You’re gonna need a fresh coffee for this one, because I am about to unpack 16 layers of BS and stupidity that so-called SEO “experts” and platforms have been feeding you. This isn’t just another rant – it’s a wake-up call that could save your business from the content marketing quicksand you’re probably stuck in right now. Buckle up, because these brutal truths might just make you want to fire your entire SEO team (and maybe yourself).

1. The “Number One Reason to Create Content is SEO” Fallacy

I’ve heard it again and again, from countless firms and SEO experts. They claim, based on data from some fancy SEO software company, that the number one reason to create content is for SEO. Let that sink in for a moment.

The Brutal Truth:

• This is like a hammer specialist saying the number one reason to build a house is to drive nails.
• It’s a self-serving argument that completely misses the point of content creation.
• If SEO is your primary goal, you’re already losing the game.

How to Fix It:

• Create content to solve problems, educate your audience, and drive sales.
• Use SEO as a tool, not as the end goal.
• Fire any “expert” who can’t see beyond their SEO tunnel vision.

2. The Pizza Maker’s Guide to SEO

Let’s put this in simpler terms. If a pizza company is training people how to be expert pizza makers, and they say “based on our data, the number one reason to make food is to create pizza” – you could easily detect how hilariously bad that assumption is.

The Brutal Truth:

• SEO firms and platforms have a vested interest in making you believe SEO is the be-all and end-all.
• Their data is skewed because they only see the world through their SEO-tinted glasses.
• You’re getting advice from people with a very limited perspective on business growth.

How to Fix It:

• Seek advice from those with skin in the game for the actual business goals, not just SEO technicians.
• Look at your entire business ecosystem, not just your search rankings.
• Remember: SEO is a slice of the pie, not the whole bakery.

3. The Struggle for Relevance

Here’s a truth bomb for you: SEO as we know it has been struggling to stay relevant for the past decade, and it’s losing ground especially in the age of AI tools. That’s why most of the major platforms are quickly converting to offer AI tools, literally wrapping ChatGPT in their branding and selling it back to you at a huge markup, asking you to continue to pay for a bunch of outdated features and tools you will never use, or will not likely help you moving forward.

Do you like Apples?

Odds are, if you’re invested into the latest “AI” iteration of the SEO titan platforms, you’re paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars for services, features and functions on last year’s outdated AI (because it’s cheaper for them), and you could have got better results, without training them on your data from a $20 direct subscription to ChatGPT.

How you like them apples?

• And No – The excuses don’t hold water. – “yeah but it brings all my data in one place”… that you store and get used to and dependent upon ALL your data being managed by them, and whatever limited functions they offer. They in turn scrape your data and train the AI on and use to serve your competitors. Read the fine print.

  This is more noise and stupidity.

The Brutal Truth:

• Every software as a service company, every SEO platform has been expanding their services to offer something more relevant than SEO.
• Just like when the ratings data companies went digital, they upcharge you to blend the old outdated tools with the new digital ones.
• They’re branching into content marketing, social media marketing, and now AI – because they know SEO is dying, and it doesn’t cut it anymore.
• If your SEO strategy hasn’t evolved in the last five years, you’re living in the digital dark ages.

How to Fix It:

• Demand a holistic digital marketing strategy, not just an SEO plan.
• Invest in creating value for your audience, not just ranking for keywords.
• Stay ahead of the curve by embracing new technologies and strategies.

4. The Flawed Belief Structure

Under the hood, most SEO firms still have a belief structure that’s fundamentally flawed. They believe that the purpose of content marketing is SEO. And if you follow that to its logical conclusion, you arrive at a digital wasteland.

The Brutal Truth:

• This mindset leads to top-ranking pages that get a lot of traffic, but they are frequently visited pages that people run away from in a hurry.
• You’re creating content that pleases algorithms but repels actual humans.
• High traffic numbers mean nothing if they’re not translating to sales.

How to Fix It:

• Focus on creating content that prioritizes humans, not bots and algorithms.
• Measure success by engagement, conversions, and sales – not just traffic.
• Build a content strategy that guides visitors through the entire customer journey, not just the search phase.

5. The Kitchen Sink Content Catastrophe

Want to know why your top-ranking pages aren’t making you any money? It’s because they’re full of what I call “kitchen sink content” – designed to trick robots instead of serving humans.

The Brutal Truth:

• Your SEO-optimized pages are probably providing a horrible user experience.
• You’re stuffing your content with every possible keyword and topic, creating a mess that no one wants to read.
• You might be ranking well, but you’re turning potential customers into active haters.

How to Fix It:

• Create focused, valuable content that addresses specific user needs.
• Prioritize user experience over keyword density.
• Remember: It’s better to rank lower and convert higher than to rank high and drive everyone away.

6. The Hot Dog Fiasco

Let me paint you a picture. If I search “how to make a hot dog”, and I click on a top-ranking result, I get a list of 10 pages that are all the same. They start with “what is a hot dog”, move on to hot dog definition, dabble in “Why is a hot dog?”, explore hot dog origins, dive into the chemical makeup of a hot dog, and if I’m an endurance athlete with the patience of a saint, I might scroll all the way down to find an oversimplified, watered-down, keyword-stuffed summary of how to make a hot dog.

The Brutal Truth:

• This is a nauseating and frustrating experience for users.
• Your audience isn’t stupid – they know exactly what you’re trying to do.
• This type of content doesn’t just fail to convert – it actively drives people away from your brand.

How to Fix It:

• Answer user queries directly and concisely.
• Provide real value, not just keyword-stuffed fluff.
• Structure your content in a way that respects your audience’s time and intelligence.

7. The Traffic Delusion

So what do the SEO “experts” take away from all this? Do they refine their approach? HECK NO! They walk away saying “content doesn’t generate sales”.

The Brutal Truth:

• Of course the content they create doesn’t generate sales – it’s not designed to!
• They’re so focused on tricking bots and algorithms to drive traffic that they sacrifice the user experience and sabotage sales in the process.
• They forget the point and purpose of content: to inform, engage, and ultimately convert.

How to Fix It:

• Align your content strategy with your sales journey. Pro-Tip: Stop referring to it as a “funnel” – the funnel concept assumes some magical force of gravity naturally pulls prospects through a prospect to conversion. There is no such magical force. There’s user experience, carrots and sticks.
• Create content that nurtures leads, not just attracts clicks.
• Make it easy and obvious for audience. Show them how all your content and digital presence is aligned to the mission and spirit of your brand. Example: Heroik creates content to demonstrate our discerning expertise, No-Bull consulting style and our commitment to bringing a sword of truth and discernment, to help businesses cut through the noise and BS to make better strategic decisions as they pursue their growth goals. If you enjoy our content, you’ll probably enjoy working with us.
• Measure the impact of your content on actual business metrics, not just SEO rankings. Traffic metrics do matter. time on site matters. If you’re just starting to learn how to develop a digital user experience, you need to pay attention to the metrics, but don’t lose sight of the goal and focus – that user journey and experience to drive conversions!

8. The “Traffic at All Costs” Mentality

Traffic at all costs seems to be the SEO motto, but I’ve never seen a client organization welcome that approach with open arms, especially when they figure out that the effort is chasing away prospective customers.

The Brutal Truth:

• More traffic doesn’t automatically mean more business.
• You could be attracting the wrong audience and damaging your brand in the process.
• This mentality is a shortcut to wasting your marketing budget.

How to Fix It:

• Focus on attracting qualified traffic that’s likely to convert.
• Optimize for user intent, not just search volume.
• Prioritize engagement and conversion metrics over raw traffic numbers.

9. The Expert Delusion

Remember, it’s not just the amateurs making these claims about the purpose of content, it’s the so-called Experts. So they have to be held accountable to the highest professional standards.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO “experts” are one-trick ponies who don’t understand the bigger picture of digital marketing, sales, or experience design. They have limited understanding and skill. Almost every business goal worth a darn, requires a multidisciplinary skillset. So why oh why would you trust the perspective of a one-hat harry over a jack of all trades?
• They’re often more focused on justifying their services than on driving real business results.
• True expertise goes beyond SEO – it encompasses business strategy, user experience, and conversion optimization.

How to Fix It:

• Demand results that impact your bottom line, not just vanity metrics.
• Work with professionals who understand your business goals, not just SEO tactics.
• PRO TIP – You must first know what, precisely, your goals and objectives are, what the performance indicators are, all in crystal clear high def, and what your roadmap looks like before bringing in an SEO vendor in the first place. If you’re skipping or half-assing planning and goal setting you’re wasting everyone’s time talent and money – mostly your own!
• Don’t be afraid to challenge your “experts” – if they can’t explain their strategy in terms of business growth, it’s time to find new experts.

10. The Ad-Centric Misconception

When you think about successful SEO projects, the clients who do not care about the user experience are almost always in the Ad business. Their pages and sites serve advertisements. Their customers are the advertisers, not the end user. These are an SEO specialists wet dream – and easy button.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO tactics are designed for ad-based business models, not for businesses trying to sell products or services.
• It’s really easy to trick humans into clicking on your link and serving up a bunch of ads. That’s the sweet spot for SEO revenue. But for business owners – it’s snake oil and bullshit approach – that will do more harm than good.
• If you’re not in the ad business, these tactics could be actively harming your brand and customer relationships.
• You can’t treat your potential customers like ad impressions and expect to build a successful business.

How to Fix It:

• Tailor your SEO strategy to your specific business model.
• Prioritize user experience and customer satisfaction over ad impressions.
• Build a content strategy that nurtures long-term customer relationships, not just short-term clicks.

11. The Fundamental Philosophical Issue

The conclusions and headlines from the SEO expert community are not just a statistical mistake or minor bias, but symptomatic of a fundamental philosophical issue.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO strategies are built on a flawed understanding of what drives business success.
• They prioritize short-term gains (traffic) over long-term value (customer relationships and sales). They obfuscate and convolute data from the ad based traffic model and try to make it appear as if it is a successful strategy for business owners. They are blending the data to trick people into believing that SEO is solving a bigger part of the marketing puzzle than it actually does.
• This misalignment can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities.

How to Fix It:

• Develop a content strategy that aligns with your overall business philosophy.
• Focus on building value for your customers, not just hitting SEO targets.
• Invest in creating a strong brand and loyal customer base, not just high search rankings.

12. The Responsibility Gap

The values and responsibilities of the actors involved are different. The SEO guy is like a DoorDash delivery driver, and the marketing director is like the guy that makes the food. The delivery guy has the easier job, with less responsibility. He has way less skin in the game and doesn’t care if the customer’s food is cold when it gets to their door. Their focus is quantity not quality.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO firms treat your business like a delivery, not a culinary experience.
• They’re focused on delivering traffic, not on ensuring that traffic translates to business success.
• This lack of responsibility can lead to strategies that harm your brand in the long run.

How to Fix It:

• Work with partners who are invested in your long-term success, not just short-term metrics.
• Cultivate operational awareness – Recognize where and how SEO experts are fundamentally biased. They have sunk investments in their skillset, learning the jargon and tools (usually specializing in a single platform), and are seeking a return themselves. This makes them biased not to drive your business growth, but to get positive return on investing in the great big BS machine and various bloated SEO platforms.
• Ensure your SEO strategy is integrated with your overall business strategy.
• Hold your SEO team accountable for business results, not just search rankings. Or better yet, if they’re your current core marketing effort – consider firing them. Imagine hiring a hammer expert to build your house. This is a fundamentally flawed engagement from the start. You end up building a strategy around their specialty instead of having a team aligned and focused on YOUR business goals. What the heck are you thinking structuring a team like this?! You need the big picture, blueprints, experienced builders; general contractors who have broad and deep skillsets to drive the larger goals. Unless you’re already 5 men deep on your Tech team – you probably should not be engaging an SEO expert, especially if there’s no one to oversee and argue with him about putting nails in everything!
  • Caveat – I’m not saying SEO is not important. I’m saying there’s more to building a house than knowing how to swing a hammer.

13. The Click-Farm Fallacy

A majority of high pay SEO work is for click-farm operations, traffic and clicks at all costs. They do not give two shits about the impact on the brands displayed in the advertisements that appear on their sites and pages.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO tactics are designed for businesses that don’t care about brand reputation or customer satisfaction.
• These tactics can be actively harmful for businesses that rely on customer trust and loyalty.
• If your SEO strategy looks like it’s designed for a click farm, it’s probably harming your business.

How to Fix It:

• Develop an SEO strategy that prioritizes quality over quantity. If you don’t have a broader WRITTEN digital strategy, you definitely don’t need to be creating an SEO strategy right out of the gate. That’s like building a house without blueprints and making plans with a plumber. Let me save you from stupid here. Start with the fundamentals first.
• Focus on building a strong brand and positive user experience.
• Measure success by customer satisfaction and loyalty, not just click-through rates.

14. The ROI Obfuscation

When the so-called SEO experts are pointing at a graph and talking about conversions, do they separate the Advertiser clients who profit through impressions and clicks, vs. the businesses who profits through conversions? NOPE. They are blending data to obfuscate.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO reports are designed to confuse rather than clarify.
• They often mix metrics from different types of businesses to make their results look better. They’re not comparing apples to apples here. As we’ve established, ad revenue from clicks and impressions is easier to obtain than revenue from a sales transaction. They are entirely different business models. So blurring the data from one with the other is a total sneaky move to misinform the unsuspecting business community from the realities and realistic expectations.
• This obfuscation can lead to poor decision-making and wasted resources.
• By blurring all this together they set unrealistic expectations for businesses. Businesses assume all the traffic is qualified, or targeted, and not a heap of sawdust. And then they use the corollary to demonize or blame user-centered content, claiming it costs more and converts less…. let’s see about that by removing all the ad based businesses juicing the numbers.

How to Fix It:

• Demand clear, relevant reporting that relates directly to your business model.
• Insist on seeing data that’s specific to businesses like yours, not industry-wide averages.
• Focus on metrics that directly impact your bottom line, not vanity metrics.

15. The Sports Analogy

Mixing data from ad-based models with sales-based models is like comparing basketball scores with football scores and coming to the conclusion that that the best NFL team is worse at sports than the worst NBA team. It’s like claiming the Detroit Pistons are better at sports than the 49ers- okay? Seriously. All because basketball tends to score more points than football. These two models are vastly different on many different levels, especially in terms of SEO performance. This is comparing apples and oranges.

The Brutal Truth:

• Many SEO strategies are based on false comparisons and irrelevant benchmarks.
• What works for one type of business may be disastrous for another. Ad impressions and random clicks are easy. Qualified traffic led to conversion is much, much harder. If you’re in the ad revenue game you want to see data for others in that game. If you’re in the sales and conversion game, you don’t want to see the data from the easy street of the ad revenue world.
• Blindly following industry “best practices” without considering your specific context is a recipe for failure.

How to Fix It:

• Develop KPIs that are specific to your business and industry.
• Benchmark against businesses with similar models and goals, not just anyone who happens to rank well.
• Remember that SEO success looks different for different businesses – define what it means for you.

16. The Path Forward

So, how do we handle it? It’s simple – we start by looking at the business model. Are we playing basketball or football, are we doing easy lay-up traffic, or playing full contact and trying to drive the ball down the field to conversion.

The Brutal Truth:

• There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to SEO and content marketing.
• Your strategy needs to be tailored to your specific business model and goals.
• Success requires a holistic approach that goes beyond just SEO tactics. If you’re not 5 guys deep on your tech crew – you shouldn’t be starting with an SEO specialist. You don’t hire a plumber or an electrician to build you a house, especially if you don’t have blueprints. Start with strategy, and a core cross-functional team.
• Focusing on improving the user experience and processes and strategies surrounding this, creating high-quality content and breadcrumbing experiences to drive towards transactions, will pay off in the long run, time and time again with dividends. Half-assed low quality, SEO content, impresses no one, and has a limited shelf life and thus a high cost. Build a content foundation that will last and continue to serve you as you get better and more efficient with it.

How to Fix It:

• Develop a comprehensive digital strategy that aligns SEO with your overall business goals.
• Focus on creating value for your customers, not just hitting SEO targets.
• Continuously test, learn, and adapt your approach based on real business results.

The Bottom Line

It’s time to wake up and smell the digital coffee. SEO isn’t about gaming the system or tricking algorithms. It’s about creating real value for your audience and guiding them towards becoming customers. If your SEO strategy isn’t directly contributing to your bottom line, it’s time for a serious overhaul. If you don’t know if it’s contributing or not – you need a trusted advisor to help you assess & understand the connection or lack thereof.

Remember, the goal isn’t to be the best at SEO. The goal is to be the best at using SEO to grow your business. So stop playing by outdated rules, stop listening to “experts” who are stuck in the past, and start creating an SEO strategy that actually works in today’s digital landscape.

Your move, hot shot. Are you going to keep wasting money on traffic that doesn’t convert, or are you ready to create an SEO strategy that actually drives transactions? The choice is yours, but the clock is ticking. Your competitors are figuring this out as we speak. Don’t be left behind.

Want some more help?

Check out Heroik’s Growth Accelerator and Trusted Advisor Programs that are specially designed guided programs to support digital transformation efforts.

Heroik also offers a free tailor-made business roadmap to help you chart a strategic course NOW. We also offer a free project planning tool. Start with a plan and roadmap, then create your first key project. Then stick to the plan, adapt and pivot as necessary.