Your SEO Playbook Is Wrong
Or: Why I stopped chasing hacks and started being useful instead
I used to think SEO was a checklist. Write a blog post ✓. Get a backlink ✓. Submit a sitemap ✓. Repeat until rich.
I watched smart founders burn themselves out on this content treadmill, publishing thin articles into the void and wondering why their traffic graphs looked like flat lines. Their analytics dashboards became monuments to wasted effort.
Then I realized something that changed everything: we were all doing it wrong.
The Problem with "SEO Hacks"
Most SEO advice reads like a get-rich-quick scheme. "Secret tricks that Google doesn't want you to know!" "Untapped loopholes!" "Growth hacks that will 10x your traffic!"
It's no wonder so much content sounds like it was written by a robot trying to sell you something—because it was.
The real issue isn't that SEO is impossibly hard. It's that we're focused on the wrong things entirely. We treat basic housekeeping like it's some clever strategy, creating a false sense of progress while our competitors lap us.
Thinking your XML sitemap is a growth lever is like thinking that putting a sign on your door is your entire marketing plan. Sure, you should have one. But Google was going to find your pages anyway. It's not a hack—it's the bare minimum.
You check off the boxes and wonder why the traffic needle isn't moving. It's because you're busy with the ticket to the game, not learning how to play.
What Actually Works: Three Approaches That Don't Suck
1. Answer Real Questions (Not "Chase Keywords")
Stop obsessing over two-word keywords that every competitor is fighting over. Instead, answer the messy, specific, human questions your customers are actually asking.
The game has changed. People don't just search for "CRM software" anymore. They search for things like:
"What's the best CRM for a small sales team that integrates with Slack and doesn't cost $200 per user?"
"How do I convince my boss we need a better project management tool when he thinks Excel is fine?"
"Why is our customer churn so high and what can we do about it without hiring a data scientist?"
These are the questions you need to answer, and you need to answer them better than anyone else on the internet.
The key insight: Your product should be the logical solution to the problem you solve, not a keyword you stuff into a blog post.
2. Steal From Your Competitors (But Do It Better)
This is the most ruthless, effective tactic you're probably not using enough. Why guess what works when your competitors have already spent the time and money to figure it out for you?
But don't just "write content around" their keywords. That's too passive. Find their best-performing article and create something so much better that Google has no choice but to rank you above them.
Here's how to find their weaknesses:
Is their "Ultimate Guide for 2022" hilariously out of date?
Is their list of "5 Ways" missing the 10 other ways that actually matter?
Is it just a wall of text with no useful images, examples, or actionable steps?
Are they answering the surface-level question but missing the deeper concerns?
The key insight: Don't just make another version. Make the definitive version. The one that makes the original look lazy by comparison.
3. Fix Your Old Stuff (The Unsexy Secret to Growth)
Here's the single most powerful, high-ROI tactic that most people ignore because it's not as exciting as writing something new:
Stop focusing all your energy on creating new content.
It's way easier to push a post from position #7 to #2 than it is to get a brand-new article to rank at all. Google loves fresh content, and updating an old post is the fastest way to signal that freshness.
Posts that work for this approach:
Find an old article sitting on page 2 of Google
Update the stats and replace outdated information
Add a new section you missed the first time
Add better images, charts, or a short video
Improve the title and meta description based on what you've learned
The key insight: Your best opportunities for growth are often hiding in the content you've already written.
The Real Rules of SEO
Every industry is different, but here's what actually matters across the board:
Listen to what Google is telling you. Your Google Search Console account is your single source of truth. It tells you what people are searching for to find you, and where your pages are falling short. Spend time in there. Most founders never do.
Be a good tour guide. A smart internal linking strategy is how you guide both users and Google through your site. Link your best-performing articles to your new ones to pass the authority along. Think of it as creating a helpful path through your expertise.
Forget about posting frequency. One incredible, comprehensive guide a month will crush four rushed, mediocre posts a week. Quality wins. Every single time. Your audience can tell the difference, and so can Google.
Accept that this is a long game. You're not going to see results overnight. This takes time. Months, not days. But the payoff is building an asset that works for you 24/7, even when you're sleeping.
What This Actually Looks Like
Here's a real example from my own experience:
I checked my analytics and found a post about "common sales mistakes" from two years ago. It was getting a trickle of traffic, sitting on page two of Google—close, but not close enough.
I spent one afternoon updating it: I added three more mistakes based on recent client experiences, embedded a new chart showing the cost of each mistake, and rewrote the intro to be more specific about who this was for. I didn't even promote it that hard.
Result: Within a month, it jumped to position #2 for its main keyword. Organic traffic to that single post tripled. It wasn't a hack. I just made it more useful.
Getting Started (Without the Checklists)
Pick 3-5 old blog posts that are already ranking on page two or three of Google
Spend the next month just refreshing and improving them. Don't write anything new
Find your top competitor and identify their single best piece of content. Put a plan in your calendar to create a 10x better version next month
Spend 30 minutes a week in your Google Search Console. Look for pages with high impressions but low clicks, and rewrite their titles
Be patient and consistent
That's it. No "secret loopholes." No "untapped tricks." Just a relentless focus on quality and usefulness.
The Bottom Line
SEO works when it doesn't feel like you're "doing SEO." When you genuinely try to be the most helpful answer to a user's question, people find you. When you're just trying to trick an algorithm, they can tell.
The best SEO doesn't feel like marketing at all. It feels like you're building the best resource on the internet for a problem you care about.
And that's not a strategy you can hack—it's just being useful.