A few months ago, I was chatting with a friend about how they are doing marketing for a gym that they teach at on the side. Out of curiosity, I began poking around on the site to see how it is. Of course, I imediatly started to notice some things, like missing meta data and elements on the homepage that eat up performance. I pointed these out to them, being thoughtful and all. They simply replied, "Sir, stick with SEO." So I brushed it off, and carreid on.

But then, it got me thinking about why that response? This person is an accomplished marketer in a luccative industry. It also reminded me of a time where I was sitting on a client call, and after my team reporting positive metrics, the client reponded by simply saying, "Who cares?"

This led to my next chain of thoughts: why do many peers negatively perceive SEO? Is it because they genuinely don'tknow that its more than just keyword research? Is it because they believe paid media is better? Or is it because there is a lot of bad information out there that gives SEO a bad rep? Was it the infamous VERGE article? I can go on.