Use the first principles of SEO as your foundation

Monty says: “Focus on the fundamentals and approach SEO from the first principles, rather than chasing algorithms, trends, or fearing new technologies like AI.

The core elements of SEO haven’t changed in the last 20 years; they still remain stable and essential.”

What are the first principles of SEO that haven’t changed?

“Let me start by defining what first principles are. First principles are the most fundamental truths of a concept. This term was coined by Aristotle in Ancient Greece but, in the modern day, Elon Musk made this popular. The reason he was able to build SpaceX was because he was able to think from first principles.

If we apply the first principles to SEO, then we can divide them into three areas: relevance, authority, and user experience. User experience is more important than ever, especially as Google is starting to put more weight on it. These are the first principles.”

How do you ensure that your site is as relevant as possible?

“First, you have to make sure the content of the webpage aligns closely with the intent behind the user query. When you are writing content, keep the intent in mind. Think about what the user is trying to solve. What is their problem? What is the reason behind their search or the intention behind their query?

I don’t think a tool can provide you with that intent. Most tools are built on keyword matching. When you do keyword research, they will just give you the matching keyword. They don’t inherently provide you with the intent. It comes from your intuition, your understanding of your audience, and the human part of keyword research. You need to rely on your own intuition to know the intent behind a query.

Obviously, you also need to know the format that will best satisfy that user intent, to decide the style and type of content you need to produce. You can easily do that by looking at the SERP. No one knows intent better than Google themselves. They have the technology and the machine learning algorithms. They know intent better than us.

You can look at the SERP and see what type of content they’re ranking for that user intent. From there you can take it on and create that kind of content yourself. You’re not copying what already exists, but you’re looking at the style of that content and utilising that style to serve the intent that you’ve already established.

Then you can go one step further. Instead of just matching a particular keyword, you can anticipate what their follow-up might be. That’s called proximity intent – the average distance between two queries in the context of their intent. You can anticipate that, and satisfy their proximity intent in your content as well.

I will give an example. Let’s say someone searches for ‘dog poisoned’. Their intent is that they are trying to find out whether their dog is poisoned. An example of proximity intent in this context would be ‘Does insurance cover a poisoned dog?’. You can understand what the user might follow up with and take a more holistic approach to the content. Cover the topic holistically and provide extra value or depth.”

How would you summarise authority and how does a site establish that?

“There are many aspects of authority, but the major one is backlinks from relevant entities who are known for your topic. Those are the sites that also post content which is relevant to your brand’s core values. The first part of authority should be having links from other entities who are relevant to your core topic.

Obviously, there are other aspects of authority, such as the EEAT of experience, expertise and trust – and the quality of your content. If your content has those, then it will most likely get engagement, and better engagement is a direct signal of authority. That’s the EEAT part of it.”

What type of links have you found to be most effective recently?

“The most effective link is the link which comes naturally to your page. You don’t have to manually build it. When you create quality content, and people are genuinely finding it valuable, engaging with it, and sharing it, then you will get those kinds of links. They come naturally.

They are also from websites that are known for the core topic that you cover on your site. Those types of links are effective.

The anchor text is also very important. The document that Google shared in the anti-trust trial mentioned anchor text specifically, which is what the web says about the document, which is very important. Anchor text and the text around the link are very important.”

Why is UX becoming more important and what elements should SEOs focus on?

“First and foremost, your site should be easy to use and navigate. Things like site speed, navigation, and your content’s readability and comprehensibility. How easy is it to comprehend your content?

You should put the most weight on things which are important for the engagement in terms of UX, within your content. It should be easy to read on your website and you should have videos and interactive elements in your content. Those kinds of things are important.

Obviously, you can’t put video on every single page. There are some pages from which you can create video, such as if you have a YouTube channel. If you run a YouTube channel and you’re creating a piece of content, then you should also try making a video on the topic and incorporate that into your content – if it’s relevant and it makes sense.

It’s all about engagement. We should shift our focus from traffic, and engagement should be our north star going forward. Google is starting to put more weight on engagement, so we should be doing that as well.

There are still many people who only put weight on traffic, even if that traffic doesn’t engage. Then they get hit by algorithm updates and they think, ‘Why is my site getting tanked?’ It’s because people are not engaging with your content. It is sending the wrong signal to Google.”

How do you measure engagement?

“You should do a content audit. You can go to Search Console and filter your data on a month-by-month basis. From there, you can do a click gap analysis and then you can see the pages that are losing clicks.

Then, you can pull data from GA4 for those pages and you will see a correlation between the pages that are losing clicks and the pages that have low engagement.

For measuring engagement, you can do it by bounce rate, pages per session, or time on page. Those are the metrics that matter. Then you can see whether people are engaging or not.”

Why don’t you recommend chasing the latest SEO tactic or trend?

“The problem with chasing a trend is that it might bring you quick results in the short term, but it is not a long-term strategy. When you’re always scrambling to stay on top of the trends, you’re not actually building your SEO strategy on a solid and lasting foundation.

Trends come and go, and what works today could be useless tomorrow, which will leave you with unpredictable results. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, which makes it really tough to get sustainable growth.

The other thing that’s wrong with chasing trends is that it might burn you out. As SEOs, there’s only so much we can juggle, and diverting our attention and effort towards every new shiny tactic is not the most productive idea because it burns you out.

You also tend to lose sight of your bigger picture, which is your audience. What is important to them? It’s trying to get better at addressing your audience and their needs. You are missing that when you’re chasing the algorithm and trends.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“Stop producing content for the sake of it. Fringe content is actually killing many sites because it doesn’t bring you engagement and it dilutes your site’s theme. Don’t produce content for the sake of it. Stick to your theme, your brand’s core values, and your product offering.

If you’ve just started working for a company and you’ve done a content audit and found lots of content that you don’t believe is core to what the brand’s about, you’re better off deleting it.

If it’s not focused on your brand’s core theme or topic, then it’s likely that content wouldn’t bring you any meaningful audience. You will struggle for engagement from any audience it does bring, which sends negative signals to search engines that your content is not relevant. Therefore, it is not valuable. If it is not bringing in engagement, I would probably remove it altogether.

Another thing that is very popular, is people taking suggestions from tools too seriously – such as the keyword focus or whatever the green light is on. Also, stop putting weight on your site authority, and those DR/DA metrics. It doesn’t have to do with how Google sees your site. Stop trying to manipulate those metrics. It doesn’t bring you any results.”

Monty Mathur is a Freelance SEO Consultant, and you can find them over at MontyMathur.com.