SEO is Simple, Not Easy: What Actually Moves the Needle

About ten years ago, a digital marketing agency approached my parents. They ran a small business and had heard they needed help with their online presence. The agency pulled up Google Analytics, pointed at a few traffic spikes, and warned that something looked wrong. Maybe even malicious, they said. They proposed a plan to investigate and fix it as part of a broader digital marketing package. The price tag ran into the thousands.

My parents asked me to review the plan before they signed.

I found pages of jargon dressed up as strategy. The pitch leaned on vague promises about "optimisation" and "digital transformation." It ignored the things that actually matter for a website. It offered nothing concrete.

I joined the next meeting. Every time they made something sound complicated, I asked some simple questions: What does that actually mean? Why does that matter? Their pitch unraveled. They tried to sell my parents thousands of dollars of unnecessary work, using confusion as a sales tactic.

That experience stuck with me. I believe the SEO industry struggles with this type of smoke and mirrors and it's why I try to cut through it.

The fitness analogy

If you want to get in shape, the formula is simple. Do a handful of compound exercises, squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows, consistently. Increase the load over time. Eat enough protein. Sleep. That's it.

But simplicity doesn't sell. Magazines and fitness programs thrive on novelty. So the industry invents complexity: new exercises, new diets, new supplements. Shiny new things sell. Tried and true doesn't, at least not to the same extent.

SEO works the same way.

The fundamentals bore people. So the industry dresses them up. It invents tactics, frameworks, and jargon to suggest a secret formula that only experts know. That formula simply doesn't exist.

The difference between simple and easy matters. Getting fit is simple, but it's not easy. Showing up to the gym every week for months and years is hard. The challenge isn't knowing what to do. The challenge is doing it consistently.

SEO isn't any different.

The three pillars

SEO boils down to three foundational components: technical foundations, content, and links. This isn't a secret. It hasn't changed in decades.

Technical Foundations

Can search engines crawl your site? Does it load quickly? Is it mobile-friendly? Does the structure make sense?

Most modern online business platforms handle the basics. WordPress, Shopify, Webflow cover most of this reasonably well right out of the box. Large sites with hundreds of thousands of pages need more care, but most businesses face the same core questions: can search engines find your pages, and do users enjoy using your site?

Content

Do you answer the questions people actually want answered? Do you cover topics deeply enough to earn trust?

Write what people want to read. Solve their problems and do it consistently across the topics that matter to your business.

Links

Backlinks act as citations. Google borrowed its original algorithm from academic publishing. Papers with more citations carried more weight. This is still the case today and websites follow the same logic. Links from trusted, relevant sources build authority.

These pillars haven't changed. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) hasn't changed them. AI hasn't changed them. Algorithm updates reshuffle the results, but the fundamentals stay the same.

When someone tries to sell you something more complicated, ask why.

What makes it hard

If SEO is so simple, why do so few people succeed?

Because simple doesn't mean easy. The hard part isn't understanding the work. The challenge is doing it consistently, at volume, over time.

Technical SEO is hard because it's monotonous. I spent years working in SEO for websites, both large and small. On large sites, I made tiny changes across hundreds of thousands of pages. I tested, waited, measured, and repeated. Once a site reached reasonable optimisation, the work evolved into steady experimentation and A/B testing. The process worked then and it still works today. It's just not exciting.

Link building is the hardest part of SEO. I won't pretend link building is enjoyable. It transforms into a sales role. You email strangers. You build relationships from scratch. You ask them to link to your site. You hear no far more than yes.

Rejection takes a real emotional toll, especially when you face it at scale. The people who succeed at link building don't rely on tricks. They show up for the boring research, follow a process, and invest years in building relationships. I tip my hat to the link builders. Much respect to them.

Content is hard because of volume. Research takes time. Writing takes time. Editing takes time. Then you repeat the process next week, next month, next year.

The sites that win at SEO don't chase clever hacks. They just keep showing up while the others jump ship for the newest shiny thing.

SEO rewards consistency, which is tedious and boring. It's simple, but hard.

The overcomplicating trap

I've watched people calculate keyword density to the decimal. I've read theories about internal linking structures based on mathematical models and inverse graphs that claim you need links at precise intervals.

These complex ideas miss the basic question: would anyone actually want to read this?

When you optimise for an algorithm instead of a person, you've already lost. The algorithm exists to surface content that helps people. You don't need the middleman. Optimise for people instead.

Panic often causes overcomplication. Rankings drop. An update rolls out. GEO becomes the new buzzword. Suddenly everyone declares SEO dead, triggering a mad stampede toward whatever new tactic promises to fix things. Meanwhile, the fundamentals that have always worked continue to churn out results.

The fundamentals don't change and people find that boring. They abandon the basics because they assume new always means better. But in SEO, boring works.

Two kinds of fear

I'd be lying if I said I don't feel fear working in SEO. Large companies control the rules. An algorithm update can cut traffic overnight, even when you do everything right.

But there are actually two kinds of fear.

Healthy fear keeps you honest. It pushes you away from shady tactics. It stops you from buying spam links, or spinning up private networks, or trying to game the system with the grey-hat tactic of the month. This fear is the fear of getting penalised and it nudges you toward building something sustainable.

Panic does the opposite. Panic makes you abandon what works. It drives you to chase every new trend because someone online claims the game has changed. This fear is the fear of missing the next big thing and it makes you overcomplicate the process because sitting with uncertainty feels unbearable.

GEO didn't kill SEO. It just added another way to surface answers when people ask questions. The fundamentals still apply. If you already create genuinely useful content, build authority, and keep your technical foundations solid, a new way of surfacing search results won't send you scrambling.

Healthy fear keeps you steady. Panic makes you reckless.

How AI changes the equation

AI is arguably the biggest disruptor the industry has seen. It's changed the landscape significantly. A single person can now do the work that once required a team, with AI handling much of the heavy lifting at scale. But this article is about cementing a different point: SEO is simple. AI doesn't change that equation. It just makes some of the hard parts easier to execute.

We've written more about how AI fits into content strategies here.

Why good agencies are still worth it

None of this dismisses the SEO industry. I love SEO. Ten years ago, I couldn't believe that I could write something online and turn it into free marketing. That idea amazed me then and it still does today.

Plenty of agencies do excellent work.

Good SEO agencies earn their fees because they do the hard, boring work consistently and at scale. They build outreach systems. They maintain relationships. They execute month after month. They can accomplish in weeks what might take you half a year.

This isn't gospel, just my experience. The agencies I've enjoyed working with have been the ones where I understood exactly what they were doing. I knew I could probably do it myself, but it would take me far longer, and they'd do it better because they've got the practice. They do it day in, day out.

The best ones don't hide their methods. You'll see some SEO people on LinkedIn openly sharing exactly how they run a project, step by step. They're not worried about giving away secrets because the method isn't the secret. Clients aren't paying for hidden knowledge. They're paying for someone to do the work well and consistently, so they don't have to.

The bottom line

SEO isn't an add-on or an afterthought. It's part of building something useful online. Think of it like tending a garden. Water it. Give it light. Take care of it. Over time, it produces results.

If you answer real questions that people ask, build genuine authority in your space, and make your site easy to find and use, you're doing SEO.

The formula is simple:

• Solid technical foundations
• Content that helps people
• Links that show trust

The execution is hard:

• Consistency over months and years
• Work that compounds
• Showing up when it feels boring

No secrets. No magic. Just fundamentals, applied again and again.

Simplicity doesn't sell. But it works.

Do the basics. Do them well. Keep doing them.

And if you hire someone to do it for you, you now know what to look for.