We’ve Been Doing SEO for 10 Years. Here’s What We’d Do Differently If We Started Today

Ten years ago, Build Epic Consulting started helping businesses improve their visibility online. A lot has changed since then.

Google has changed. Websites have changed. Search behavior has changed. Mobile became dominant. Google Maps became increasingly important for local businesses. And now people are asking ChatGPT and other AI platforms questions they once would have typed directly into a search engine.

But here’s what’s interesting.

After 10 years, we haven’t concluded that everything we used to do was wrong. We’ve learned which things actually matter. If we were starting an SEO strategy from scratch today, here’s what we’d do differently.

 

1. We’d Spend More Time Understanding the Business Before Touching a Keyword

 

Years ago, SEO could quickly become a conversation about keywords.

What do you want to rank for?

Today, we’d start somewhere else.

What does the company actually want to sell? Who is the ideal customer? Which services are most profitable? Where does the company operate? What makes it different? And what questions do customers ask before buying?

Keyword research still matters, but a keyword without business context is just a number. That’s why our process today begins with understanding the business before we write a single line of SEO content.

We’ve written an entire article about what happens before we start creating SEO content.

 

2. We’d Build the Website Around Search Intent From Day One

 

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that SEO becomes much harder when the website wasn’t built with search in mind. A beautiful website can still have poor page structure, weak service pages, confusing navigation, thin content, or several completely different services crammed onto one page. Today, we’d think about site architecture from the beginning.

Each important service needs a logical place to live. Location pages need a purpose. Content should answer the questions visitors actually have. Internal links should help both people and search engines understand how everything connects. Fixing those things later is possible. Building them correctly from the beginning is better.

 

3. We’d Stop Obsessing Over One Ranking

 

Ranking #1 feels great. We’ve celebrated plenty of them. But after years of managing SEO campaigns, we’d rather see a business develop broad search visibility than become obsessed with a single keyword. One ranking can move tomorrow.

A website with hundreds of relevant rankings, growing organic traffic, strong local visibility, useful content, quality backlinks, and increasing authority is much harder to knock down.

That’s why we look at the entire search presence rather than declaring victory because one keyword reached the top of Google.

 

4. We’d Think About Conversion Much Earlier

 

This is a big one.

SEO can get someone to your website. It cannot force them to become a customer.

We’ve seen websites rank well and still struggle to generate leads because the next step wasn’t clear, the messaging didn’t build trust, the site was difficult to use, or the visitor simply couldn’t figure out why they should choose that company.

Today, SEO and website strategy need to work together.

Ranking on Google but not generating leads isn’t much of a win.

 

5. We’d Build Authority From the Beginning

 

Authority takes time. That’s one reason we wouldn’t wait until Year 3 to start thinking about backlinks, third-party mentions, reviews, case studies, useful resources, and content people might actually reference. We’ve watched client websites grow from almost no digital authority into established resources within their industries. It didn’t happen because of one backlink campaign or one great blog. It happened because we kept building.

 

6. We’d Prepare for More Than Google

 

This is probably the biggest difference between starting an SEO campaign 10 years ago and starting one today. Google still matters tremendously. SEO still matters. Your website still matters. But discovery is expanding.

People can now research companies, compare products, ask detailed questions, and discover resources through AI-powered platforms such as ChatGPT. That’s why Answer Engine Optimization has become part of our strategy.

We don’t see AEO as a replacement for SEO. SEO builds the foundation. AEO expands where that authority can be discovered.

 

7. We’d Be More Patient

 

Okay, this one hasn’t changed. We’d just understand it better.  SEO rarely moves in a perfectly straight line. Rankings fluctuate. Competitors improve. Algorithms change. Traffic has good months and bad months. What we’ve seen repeatedly is the value of consistency. Our long-term clients have taught us something that no SEO textbook could: digital authority compounds.

Content builds on content. Links build authority. Rankings create traffic. Strong pages create new opportunities. Years of work can eventually create a digital presence that would be extremely difficult to build overnight.

 

What Wouldn’t We Change?

 

We’d still focus on doing the fundamentals well. Build a good website. Understand the customer. Create useful content. Make the site easy to navigate. Develop authority. Measure what happens. Adjust the strategy. Keep going. The tools have changed dramatically in 10 years. The goal really hasn’t.

Help the right people find the right business at the right time.

At Build Epic Consulting, we’ve spent the last decade learning, testing, adjusting, occasionally yelling at Google, and helping businesses build stronger digital visibility.

We’re excited to see what the next 10 years bring.

Ready to Build What’s Next?

If your SEO strategy is stuck in the past or you’re not sure how traditional search and AI search fit together, contact Build Epic Consulting.

 

Frequently Asked Questions