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When does SEO get easier?
Posted by on March 31, 2026 at 11:32 amTake the word "easier" with a grain of salt because I'm aware it's a constant treadmill of work.
But speaking of treadmills…we are officially running in place. Our organic traffic is close to none and we are drowning in ad budgets.
I've done everything in my power to turn this around for us, but having pretty much no luck to note.
It's pretty exhausting. Does this headache ever go away or am I just spiraling with no happy ending in sight? Obviously I'm not looking for a specific answer on that since there's a ton of context like analytics and industry, etc. But outside of those things, generally speaking, does SEO ever get easier?
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1 Reply
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What have you done so far?
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The thing is even with SEO, nowadays your content will get scrapped by AI bots and presented as snippets as the top of search results, making it less likely for people to even scroll down to look at search results (your page).
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If you become an authority in your niche and people quote and link to you naturally it becomes a lot easier
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As you develop topical authority.
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But outside of those things, generally speaking, does SEO ever get easier?You need to promote your site.
Why do you think Google ranks pages in an index? What is the “currency” that makes one site more valuable?
Authority – 3d party validation
3rd party validation = votes = verificiation that the content solved or was interesting or whatever you want to call it -there are hundreds of use cases (potentially)
If you’re waiting for backlink to magically appear: maybe thats the flaw in your strategy?
[{Sticky Discussion} Creative Link building techniques for SEO Providers : r/SEO](https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1mcc2vk/sticky_discussion_creative_link_building/)
{Sticky Discussion} Creative Link building techniques for SEO Providers
byu/WebLinkr inSEO -
I worked on a b2b lead gen with 150 URLs that had tanked after an update, and once we gutted the site to only the strongest pages and only what we had the resources to keep up to date (50 at the end), once the site was technically perfect, once backlinks started being acquired, then the holding on to what we were good at was easy and we could start looking at re-attempting some pages we had culled but with a new perspective.
Took about a year, but we knew the site was underperforming so there was no pressure to deliver instantly.
Although once PPC got in trouble, their budget was slashed and they could no longer bid on brand, so SEO sales jumped as if by magic.
Otherwise it’s always a slog and we’re always one update away from having to relearn what works and what doesn’t. That never gets easier.
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one thing thats rarely talked about in these “seo isnt working” situations is the attribution problem when ur also running heavy paid
u said ur drowning in ad budgets. so heres the thing: if ur bidding on branded terms and broad match keywords in google ads, ur ads are eating the clicks that ur SEO would have gotten. seo looks flat in GSC impressions but actually ppl ARE finding u organically, theyre just clicking the ad that shows up right above the organic result
tried toggling off branded paid for a week or two and just look at what happens to organic clicks. most ppl are shocked. the cannibalisation is real and it makes seo look way worse than it is
also the “drowning in ad budgets” thing is sometimes a symptom of seo not being given enough time to mature. paid fills the gap but then the gap never closes bc the budget dependency becomes load bearing
its not always that seo isnt working. sometimes its that the measurement setup is lying to u about whether its working or not
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I think that learning principles stacks. Even with the platform changes and AI, the new versions of SERPs are built on the old versions and it’s not as easy as they’d like you to think for them to just change that.
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It gets easier generally when you stop looking to “cheat” the system and do the common sense things and strive to be the authority/better site than every one else. If you can think of a shortcut, so can the makers of the search engines (and chances are its already been abused to death).
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Everyone is saying something along the lines of “once you have authority, it’s easier.” For me, while that is true in general, SEO is also just becoming more and more competitive as more businesses are realizing its value, and, at the same time, Google is making changes and showing more ads, AI Overviews, and other SERP features, all of which leads to the organic listings getting fewer clicks, especially for high-intent keywords that show a ton of ads and any informational keywords.
SEO keeps evolving, and I think it will only get harder to rank in general. A big brand and authority doesn’t necessarily mean everything is easy. Those big brands are often competing against other big brands for highly competitive keywords and topics. A big brand can also still see a rapid fall. For instance, we’ve widely heard major news publishers having issues with huge traffic drops like Wash Post, WSJ, and CNN, anyone with lots of informational content likely saw drops. HubSpot is a good example. Sites like Forbes and CNET declined due to reputational abuse. Affiliate sites seem to have all but disappeared. Social sites like Digg and Vine crashed and burned, Tumblr declined a ton.
When working with big brands that have a lot of authority, I tend to be extra careful and feel even more pressure to do things perfectly. There is a bit more freedom with small brands that are just starting or don’t have much traffic. It’s also just fun to get those small brands huge growth like 2x, 3x, or 4x in a year, whereas a big brand might only be able to grow 10% or something.
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It doesn’t get easier, you just get faster at doing the same things. The first 6-12 months are brutal because you’re learning the fundamentals while also trying to see results. After that, you develop pattern recognition ‚Äî you start seeing what works and what doesn’t much faster. The treadmill never stops, but your stride gets more efficient.
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