Hey SEO’s — Everybody Love Everybody

Another day, another surge of SEOs getting mad at each other. Tale as old as time, A story bordering on legend, A tale that even my grandfather considered old and all that.

A screenshot of Ahrefs organic rankings/visibility was shared on social media showing a large drop for one of the largest CRM’s out there — HubSpot.

Nothing wrong with this post, no malice, no calling anyone out. I especially like the ‘welcome to a new era of SEO’ because it’s true! The SERPs have been changing like crazy lately, it’s not just creating content and ranking in the 10 blue links. The times they are a changing.

When a drop (or increase) like this happens, we shouldn’t blindly suggest the reasons or fixes. We should

• Take a deep breath
• Let the dust settle
• Examine the changes
  • What dropped? Why?
  • What increased? Why?
  • What’s up with the competition? Why?

The ‘Why’ is diving into the SERP’s and seeing what has changed with the intent. Who is ranking there? What is ranking there (video, long form, short form, etc.)?

We as SEOs should be examining stuff like this because it’s extremely relevant to the changing world. An industry-leading website known for its content library saw a large drop in organic rankings. Most SEOs would and should find this intriguing. The problem is that this is third-party data that doesn’t tell the full story.

We do not have access to their actual analytics, the money metrics. We do not have access to their strategy. We cannot say for sure if this out-of-context chart truly even means anything to them. But that’s not stopping SEOs from going to town on each other and the HubSpot team.

Honestly, this happens everywhere, it’s not just SEOs (but we do this a lot). You can look at almost any new movie trailer that’s posted on Twitter and see people commenting about color grading, over analyzing frame by frame that things look off. We love to arm chair quarterback!

Why I Care

No one asked for my 4 cents. I get the irony of writing a response article about everyone else’s response. But the main purpose of this article isn’t for me to say ‘HubSpot should have done x’, or ‘Hubspot went wrong here’. I never want to do that to anyone besides the sites I am responsible for. I hate getting in the mud and try to stay out as much as possible. Regardless:

Maybe I’m crazy, but even if Hubspot did lose all these top-of-funnel keywords, is it really that bad of a thing? It worked once which was great, but now it no longer does. I’m sure they’re on top of it, if not even ahead of it.

This seems pretty standard, a strategy has a shelf life. Things get stale, they won’t work forever. We as an industry should understand this and not knock it. Keyword stuffing, meta keywords, signing up for a million directories. All old tactics that once crushed it, but no longer work. It happens.

I remember so many people telling me they found my last company from radio ads! I’ve lived in Chicago for 7+ years now and couldn’t even tell you a radio station. But a while back that was the place to be to get exposure. Not so much anymore, things change.

We need to stop trashing each other and our strategies. We do such a good job documenting what works with processes, videos, case studies and all that. If it’s not your cup of tea, just keep scrolling. No need to stop and trash/correct whoever is responsible for creating it.

This is one of the main reasons I created Digital E-A-T’s. I want to build up the great people in the digital industry by highlighting their work and their experience.

Omni-Channel Marketing Is Where It’s At

Maybe a hot take, SEO is not the most important thing in the world. I love SEO, I love doing it, I love researching it and I even love the people in the industry. But it is a piece of the pie. We need to stop acting like keyword rankings run the world. Keywords do not equal money.

I had an HVAC client a while back whose previous agency or consultant had them create a bunch of recipe-related posts. Had nothing to do with their services but they actually ranked well. They got tons of traffic and brand awareness, but I always had to answer why traffic was so high but conversions and leads weren’t.

Hubspot is doing fine I’m sure. Again, don’t have access to any real money metrics data, but as of January 2025 the stock price is solid. The higher-ups there won’t care about a third-party ranking tool showing a drop, they care about the dolla dolla bills.

I know a few people who work at Hubspot or have worked there and I know they know their stuff. When you dig deeper into the keyword drops, they are very top of the funnel, likely never leading to any attributable sales. I’ve even looked at some of the reported ‘drops’ using a different third-party tool and they seem to still be ranking? These were likely great for some brand awareness and understood they weren’t going to generate a ton of leads/sales.

Regardless when looking up their money keywords on Google I see an ad, and AI Overview and they rank #1 organically (see below).

I looked them up on Instagram and now I am getting ads on both Insta and Facebook. I see they have an eNewsletter signup on their site as well, and I am sure it has a massive audience. Not a big TikTok guy but I’m sure they are there as well.

What’s The Point?

Our job as SEOs, Digital Marketers, Paid Ads Specialists and Content Creators is to understand our customer’s problems, highlight our company’s/brand’s solution and distribute it to wherever our audience is. The channel should not come before that!

They have the strategy, they know what they’re doing, this is a sustainable solution. They’re fine! We should all try to mimic this strategy of omni-channel marketing. Live by one channel, die by one channel!

We do not always know the other’s story, we can only control what we can control. So let’s try to focus on that.

Update!

After posting this I saw the perfect response from Cyrus Shepard & HubSpot.