If SEO Was Like Music

Don't you hate it when you get stuck in a traffic jam? You sit there, waiting for hours to move a few inches. The only thing you can do is listen to the good old radio... or play some game on your super smart phone.

So I was listening to the radio and a random pop song came on. Not a big fan of the genre, but there are a lot of good songs. This particular one wasn't. There was a lot of repeating of the same word over and over again. The lyrics had almost no meaning and the melody was sampled from another very successful song from the past. Because I see content everywhere, I instantly connected that to my work - SEO.

This is how I see SEO if it was like music.

Pop Music

This genre has been here for a long time. I won't talk about the olden days, but about modern pop. The Pop SEO is a persona who likes to stuff his text with keywords. No synonyms, no variations, maybe a bit of entity salience. They usually mention the main keyword at least 50 times in a 500-word-text. And they will put it in the title and in the headers.

These folks always search the easiest ways to rank. Just the most skilled ones will create something new and will maintain it for years. Most of the Pop SEOs prefer to grab an old content and give it a new look. It's called a skyscraper technique - why think of new things, when you can rely on already successful content. Just make it better, or in most cases - fresher.

A main problem here is that many of the colleagues in this field are one-hit wonders. They make one site, rank it to the top with a lot of links, lot of mentions, stuffed content. The website stays on the top positions for a few months, but later on it will fall and we will never hear from it again. Sometimes they come back with new sites, but they never have the same success.


There is a thing like a Pop Producer SEO. They do the same thing, but when the site falls, they simply use the same technique to rank a new one. Same content, visually similar, but with a new domain. This process is done every two or three moths. It's a spammy method, but it still works.

The strongest side of Pop SEO is the social media. They really rely on Facebook and Twitter to get a lot of attention. The smart ones will use social media in lots of different ways to popularise their products. Also, they know how to make content user friendly. You have to admit that they are really good in this field.

Rap Music

Rap SEO is a whole different game. They really love keyword rich content. You will see so many variations of the main keyword in the body of their websites. Sometimes you even envy their skills.

But other times, they have used so many words, that even after the Hummingbird, Google can't still figure out what those SEOs are talking about. Semantic search doesn't stand a chance. 

Another interesting quality about them is that Rap SEOs love to make multi-niche orientated sites. It's a hard job, but some how they succeed. So you can search for "street art" and then for "what would Jesus do" and you will find the same site. Amazing!

Not everyone here loves making fresh content. Some are quite gifted and can write 20 articles a day out of nowhere. But others prefer to use more simple language. Also, many Rap SEOs like using the skyscraper technique. They get old content and make it better. Only this time, they can actually make it sound better, in their own way.

Some of these optimisers like to use negative methods. They spam some of their competitors, throw bad links at them. Sometimes things become ugly and both sides get hurt. I don't suggest being part of this gang. 

Pop Hop

I know this is a mixture of the previous two, but it had to be mentioned.

These are the blackest hats in the branch. Spam is their biggest friend. When you open your mail, they are there. When you open your Facebook, they are there. When you open your favourite news sites - yes, they are there. You can't escape the spam.

And they are not even trying to make new content. They just go to Google Trends, see what's popular right now and do it. Many times they get the design of other site owners. Or even if they make their own, they make it using the same theme. Something like 9gag back in the days - after their creation, several other humour-orientated websites appeared, having the same theme - 9 pictures, black header image, scrolling, title on the right. You get the idea.

But there are some, who are really persistent and always work in the same niche - specially sites about drugs and Kardashian-type girls. 

You will find Pop Hop SEOs lurking in old article directories, link directories. They will always have a big signature with many links in every forum. 

Great Scot! I forgot to talk about keywords. Don't be surprised when you see one word (not even a phrase) repeated constantly through the whole website. Their anchor texts are always exact match and the links are coming even from unrelated sites.

Even after all the black-hat approach, they still somehow manage to get a few links from other people, without even begging. 

Rock Music

This genre is massive. There are a lot of sub-genres from different eras. Today Rock is not as popular as it used to be, so let's talk about the greater days, when it used to be the greatest music out there.

Rock SEOs rely on quality. Innovation is always part of the process. They are all good keyword researchers. They are so good, that sometimes RSEOs take unpopular phrases and make them popular to a big audience. That's some high-level optimisation here.

And you know how some people just write a 600 word article, put a exact match anchor text, publish it in Article Base, and wait for miracles to happen. This is not the case here. They will write thousands of words, make brilliant visual content, will outreach the biggest sites to get the best backlinks possible.

Not every Rock SEO is like that though. Some still prefer to rely on simple, catchy tunes, which people can whistle to... I mean they rely on catchy content, which is memorable. And this is cool, because easy-to-remember things are more shareable.

A very typical quality of this type of optimisers is the niche-orientation. They really like working in one niche strictly. Although, most of the niches are the same, each optimiser likes giving name to his work. Like "I'm working on a Scandinavian folklore late 90s Brit website right now". It's innovative in a way, but sometimes people get really confused when it comes to searching.

Another very typical quality is the desire to make pillar articles. They create evergreen content which is popular and on-topic even after years. Other SEOs can do it too, but Rockers are the best when it comes to long-lasting content.

Classical Music

These SEOs are more marketing orientated. They are one of the biggest professionals in the business.

Regular SEOs will start with a keyword research, make a website and optimise it, then start building some links, share content in social media. Not these guys. 

Their main plan is to make a website or a product extremely pleasant for the customer. Whether it's going to be by making a visual content, an interactive website or something really simple and artistic, they will make it popular. This way they don't need to make backlinks - the client will make make them.

Take bear71 or New Fantasyland for example. They don't have hundreds of keywords or optimised images. No, they have good visual content, interaction and materials to satisfy the searcher's needs. This way the bounce rate is lowered to minimum, the visitor will be astonished and will instantly share this experience with friends. Then the sites will be mentioned by authors, reporters and you get viral.

Classical SEO - where SEO and marketing work together, to give you the best results.

Trip Hop

These guys don't do anything extraordinary in the field of SEO, but need to be mentioned.

They are a little bit more underground than others. Trip SEOs can make beautiful content, easy to read, with deep meaning. But they don't know how to optimise well. So their work is hardly findable across the web.

But the people who do find the content really like it. It's like some small blog or a humorous website. You find it and you see the are a lot of funny images, lot's of amazing and unique content. It's a pity no one has every talked about it before.

Reggae 

Reggae SEO are your internet best friends. They are always there to help and will always treat everybody to the best of their capabilities.

True Quotes

They like writing big content. And they can do it on lot's of different topics. It's hard to say where they get their inspiration, but it's a fact that they are some of the best writers out there. Keywords are no trouble.

The key is that they write from experience or always add a personal touch. This instantly makes the content unique. But a big issue here is sometimes they like to outdo themselves. So if you were looking for a quick answer to your question, Reggae SEOs won't be the perfect choice. They are philosophers.

It's a well known fact that Reggae SEOs are good at their job. They've been here for years and know how to rank a site. The problem - they use outdated techniques and that's why we see less and less of them.

But there are many other types of SEO who are inspired by their work. Let's say Pop SEO - they constantly use Reggae methods to do their work.

What SEO are you?

Maybe you don't fit in the types above. Maybe you are a Metal SEO or Techno optimiser. What would you say fits your description best?