. In one instance, the only thing I needed to do to finally get to #2 on national results for a keyword was to remove that exact keyword from the site as much as possible. I replaced it with semantic keywords that were helpful to the user and provided contextual clues to search engines, but the results from first removing that keyword were virtually instant.
Below are 3 Evergreen Search Tips:
1. Take on the Perspective on the User
“If I were to look for this, but didn’t know specifics, what would I search?”
Utilizing keyword research tools can help inform this process.
If you think “that’s too basic, everyone knows that…” you’d be surprised at the search volume for some of the most basic information.
Some of my best performing informational blog posts are the bare-bones fundamentals. Don’t be afraid to spell things out as you would to an absolute beginner. At the same time, get deep into the subject. They can always “read more”.
Why? User metrics are more important than ever. A user that gains value from your site shows Google the relevancy of your content.
2. Build Webpages w/ Top Level Info
Give your content information hierarchy and “resting” points.
Endless paragraphs are too easy to skip. Make sure that you provide subtitles, headlines and drop in original applicable images in a way that provides resting points for the eyes.
I’ve noticed from studying website behaviour that people often will scroll a page first taking in the top-level information before reading in-depth. More often than not, people read lots of text without even knowing they do.
Why? If users scroll through endless text, they're less likely to read or engage. This often leads to abandoning the page and heading back to search.
3. Be the Expert (Or Enthusiast!)
Taking the time to document the thoughts and knowledge from real experts matters most.
AI blog articles are simply going to regurgitate what is already known and indexed. As a tool, AI can help of course, but I prefer to write completely originally in order to have a unique voice and bring new information to the online format. Did you noticed I generated some AI images for this article? I'd prefer to have real photos and graphics...but for the sake of publishing in a timely manner, it's a tool.
People can see through a generic blog faster than you’d think, so even if you are using AI heavily, make sure you’ve taken the time to customize it and bring authenticity to the articles. Even if you don't consider yourself an expert (I certainly don't), being researched and enthusiastic matters more than ever.
Why? AI Results are looking to bring new information to their results, so by "training" AI, your article will have more authority.
Changes to the Algo
I’m sure that many websites noticed a loss of organic traffic in 2024 on pages that had performed well in years past. Others saw massive increases in organic traffic by getting into the AI results. Beyond that, an abundance of sponsored ads on certain search terms rendered some organic traffic nearly extinct for a few months.
Google is highly aware of their user experience and always changing to adapt to their business model, but they also want to keep users searching. “Gaming the system” has never been the ideal long-term plan.
If you’d like your website to perform well in the long-term, you’ll need to work on it long-term.
In 2007 I could perform a one-time SEO audit and often send the website soaring to the first page. Nowadays I would not make flippant promises with out adequate research, but I hear them often.
In fact, I would be highly suspect of companies who do make those promises. I recently asked a cold-call SEO sales-person if they could put me at #1 on Google organically for the search term “iPhone” and they replied in the affirmative.
Maybe they’re just that good?
What do you do? SEO. What is that?
In todays day and age it’s likely related to: looking for obvious issues & errors, writing/publishing new content, testing on several devices and trying to empathize with the viewer and user.
Yes, there are trade secrets and tools that SEO Engineers utilize, but if you don’t have those three factors dialed, all the grease in the world won’t make that wheel spin. So for any of you still reading, you'd be surprised how much the power of word-of-mouth still rules. If you share this article with friends on a social media app, or send it to a website owner you know - you are the most powerful marketer there is. As powerful as SEO tactics can be, it's likely just the search engines way of interpreting old-school word of mouth.
- Lucas Holmgren
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