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I think most businesses are wasting money on SEO reports.
Every month, they get:
“Your rankings improved.”
“Your impressions increased.”
“Your visibility is growing.”
And everyone celebrates.
But here’s the uncomfortable question:
Did anyone actually do anything?
Did they call?
Did they visit?
Did they request directions?
Did they message you?
Did they buy?
Because if your SEO agency can only show you rankings and impressions, but can't explain what happened after people found your business...
What exactly are you paying them to achieve?
I’d rather see a business with fewer impressions and more meaningful customer actions than a business with impressive traffic numbers that produce nothing.
SEO should not be a vanity project.
Visibility is valuable. But business action is the point.
Agree or disagree?
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Two years ago, I was charging less than a grand for a website. This year, I’ve shipped identity systems for companies at their most critical funding rounds.
Same hands. Same tools.
The only thing that changed is I stopped punishing myself for being fast. When you bill hourly, you’re literally charging less as you get better.
I stopped selling "time" and started pricing for what a successful launch or a successful rebrand is worth to the company. Positioning isn't just what you say to clients. It’s what you charge them.
Charging hourly only makes sense in two cases:
1. When you're starting out (can't properly scope a project)
2. For revisions
One of the biggest mistakes I see in business websites is trying to say everything at once.
More sections. More text. More buttons. More information.
But if someone lands on your website and still can’t tell what you do, who you help, and why they should care within a few seconds, adding more content usually won’t fix the problem.
Good web design isn’t about fitting as much as possible onto a page.
It’s about knowing what deserves attention and making that message impossible to miss.
A simple website with a clear message will usually do more for a business than a beautiful website that leaves people confused.
That’s something I always keep in mind when designing.
Search is getting more conversational, more generated, and harder to predict. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are increasingly answering questions before anyone reaches the traditional list of links. That changes a lot for publishers, brands, and content teams.
Less than some of the vocabulary around it suggests, though. The underlying problem is the same one it's always been: content that doesn't answer the question clearly doesn't perform, regardless of what's doing the surfacing.
A few things get more important, not less: clear structure, useful information, consistent terminology, a hierarchy that reflects how people think, and copy that answers the actual question instead of performing interpretive dance around a keyword.
Whether the next phase gets called SEO, GEO, AEO, or something that hasn't been coined yet matters less than the question I keep returning to: can people (and now machines) understand what this content is trying to say?
The interface is new. The problem isn't.
#SEO #ContentStrategy #InformationArchitecture