College drop out claims that SEO isn't complicated

I just got back from Chicago last night after a weekend away from Los Angeles – just my luck to pick the coldest weekend of the winter to visit (an average of -1°F)...

I was one of the fortunate ones not to have my flight canceled, though it was delayed by an hour. I got back at 10:00 pm last night and after a 6:30 am workout, I’m ready to get back to it!

Anyways, I’m going to answer a question I get asked a lot (especially by brand owners) which is:

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“Is SEO really as complicated as people make it seem?”

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My answer:

No, SEO isn’t complicated.

At the most elementary level, the internet is a series of content and links.

I’ve found myself saying this to other SEOs, and many of them take it as an insult. 

To a degree, I understand their frustration. They possess a ton of knowledge and I’ve boiled it down to two words: content & links. 

That’d be the equivalent of me saying that being a pilot is just lift & thrust. Of course, there’s more to it than that, though I still don’t have a solid understanding of how planes fly. 

I don’t believe that what I do for Shopify brands is all that difficult. 

I graduated with a 3.9 GPA and a degree in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I spent 4 years analyzing enormous geospatial databases and making all sorts of connections from them. 

For my senior thesis, I taught myself thermodynamics and created a risk assessment for sea level rise in the state of Florida based on historical hurricane data, localized bathymetry, and current climate trends.

Then I mapped out the estimated economic & property damage based on that data. 

That was far more difficult than SEO. Side note, I would not recommend that you buy real estate in Florida. 

But ironically, it taught me how to think like an SEO, specifically the relationship between keywords, pages, and links. 

Now, when I build strategies or audit sites, I don’t need tons of tools to tell me what’s going on. 

Again, the internet is just a series of content, links, and yes, keywords. And once you simplify it down to this level, I guarantee that your life will be so much easier. 

Take this brand for example – we’ve been working with them for 12 months and this is what we’ve done on a monthly basis: 

- optimizing the product & collection pages

- writing 4 blogs per month

- building 6-8 links each month

Their organic traffic has more than doubled from 35k organic visitors to 80k/month: 

It is quite literally as simple as knowing which levers to pull and the amount of time you spend pulling them. 

You'll likely never look at SEO the same way again. 

That is all for today.

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell