Takes.

The contrarian column. Opinionated essays on SEO, GEO, the industry, and the people in it. Written by someone who has been doing this since 2005 and is no longer interested in pretending the emperor is dressed.

64 takes / latest first

My Father Built Houses. I Build Rankings. Neither of Us Understands What the Other Does.

May 9, 2026
Take Flagship

I Got Fired by My Best Client and It Was the Best Thing That Happened to My Career

May 7, 2026
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I've Been Doing This for Twenty Years and I Still Google How to Do Things

May 2, 2026
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The Client Who Ranked Number One and Went Bankrupt

Apr 30, 2026
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I Charge $500 an Hour and I'm Underpriced

Apr 29, 2026
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The Redesign That Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Will Blame You For)

Apr 25, 2026
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SEO Broke Journalism and I Helped

Apr 24, 2026
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The SEO Audit Is a Sales Document (And Everyone Knows It)

Apr 17, 2026
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I Don't Use AI to Write This

Apr 11, 2026
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Why Your SEO Agency Can't Do AI Search

Apr 9, 2026
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Every PE Firm I've Worked With Made the Same SEO Mistake

Apr 3, 2026
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I Deleted a Client's Entire Website and Nobody Noticed for Three Weeks

Mar 22, 2026
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My Therapist Told Me to Stop Checking Rankings

Mar 22, 2026
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The Worst SEO Advice I Ever Gave Cost Someone Two Million Dollars

Mar 22, 2026
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AI SEO Is Not a Thing

Feb 22, 2026
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Attribution Is Astrology for Business People

Feb 16, 2026
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Google Knows Your SEO Agency's Playbook

Feb 15, 2026
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I Saved $1,500 a Year by Creating a Google Account Like a Normal Person

Feb 12, 2026
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I Took a Job at Big Tobacco and Learned What Marketing Actually Is

Feb 8, 2026
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The Loneliness of the Search Engine Optimizer

Jan 27, 2026
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The SEO Industry Needs You to Be Afraid

Jan 21, 2026
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Shared Hosting Is a Scam

Jan 19, 2026
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WordPress Made the Internet Worse

Jan 19, 2026
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SEO is a Hardware Problem

Jan 4, 2026
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Josh Woodward and the Future of Everything

Dec 31, 2025
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The SEO Industry Makes You Want to Become a Farmer

Dec 31, 2025
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I Sharted and Finally Understood the Helpful Content Update

Dec 30, 2025
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SEO Predictions Are Horoscopes

Dec 29, 2025
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AI Overviews Are Filtering Out Bad Traffic

Dec 25, 2025
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GEO Is Premature Optimization

Dec 24, 2025
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Beware the "SEO in 2026" Advice (Read This Instead)

Dec 18, 2025
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Readability Scores Are Nonsense (Not a Ranking Factor)

Dec 18, 2025
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You Don't Need a CDN for SEO (130ms Won't Save You)

Dec 16, 2025
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Your Site Doesn't Need an SEO Audit (You Need Content)

Dec 2, 2025
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The SEO Industry Needs Google's Opacity (Dirty Secret)

Dec 1, 2025
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You've Been Thinking About SEO Backwards (Flip It)

Dec 1, 2025
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Most SEO Case Studies Are Lies [How to Spot Them]

Nov 30, 2025
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SEO Reports Are Fiction (Creative Writing for Retainers)

Nov 30, 2025
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SEO Conferences Are $2,000 Commercials

Nov 29, 2025
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SEO Twitter Is an Echo Chamber (Hall of Mirrors)

Nov 29, 2025
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Google's Search Quality Team Is a PR Department

Nov 28, 2025
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SEO Certifications Are Worthless (All of Them)

Nov 28, 2025
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The SEO Playbook Nobody Will Sell You [Free]

Nov 28, 2025
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Core Web Vitals Are a Google Tax (Barely Matter for Rankings)

Nov 27, 2025
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Local SEO Is Yelp With Extra Steps (That's It)

Nov 27, 2025
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E-E-A-T Is Made Up (And You've Been Chasing a Ghost)

Nov 26, 2025
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The Death of SEO Never Comes (20 Years of False Predictions)

Nov 26, 2025
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AI Content Is the New Content Farm (Same Garbage, Faster)

Nov 25, 2025
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Domain Authority Is Meaningless (Stop Obsessing)

Nov 25, 2025
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Content Calendars Kill Content (Quantity Over Quality)

Nov 24, 2025
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SEO Agencies Are a Tax on Ignorance [Uncomfortable Truth]

Nov 24, 2025
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Backlinks Are PageRank Theater (It's Not 2010 Anymore)

Nov 23, 2025
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The "200 Ranking Factors" Myth That Won't Die

Nov 23, 2025
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SEO Tools Are Selling You Your Own Data ($400/Month)

Nov 22, 2025
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Technical SEO Is a Distraction (You Have a Content Problem)

Nov 22, 2025
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Keyword Research Is Procrastination (Just Publish Already)

Nov 21, 2025
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Stop Chasing Algorithm Updates (It's a Losing Game)

Nov 21, 2025
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Google Doesn't Owe You Traffic (You Built on Rented Land)

Nov 20, 2025
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The Best SEO Is Not Needing SEO (Build the Brand)

Nov 20, 2025
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Piston-Driven SEO

Jan 15, 2025
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Internal Links Beat Backlinks (For Most Sites)

Jan 14, 2025
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There's No Such Thing as an SEO Strategy

Aug 10, 2020
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SEO Is Alchemy (And We're All Pretending Otherwise)

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