Most SEO Campaigns Fail. Here’s Why.
I am going to be blunt: Most companies waste money on SEO. Not because SEO doesn’t work, but because many agencies skip the very first step that makes everything else work.
I’ve watched this happen for more than a decade. You might ask yourself, “Geraldine, how can you say this and how do you know?”
Long story short, I’ve seen the worst of the worst happen…
Back in 2011, a client called me in a full-blown panic. Their revenue dropped 50% almost overnight — from $100K per month to $50K. Why? They were banned from Google. Completely wiped out of the index.
I dove straight in. I studied every Google algorithm and ranking factor in depth, line by line. Then my team and I reverse engineered exactly what went wrong.
That experience is what led me to create The SEO7 System: seven foundational methods for search engine ranking that don’t rely on tricks, shortcuts, or guesswork. It’s the system I still use today.
Here’s the controversial part:
I’ve watched businesses pour money into…
• website redesigns
• content overhauls (or deleting too much content)
• mass link directory updates
• agencies that promise the world
…only to wonder why nothing changes.
Here’s the real reason: you can’t optimize for search without a robust keyword strategy.
I’m not talking about the 5–10 words your previous SEO agency mentioned. You need much more than that.
That’s why my colleague Randy Lyman and I wrote Start With Keywords.
This is not a book filled with SEO jargon or technical details no one understands.
It’s a book designed to fix the most expensive mistakes business owners make:
• do-it-yourself trial and error
• guessing
• trusting SEO agencies that swear they’ll get you to #1
(No one should ever promise this.)
Keyword strategy is the part no one talks about because it’s tedious and not glamorous.
But from our years of experience, we know this…
Data-driven keyword research is what tells the search engine you know what you’re talking about.
It’s research.
It’s understanding consumer behavior.
It’s building your online presence on actual evidence — not assumptions.
In Start With Keywords, we break down our entire process for real people with real businesses. So whether you choose to do the research yourself or hire an agency, you’ll finally be able to ensure your SEO campaigns are effective.
This is the same process behind my proprietary SEO7 System — the method I’ve used since 2011 to help thousands of businesses increase visibility and attract higher-quality leads (whether they are active on social media or not!).
If you’ve ever felt like SEO was confusing, gatekept, or unnecessarily expensive… it’s not you. The industry overcomplicates it. The basics are simple.
The Start With Keywords paperback is available on Amazon, and you can also read it electronically on your Kindle.
After you read it, I’d love to know how it helped you.