Presentation delivered at Engage 2021, which addresses the problems with SEO throughput and the flaws in measuring SEO projects in isolation. When the whole is greater than the sum of its parts you can't measure the relative success of each part.

1. Compound SEO

2. My name is AJ Kohn

4. @ajkohn
@SEMpdx
#engagepdx

5. Talk about anything you want

7. The decline of root terms

8. The importance of crawl latency

9. I feel a great
disturbance in SEO

10. I need traffic estimates for
all your SEO projects
We’ll implement all my SEO
recommendations?
We’ll implement all my SEO
recommendations?

11. “What three changes will have
the most impact”

12. You’d think
we’re hunting
werewolves

13. That’s not how
SEO works

14. The whole is
greater than the
sum of its parts

15. Which three pieces will have
the most impact?

16. You don’t get these results with a
handful of changes

17. You won’t know exactly which
changes made the most difference

18. Most SEO teams are moving
way too slow

19. So … how did
we get here?

20. SEOs

21. Google

22. Measurement
has become an
obsession

23. Core Web Vitals are popular
because they are easily measured

24. The way we measure SEO is
outdated and broken

25. Marginal Gains

27. We repeatedly measure here

28. Instead of here

29. bit.ly/1-percent-gains

30. “We painted the
floor white”

31. “Stop linking to internal pages that 301 redirect”

32. The Baseball Hall of Fame
Conundrum

33. Ted Williams is
perhaps the best
hitter of all-time
His lifetime batting
average is .344
Inducted into the
Baseball Hall of
Fame in 1966

34. .344

36. SEOs need to take
more swings

37. Throw a fit

38. Very little SEO work is funded

39. Very little SEO work is funded

41. 34% increase in traffic as velocity
of SEO picks up

42. Throw a fit

43. We can’t manage
solely from our gut

44. Measure SEO Output
and Velocity

45. Measure SEO
Velocity

46. Technical SEO Bug Update Title Tags New Page Type

47. Rewards funding and
throughput

48. A sub 10-point SEO quarter is like asking
a hockey team to win without sticks

49. We need to solve the
investment problem
SEO

50. Time in market vs
timing the market

51. Time in market vs
timing the market

52. $5,368,709.12

53. AJ Kohn
Owner, Blind Five Year Old
www.blindfiveyearold.com
aj@blindfiveyearold.com
@ajkohn