In search results, there is no gravity

Soccer players throwing themselves to the ground the moment someone touches them, and men’s curling that sometimes looks more about smashing the stone into the back wall than scoring points. When phenomena follow a completely different set of rules than what we’re used to, common sense can actually become a problem.

We all have a sense of common sense – a mix of experience, instincts, and misconceptions. Common sense is about an ability to understand everyday life (according to Wikipedia). It shapes how you see things and is the result of the three points just mentioned. You know that if you throw something in the air, it will eventually fall down – you knew that long before you ever learned who Newton was. Throughout your life, you’ve been learning the rules of the society you live in, the world you move in, and even the universe. The problem is that these rules no longer apply here.

Every now and then, debates pop up about soccer players who seem to be beaten black and blue just because an opponent brushed against them. They’re compared to athletes in other sports where people play through blood and bruises, and they’re described as soft. Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone who has trained to an elite level in any sport could be particularly soft – it’s hard work. Something else is at play here. The same goes for men’s curling; it almost seems like they don’t want to score points at all. Instead of placing a stone where you can earn points, they repeatedly smash it to the back. In women’s curling, it doesn’t look the same. The reason it looks this way is, of course, because you get rewarded for doing it.

We probably all understand football at some level, and it hardly needs debate. Some teams are simply very good at set pieces, and those opportunities arise when the opposing team is penalized in one way or another. It’s up to the players to seek out those situations. In men’s curling, there’s a tendency that if you’re the first to place a stone in the house at the wrong time, you’ll get punished. That happens because your opponents are skilled enough to use your stone against you.

Just like football and curling, SEO comes with its own rules – to an even greater extent, in fact. Not only can you get rewarded for strange behavior, but it can also be as if gravity doesn’t work the way it does on a football pitch. Your common sense means nothing in that world. The experiences you carry from daily life outside the computer don’t apply on this new playing field where all the rules are created by a machine. This is a major challenge that many newcomers to SEO struggle with.

It should be like this or like that

Common sense is not just useless in search engine optimization – it can even be counterproductive. Your gut feeling, especially if you don’t have experience with SEO as a craft, is not based on search engine algorithms but on how things work on the football field, at the beach, or on the way to school.

The laws of nature in search results are different from the natural laws we’re used to. This means that reasoning your way to the right answer doesn’t really work. Just because something feels reasonable doesn’t mean it holds true. Google’s logic is not the same as everyday logic.

Kill your darlings

You’ve probably heard it a thousand times, but I’d like to dig a little deeper into the idea of “kill your darlings.” Take a moment to think about how much of what you “know” might actually be wrong.

I often do this exercise myself because I’m pretty convinced that we all carry around a lot of misconceptions in our knowledge base – enough to make a “director of mistakes” blush. Figuring out what you don’t understand is a difficult but very rewarding step. Unfortunately, it’s almost just as difficult to know how well you’ve succeeded in that, since the “truths” we carry with us tend to reinforce themselves.

Changing your mind is really the point here. Admitting that you were wrong and adjusting your perspective is incredibly smart. Does that sound obvious? Maybe it does – but it’s actually quite a big leap to sit down and question your own certainty.

I don’t want to push everyone into becoming fearful nihilistic wrecks – we humans can end up there sometimes too – but rather encourage you that when you hear something you’re absolutely sure is true, just think: What if it’s the other way around? I’m convinced that this is an SEO specialist’s sharpest weapon. I’ve fully embraced that in SEO, and the reason is quite simple: search engines are a constructed system, a completely new environment. Your instincts from everyday life don’t fit on this new playing field.