I’ve been doing SEO for so long, I remember getting ranked on the first page of Google by simply hiding the Keywords as the same color as the background of my website. I wrote “Orlando Condos For Sale” two thousand times, hidden in white font on a white background to trick Google and it worked! The year was 2004 and I’ve been gaming the algos ever since. That being said, if you have an ear to hear or an eye to read, here’s my 22 year SEO update…
On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
On-page is all the things you can do to the website itself it help it rank.
Off-page refers to link building, citations, social media etc. All the things you can do off the website to help it rank.
On and Off-page are both equally important but carry a different workload.
I’m not belittling Off-page, it is SUPER important but once your website is fully optimized with all the bells and whistles, there’s not much more you can do other than refresh and add new content here and there. This is a simple task that doesn’t take much work from you or your SEO team.
This means, the bulk of the work that your SEO team should be performing is Off-Page SEO. But exactly what is Off-page SEO in 2026???
Quality Backlinks!!!
Get high quality backlinks. This has been and probably always will be the king of SEO. The higher the quality and the more, the better!
- Organic – Get people to link to you naturally because you are a true resource, a pioneer in your industry or a partner.
- Content collaboration- Write and distribute unique and high quality content.
- Paid- Offer money for sponsored posts, ads and backlinks.
- Directories- Try to avoid spammy directories that are just link farms but there’s still hundreds of good directories you should attain.
Citations & Social Media Signals
Get people talking about you online. Create a unified handle across different platforms. Here’s just a few places you can focus…
- FB Page
- IG
- Tiktok
- Google Maps
- YouTube
BlackHat Backlinks
As I said way back in 2012 with my article about the disavow link tool, there’s no such as a bad link. If I could simply build spammy backlinks to sabotage my competitors and knock them out of the rankings, that would undermine the entire Google search engine.
If building spammy backlinks to you competitors won’t hurt them it won’t hurt you either!
There’s lots of blackhat tools and legal hacking techniques where you can score thousands of low quality, spammy backlinks for such a low cost so why not do it, as long as you’re smart enough not to let it trace directly back to you.
In conclusion, you can get thousands of backlinks for pennies so I say throw shit at the wall and see what sticks! Just don’t pay much or exert much recourses on it.
Public Relations & Press Releases
Another relic from the old days of SEO that still works when done right. Press releases and mentions in media are still very valuable because they build strong links and/or strong citations. I’ll spend thousands of dollars on a single press release campaign if it’s done right.
Local Business SEO
Local SEO is still a thing however, don’t expect results outside of the geographical areas that you target. It can sometimes jeopardize your site if you are trying to reach global audiences at the same time. It can be very difficult and convoluted to try to target local geographical areas while at the same time trying to rank globally unless your business has actual locations in each of the areas you are trying to target.
Brand Management
This does not fall under the SEO department but ultimately, just focusing on building a brand instead of an online persona can lead to brand recognition and therefore organic traffic that drives your CTR ratio on the SERPs. Having built a name for yourself will also contribute to your SEO. Produce promotional products and get your name out there using the old fashion channels of cards, direct mail, merchandise, print advertisement, going to conferences etc. Google actually recognizes and awards companies when they are searched for directly by name.
On-Page SEO vs Conversion Science
You may notice that most SEOs are not graphic artist, sales people, nor the person to build the sales funnel or squeeze page. While they may be familiar with it, they may not always be experts at it.
Many times, the SEO’s job is to bring the targeted traffic and it’s up to others to convert it. In many cases of my career, a “conversion scientist” was called in to design the page and direct the users to a contact form, signing up or checking out. They would analyze where the traffic was coming from, doing A/B testing and other experiments to design the page and the CTAs (call to action) accordingly.
A conversion scientist might not know anything about SEO and driving traffic but they know how to get that page to convert. Especially, the online sales and affiliate marketing types who you always meet at conferences. SEOs often work with conversion scientist. Especially, when using heat-maps but the skills are rarely performed by the same person.
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