WebLinkR Interview - we spoke with SEO Reddit Mod WebLinkR about, well, SEO

I’ve been interested in SEO for a long time, I’ve always considered it a good proxy for some of the other parts of web work folk should be doing but often have a hard time getting buy-in for.

When I approach SEO, depending on the hat I’m wearing for my clients I will either approach it from a technical or content side. This is because I know my way around code and can string a sentence together.

However, this is only a fraction of what is needed for SEO (and anyone who claims just technical, or just content is enough is probably misinformed).

Admittedly, this isn’t something I know much about so I wanted to speak to someone who has thought much more about this.

Enter WebLinkR, a moderator of the SEO subreddit who has, in my opinion, very sensible thoughts on SEO. In countless threads where people are getting excited by a new buzzword, they quietly pipe up about fundamentals, or dispelling a myth.

WebLinkR very kindly agreed to answer some of my questions, which I’m sharing here.

First up, can you tell us a little about yourself

I’ve been doing SEO since I built my frist commercial website in 1995 but professionally since 2003. I’m a PageRank SEO¹ who distils SEO down to its basic requirements and the reason I dislike SEO myths is that it holds people back from success - and my pet peeves are telling people to wait, that SEO takes time or that just writing good content will get them ranking and clicks. SEO is much more complex than this and while its not instant - time waits for no site.

What is the biggest misconception you repeatedly see with SEO?

That Google cares about content - it does not.

I think people have a hard time grasping that Google can’t really judge a page without knowing a search query first. “Good” is very subjective. If you could “fix” one thing about the industry, what would that be?

The disinformation about Google or LLMs caring about content (as above) and content structure etc.

I’m guessing I already know the answer to this, but When asked for learning resources, you often cite what some have called “classics” (Matt Cutts, etc), do you think the fundamentals will ever change, and why do you think people often skip past resources like this?

Unless something beats PageRank and I don’t see it happening the fundamentals won’t change.

People wanting SEO to change are just banging their heads against a wall. It’s worse than the HCU² hit group trying to tell people to stop using Google.

What, aside from money (💰 ;-) ) excites you the most about this industry?

The ability to influence Google.

It is a lot of fun! When it comes to technical SEO, what do you which more web developers knew about making things on the web

Web developers need to understand that its page rank and not dev quality - same as copywriters need to learn it’s not about content quality. I’m not saying they don’t matter I’m saying PageRank is agnostic.

End of interview

Whilst I still think technical SEO is important since it is a proxy for other great things (fast web pages are better for people, accessible pages are better for people), and I still think that engaging content is fun to write because it is fun to read. I definitely think these answers highlight a large blind spot in my thinking.

We need to move away from build-it-and-they-will-come attitudes and more towards building relationships on the web that help search engines see the value in a page, not for the page itself, but in how other parts of the web view said page.

Thanks so much WebLinkR!