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Should SEO Influencers Rank for stuff? [SEO Thought Leadership & Direction
Posted by on January 31, 2026 at 6:33 pmApart from their brand names — or should we call them funfluencers?
I’ve been noticing a rise in people branding themselves as the next “SEO thought leader” or “future of SEO strategist,” talking endlessly about things like LLMs.txt, advanced semantic SEO, and entity ranking systems. But when you look under the hood… most of them don’t actually rank. Or, if they did, it was a short-lived run — 3–6 months of 50 keywords before the drop-off.
Here’s the issue: their “proof” is often anecdotal, or worse, a recycled mirror myth. You’ll see claims like “entity vectors drive rankings,” but when you dig deeper, it’s just normal PageRank correlations or brand authority doing the heavy lifting.
As someone who likes to test myths, I’ve found far more success applying topical authority principles that have worked for decades — updated, sure, but still grounded in real-world SEO fundamentals. The basics evolved, but they didn’t vanish.
It’s fine if people want to believe that SEO is constantly reinventing itself. Tech evolves, documentation changes (or sometimes doesn’t — looking at you, SEO Starter Guide 🙃). But evidence still matters.
So if you disagree, cool — make your case. Just respect that this sub is a space where actual SEOs (and buyers, which makes it rare) can debate SEO ideas critically without turning it into a hype cycle.
Quality of information still counts in my book – and evidence, not onjecture to support the claim.
Examples of this are:
- Google wants to show quality information, therefore [insert any argument here]
- Google need to conserve X, therefore [insert hypothesis here]
- Think about what Google needs, ego
SEO is a system.
Provie it by ranking it – its that so wrong?
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6 Replies
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Maintaining the ranking for long has been more hard nowadays than just ranking. Also, topical athority is a win-win tbh cuz it help us to rank for long-term.
And i really agree with the point: “SEO is a system”. Think about what google needs is not evidence, tested outcomes are.
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You’re absolutely spot on!
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What’s been driving me nuts lately
LLM bots like a certain structure
With AI Google now really needs to understand your web page
Semantic triples are not just a complete sentence. It’s a way to process data.
The alphabet sales people are now learning three syllable words to try to entice unsuspecting end users out of their money.
The good fight continues….
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I just focus on whether the advice they give actually works. Rankings can help show skill, but I care more about clear examples, real tests, and honest breakdowns of what they did.
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I’ve also found that the folks who rank well usually do so because they show their work in a clear, consistent way rather than chasing flashy topics. I’ve had good experiences with https://antmedia.my/ for keeping my own strategy grounded in real data instead of hype, which helped me see the difference between influence and actual impact. That kind of steady approach makes the whole ranking question feel less messy.
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