"Dangerous Dave" and the SEO Insights Trap

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Dave means well, and that's the thing.

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He's not trying to make your life difficult.

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He just went to a two-day digital marketing conference in Birmingham,

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sat through a keynote about AI search, and now he's forwarding you articles

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00 PM on a Tuesday with a subject line, "Have you seen this?" You have.

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You saw it six months ago.

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Welcome to one of the most common and most exhausting problems in SEO.

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Not algorithm updates, not technical issues.

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Dave.

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This is SEO Fucking what?

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I'm Nikki, and I've been doing SEO for over 30 years.

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Before it was even called SEO.

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I help people like you make money from your website by getting found on search.

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Now back to

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Dave takes many forms.

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Sometimes Dave is your CEO who bought a cheap SEO tool that's showing

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completely different numbers to everything your SEO consultant reports.

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Now there's a spreadsheet, there are questions, and now there's a meeting

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Sometimes Dave is your business partner's contact who does a bit of SEO on the side

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and has strong opinions about backlinks, or a LinkedIn post that got eight hundred

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and forty-seven likes from someone with growth hacker in their bio claiming

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everything your SEO is doing is wrong.

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Dave is everywhere, and Dave has opinions.

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The problem is, and I say this as someone who's been doing SEO since before

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most of Dave's LinkedIn connections were born, Dave isn't always wrong.

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That's what makes it complicated.

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Sometimes Dave stumbles onto something really worth looking at.

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More often, though, Dave has half a story, no context, and excellent confidence.

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This is what Dave usually gets wrong.

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The conference Dave attended probably had good speakers.

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Most of them possibly knew what they were talking about.

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But conference keynotes are designed to be exciting, not always accurate.

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Speakers need applause, not caveats.

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So Dave comes back fired up about AI search being the future, having

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heard approximately forty minutes of content about a channel that currently

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drives a fraction of the traffic Google does for most B2B businesses.

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He didn't hear the bit about how this varies wildly by industry.

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He left before the Q&A where someone asked about actual numbers.

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The cheap tool Dave found is probably measuring something real,

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just not the same thing your SEO consultant is measuring in the same

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way or over the same time period.

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Different tools use different data sources.

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Showing Dave two tools that disagree doesn't mean one of them is lying.

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It means data is complicated, and someone needs to explain that

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without making Dave feel stupid.

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The LinkedIn post Dave forwarded, written to get engagement.

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Broad claims get shares.

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Nuance gets ignored.

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None of this makes Dave malicious.

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It makes Dave a person who absorbed incomplete information

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and got enthusiastic about it.

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So how can you handle Dave without losing your mind?

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Look, first of all, don't dismiss him outright.

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I know that's hard when you're three months into a solid SEO strategy and Dave

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wants to blow it up because of a tweet.

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But if you wave Dave away, Dave goes quiet, and then he brings it

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up in the board meeting instead.

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Ask Dave for the source, not aggressively, genuinely.

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"It's interesting. Can you send me the full article?" Half the time,

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the article itself contradicts what Dave remembered from it.

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Then take it to your SEO consultant.

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A good one won't be defensive.

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They'll either explain why it doesn't apply to your specific situation,

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acknowledge it's worth considering, or occasionally say, "Do you

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know what? Dave's onto something. Let's have a look at this." And

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any of those is a useful outcome.

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What you're really doing is creating a process.

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Dave doesn't disappear and go quiet so you have to wonder what he's up to.

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Dave becomes something you can handle systematically rather

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than something that derails your entire strategy every six weeks

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And I'm gonna be honest with you, sometimes Dave's right.

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Not because the LinkedIn post was accurate or the conference keynote

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was well-researched, but because sometimes an outside perspective,

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even an imperfect one, captures something worth looking into.

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If Dave keeps raising the same concern and your SEO consultant keeps

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dismissing it without really engaging, that's worth paying attention to.

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A good consultant will welcome the question, give you a proper answer.

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Not a defensive one, not a 'trust me, I know best' one, an answer with context.

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If you're not sure if Dave has a point, that's exactly what I'm here for.

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If your business is dealing with conflicting SEO advice, a skeptical

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stakeholder, or a consultant you're not sure whether to

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trust, let's have a conversation.

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Sometimes you need someone to look at what's happening and tell you plainly,

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"Dave's wrong. Here's why," or, "Dave's onto something. Here's what to do."

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[UNCLEAR], get found, make money, stop stressing and get

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yourself a Nikki, not a Dave!