I hate old people

Way back in 2022 when I was still freelancing, I worked with this surf brand.

If you can believe this, I wrote a few articles for them (AI wasn’t around yet) and charged them $150 per article.

Honestly, these were simpler times. I was poor but things were simpler.

Anyways, I caught up with the Founder the other day — he’s a good dude and he randomly hits me up for SEO & other growth decisions, I’ll always make time to speak with him — I don’t charge him anything.

I’m a bit biased too — I love working with surf brands.

Anyways, he told me that the week prior he attended a free 4-hour SEO webinar.

It was run by a guy who is a self-proclaimed “SEO Expert, Author, Professional Speaker.”

I didn’t make any of that up, that’s literally the meta title from his personal brand site.

“SEO Expert” would normally be a red flag, but I looked into this guy, he’s worked with some big names and the case studies seem to be legit from what I can tell.

The webinar was broken into a few parts:

• He gave a crash course on SEO

• He held a Q&A on the crash course

• He then audited a handful of sites that belonged to some of the attendees, including my Founder friend

I was most interested in the site audit and what he had to say about the surf brand’s site.

I’ve seen the site before — I used to work on it, and it hasn’t changed much since.

I also did most of the on-page SEO when I wrote those articles, so I knew the SEO aspects of the site were solid.

Apparently, Mr. SEO Expert, Author, Professional Speaker didn’t think so.

He had a few things to say, here are the cliff notes:

• the home page needs 1200-8000 words

• get rid of all the videos on the site, even the UGC ones

• he told the Founder to go on podcasts to get backlinks

If you’re still reading, I hope you laughed as hard as I did when you read these.

First off, who in their right mind would add 1200 words to the home page, much less 8000? If you write 8000 words, take it to a publisher and turn it into a NYT Best Seller.

Second, the brand’s flagship product is a wetsuit, and speaking as a surfer myself, videos are extremely important to the online buying process, especially UGC videos.

And last, podcasts… Come on, be serious. That is the lamest strategy I’ve ever heard, a Founder can only be on so many podcasts, not to mention the effort & time it would take to land podcast appearances. It’s simply not scalable.

Then it hit me.

The Founder had name dropped a few people the guy had worked with in the past when we first started talking.

I recognized many of the names, you would too.

Tony Robbins was one of them.

And Robbins is a rich guy who only hires the best talent, including SEOs, so I figured the guy would give solid advice.

But the minute he told me about the 8000 word home page and podcast syndication, I thought the guy was a joke.

But then I was reminded of something that I’ve told you and I actively tell brands all the time.

“It depends.”

The primary principles of SEO remain true across all websites: create a simple technical structure, write relevant content, and consistently build links.

But as you approach SEO in different industries, like local, eCommerce, or B2B, the specifics change.

In this case, Mr. SEO Expert, Author, Professional Speaker gave SEO advice that was correct in the realm of personal brand sites.

How do I know this? Because I’ve actually worked on some of the personal brand sites that he name dropped, even further back in 2021.

For about 6 months I freelanced for a personal brand web design agency, we worked on $100,000 website redesigns and I managed the SEO for all of them.

I signed an NDA, so I can’t tell you exactly which sites they were, but most of the clients were on par with Tony Robbins in terms of wealth & popularity.

They were Gary Vee-type people.

And the long home pages, no videos, and podcast link building were exactly what we recommended that those sites do in order to grow.

However, this advice is total shit for eCommerce brands.

Why?

Let’s go point by point:

1) 8000 words on a home page? I don’t know any successful eCom brand whose home page exceeds 500-600 words.

2) No UGC videos? Only take these off your site if you’re interested in making less money.

3) Podcast backlinks? You’re building a consumer brand, not a personal brand — you’re supposed to make your brand more money, not get more IG followers. Just pay for links so you can effectively grow your company.

I explained all of these in great detail to my friend, and explained to him what is working in eCommerce SEO right now.

He opted not to implement any of the suggestions from Mr. SEO Expert, Author, Professional Speaker.

Smart move.

Catch you next time.

Kai