90 Days Into SEO, I Realised I'd Been Solving the Wrong Problems
The subtle SEO truths you only notice after you start
Over the last 3 months, SEO became a very different challenge to the one I expected.
I went into it with a head full of advice. I had a strong sense that I needed to do it “right”, and that if I missed something important early on, I’d pay for it later. But what surprised me wasn’t how much there was to learn, even though there was a heck of a lot.
It was how much of it didn’t matter yet.
When I started, I began my first project: an eCommerce store selling wall art.
I then began the normal processes of…
Exact keyword matching. How else will Google know what keyword I’m going for if I’m not making it clear throughout the page?
Writing heaps of blog posts. After all, “more pages” means more surface area, and more places for people to find me.
I wasn’t just going for thin content, either. I was doing serious research, digging into old books on London’s history and building data-heavy tables. Not only was I getting ready to be cited by Perplexity, but I was creating link bait which was sure to earn a few backlinks!
Now—none of these is a bad strategy on its own.
In fact, several of the books I read at the start told me to think like this. What’s more is that it made sense. Within a month, I’d made clear to Google what my site was about, and I’d published a whole bunch of high-quality content to that effect.
Every night, I’d check Google Search Console like a gambler refreshing a betting app. Surely this was the day Google noticed me…
…for the longest time, it wasn’t. For a brief stint in the middle, I nearly gave up. Nothing I was doing seemed to be working. But why?
My thinking wasn’t wrong. But there were definitely some subtleties I’d missed in my enthusiasm to get stuck in. Subtleties which it takes some practise and experience to figure out.
It turns out, I’d misunderstood exactly where the difficulty was.
3 surprises which took experience to realise
Here are some of the ways my views on SEO changed once I got stuck in.
#1: Backlinks are less romantic than I expected
I’d always known that, to have a chance at ranking, I’d need other sites to link to me.
The common myth is that, if you create worthwhile content, people will link to it. Hah! Only a fool would be so naive. If your content has no links and no ranks, then no one’s going to be able to find and link to it in the first place. So, not being a fool, I put together some content I believed to be worthwhile and got ready for some outreach.
I put together a list of blogs in my niche. I read through their T’s and C’s for collaboration. I wrote some outreach emails…
…but something played on my mind. I wondered about something I’d heard mentioned on YouTube a lot: buying backlinks. I mean, it’d save a whole load of time and energy. But isn’t it a bit of a “naughty no no”?
Well…no.
Outreach is free. But it’s time-consuming, crowded and unreliable.
On the other hand, I could just “outsource” my link-building. It’s more expensive, sure. But this way, the result is all but guaranteed, and it saves me a heck of a lot of time.
Honestly? A worthwhile trade-off for a solo operator like me.
I’ll still keep doing outreach over time, especially where there’s low-hanging fruit. It’s definitely the way Google wants us to do it. But in reality, the amount of time it takes is massive, and as a one-person operation, I’m optimising for speed. I can’t afford to be a purist…
…and I’ve decided that I’m ok with it.
#2: Google is surprisingly good at recognising intent
When I began, I misunderstood exactly how keyword targeting works in 2025.
Google isn’t a giant AI robot (yet). I figured: if I’m targeting a keyword, surely my page has to include the exact keyword throughout? Well, yes. But what if I’m targeting a series of very similar keywords? Do I need to include all of them, or should I build a page for each one?
I went for a hybrid approach. In particular, I spotted a keyword cluster around “wall art for living rooms” with low competition, so I set to work targeting it.
It took a chunk of content, some decent backlinks and a whole load of time. But, eventually, one of my pages started creeping into the ranks for that search term.
What surprised me was the search terms I hadn’t targeted which the same page also started ranking for, like:
living room wall art
living room art
living room prints
prints for living room
…you get the idea.
Most of these phrases don’t appear on the page at all. But they all have the same “intent”, in that someone who’s searching for any of the above is probably looking for the same thing.
SEO isn’t about convincing Google you’re relevant. It’s about being relevant and letting Google figure out the rest.
#3: There’s something that trumps “quality”
There’s a way to think about social media: each post is a lottery.
Every time you post, there’s a chance you’ll go viral. The chance is pretty low, but on platforms like Twitter, you literally get as many bites at the cherry as you want.
The same cannot be said of SEO.
I once thought every blog post was a chance to pick up search engine traffic. And once upon a time, I’d have been right! But nowadays, simply posting more content without a game plan can actually be a liability.
Search engines are getting more and more sophisticated. In an earlier piece, I explored how Google isn’t just watching your content; it’s watching your behaviour to infer how well you know your sh*t.
At the start, I was posting haphazardly about:
Interior decorating
London
History
Photography
…and as good as Google may be, even it is going to have a hard time figuring out my expertise on a range of topics like this.
And you know what? The same thing applies to backlinks.
When I began link trading, I was accepting links to and from almost any website.
But I imagine an art store getting a link from a fine-dining site is a bit like a chef recommending…well, wall art, even if you’d rather hear opinions from a professional curator.
So, I decided. Interior decorating isn’t exactly my expertise, but I doubled down on it. I wrote more blog posts on that topic, and I unpublished anything which was unrelated. I focused my link-building efforts on sites with at least a tangential relationship to interior decorating.
Lo and behold, my rankings improved.
As the cliché goes, quality over quantity. But in the world of SEO, even quantity is beaten by one thing: relevance.
And sticking to that has taken more discipline than I would ever have expected.
What I’d ignore if I started again tomorrow
When I started this challenge, I expected I’d specialise in the part of SEO most related to my former career: technical SEO.
It didn’t take long for me to realise: not only does it move the needle the least, but it’s also by far the least interesting part. If I restarted my eCommerce website tomorrow, I’d definitely leave out the weeks I spent over-optimising my home page. Metrics like “keyword density” are only relevant if you’re keyword stuffing to begin with. If you’re writing naturally? It’s completely unnecessary.
I’d certainly leave out the blog posts which didn’t matter. The flip side was that it wasn’t a total waste. I’ve loved learning about London. My picks for “the 5 prettiest bridges in London” or my research on “the first 7 London underground stations” will make great social media content one day. But for the blog on this site? I’d definitely begin with a much more refined game plan.
Finally, I’d stop obsessing over Google Search Console. At the start, I’d check my rankings multiple times per day as if they were magically going to shoot up. But, if I could tell myself 3 months ago one thing, it would be to accept that organic rankings just take a long time. Early on, I’d pick a keyword, build some pages and links and get frustrated when it seemed like nothing was happening. That was until one day, my pages suddenly started appearing in search results.
Sometimes, the challenge is waiting for the system to show results rather than switching courses or interfering too early.
And that’s the crux of it.
Search Engine Optimisation as a practice won’t reward me for being too clever or for learning how to game the system. It will reward me for being consistent, focused…and, on occasion, a bit boring.
For someone going on a journey like mine, I think that’s fantastic.
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