Why Good SEO Means Ignoring Content 'Advice' From Business Coaches

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The business coach told you to stop giving your knowledge away for free.

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That advice could be costing you Google rankings.

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This is SEO Fucking What. I'm Nikki, and I've been doing SEO for over 30

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years — before it was even called SEO.

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I help people like you make money from your website by getting found on search.

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And today I'm coming for the business coaches, because some

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things go around LinkedIn again like a sickness bug in a nursery.

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And every single one of them seems to have caught it at the same fucking time.

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Stop giving away your best stuff.

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You're training people to do it themselves.

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If you tell them how to do it, they'll never pay you to do it.

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Bollocks. Absolute cast-iron, weapons-grade bollocks. And I'm not just

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annoyed about it as a business owner, I'm annoyed about it as an SEO,

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because that advice, if you follow it, will keep your website invisible.

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Let me explain why.

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Let's start with the funniest bit, because it's right there in front of you and none

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of you seem to have said it out loud.

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Where did you read this advice?

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Go on, have a think.

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You read it in a free LinkedIn post. Or a free newsletter.

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Or a free webinar with a 40-minute pitch bolted onto the arse end of it. Or a free

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podcast episode, much like this one, if we're being honest with each other.

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Every single person telling you that free content devalues your expertise is telling

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you that via free content, because they want you to buy their expensive thing.

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They don't believe it.

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They can't believe it.

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Their entire business is built on doing the exact opposite of

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what they're telling you to do.

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What they actually mean is: publish stuff that makes you look clever

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without being useful enough for anyone to act on it. Which is completely

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different advice, and it's a lot worse.

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And that right there is why so many small business websites are shit.

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Because you've been told to hold back.

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So your website has got four pages on it — home, about, services, contact — and

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the services page says you deliver bespoke solutions tailored to your

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client's unique requirements, which means the square root of fuck all to a

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human being, and even less to Google.

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You've got nothing on your site that answers a single question

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anyone actually types into a search box. And then you sit there

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wondering why you don't rank.

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Google's not sitting there thinking, ooh, this one's mysterious.

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Let's push her up

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the results.

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Google ranks pages that answer questions.

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If you've published no answers, you've given Google nothing to rank.

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You've optimised yourself into a filing cabinet.

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Meanwhile, your competitor down the road — the one that you think is some

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kind of SEO genius — has written 12 pages explaining how the thing works.

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They're not cleverer than you.

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They just weren't afraid to give stuff away for free.

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And that's the objection, isn't it?

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Because the biggest objection there is — and I'm not gonna pretend there

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isn't one — is: but Nikki, if I explain how to do it, people will just do

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it themselves and I'll get no work.

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Yeah, some of them will.

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That person was never going to hire you.

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Let me say that again.

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For the people at the back.

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That person was never going to hire you.

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They were going to Google it and have a go regardless.

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Now,

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the only question on the table was whether they had a go using your good advice,

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or using some bollocks they found on a content farm written by a bloke who last

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read anything from Google in about 2019.

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You haven't lost a client.

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You've lost somebody who was never a client.

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And in exchange you've got a person who knows your name, has had a decent

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experience of you, and who will say your name out loud when their mate

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at a networking breakfast says, do you know anyone who does this?

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And that's where my work comes from. Not from the person who downloads

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the free guide — from the person that person was talking to on a Tuesday

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morning over a really shit coffee.

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And the coaches aren't gonna tell you that, because it doesn't sell you anything.

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Here's another thing they're not gonna tell you.

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Free content does your qualifying for you.

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And I'm going to say it again: free content qualifies your leads.

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When somebody reads my guide on fixing your page titles and they get

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halfway down and say, oh my God, this seems like way too much work —

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that person lands in my inbox already sold.

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They know what needs doing.

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They know why it matters.

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They've worked out that their time is worth more than the fiddling.

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That's the easiest conversation in business.

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And I did none of the selling. The free thing did it while I wasn't looking.

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Compare that to an enquiry from someone who knows nothing at all.

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I can spend three calls explaining what SEO even is before I can even quote.

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And then half of them go with a bloke charging 90 quid a month, because

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I've given them no way to tell the difference between him and me.

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And that's what happens when nobody publishes anything useful.

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The whole market gets sold on price, because price is the

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only thing anyone can compare.

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And I know there's a fear underneath all of this.

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Don't give stuff away for free.

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So let's name it. You think what you know is a finite pile, and every time you

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hand it over, the pile gets smaller.

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Eventually you'll have given away all of your free knowledge and

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you'll have nothing left to give.

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But the pile isn't finite, and it doesn't get smaller.

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What you know is not the same as what you can do with what you know. I can tell you

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exactly what a good page title looks like.

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Character count, structure, where the search term goes,

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what to do about your brand

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name. All of it.

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Free.

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On my site. Help yourself.

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I did a whole podcast episode about it. What I can't hand you in a checklist

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is the judgement that comes from having written thousands of the bloody

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things and watching what happens next.

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Which of your 400 pages actually matters?

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What to do when the obvious search term is owned by a directory

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site older than your nan.

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When to ignore the rule completely because your situation is odd.

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Nobody's ever read a recipe and become a chef.

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That's my analogy for the day, and I'm keeping it, because it's

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the entire argument in a sentence.

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No one ever read a recipe and became a chef.

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No one can read your free information and become an expert in what you do.

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I talked back in episode 10 about what good SEO people look like, and one of the

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markers I gave you is that they share what they know openly, without making it feel

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like a magic trick only they can perform.

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That's not me being generous.

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That's me telling you that anyone who treats this stuff as a mysterious

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black box is usually hiding the fact that there isn't much in the box.

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Now, there is a real version of "don't give it away" hiding underneath

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all that nonsense, and it's worth digging out, because I don't want

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any of you finishing this episode and going off to work for nothing.

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The line is between free resources and free labour.

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They're not the same thing.

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And knowing where that line sits could save you a fortune. That's coming up.

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Plus your homework, which involves writing one page, and will probably

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do more for your rankings than anything you paid for last month.

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Right.

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Free resources versus free labour.

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A guide is free.

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A checklist is free.

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A blog post, a newsletter, a talk at your local business centre — all free.

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And they cost me exactly the same whether one person uses them or 4,000 people

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do.

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I write it once,

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it works forever.

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It sits on my website getting found on Google at three

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in the morning when I'm asleep.

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Looking at your website is work.

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Sitting on a call answering your specific questions is work.

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Producing a bespoke document about your business is work.

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None of that is generosity.

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That's unpaid consultancy.

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And the second you do it, you've taught that person that

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your time is the free sample.

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Which is why I've got no patience whatsoever with a free SEO audit.

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And I've had a proper go at that in its own episode, so I

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won't do the whole rant again.

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But quickly.

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When an agency offers you a free audit, they're not giving you anything.

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They're running your site through a tool that you could run it through

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yourself, sticking their logo on the output, and using your own

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broken redirects as a sales pitch.

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That's not free value.

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That's a lead magnet with a spreadsheet on top.

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So give away the knowledge. Charge for the application of it.

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That's your line, and it stops being awkward about the fourth

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time you say it out loud.

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I will give you this information for free. If you want me to implement it,

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here are my prices.

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And now your homework. And I mean it. Don't file this under

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"ooh, I'll do that one day".

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First job.

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Think of the question your clients ask you on every single call. Not a

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keyword — the question, in their words. The one you answer for free about

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twice a week and have done for years.

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Write it down. Now go and write the answer properly.

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The whole answer. Not a teaser with the useful part removed. The whole

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thing that will help them from A to Z.

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Put it on your website as a normal page, with a proper page title and a

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heading that matches the question.

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And that's it.

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You've just built the exact thing you've been told not to build, and it

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will outrank most of your service pages within a couple of months, because it

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does something your services page has never done — which is answer something.

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The second job, and this is the one people get wrong.

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Put the answer in a PDF behind an email form? It's gated. Google

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can't read it.

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It does nothing for your rankings.

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You've taken your best piece of content and locked it in a cupboard.

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Put the content on the page where it can be crawled and read.

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And if you want the email addresses, offer a downloadable

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version of it on that same page.

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Content out in the open, sign-up form at the top.

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Everybody wins, including you.

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Your third job.

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Go and look at your service pages with fresh eyes and count how many

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sentences are actual information versus how many are positioning waffle

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about your passion for excellence.

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If it's mostly waffle, that's your content problem right there, and it

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came from being told to hold back. Your fourth job: decide your line

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and write it on a Post-it note.

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Mine is one word. Bespoke.

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Anything about your specific site, in any format, is paid work.

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Everything else — take it, it's yours.

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Having that decided in advance means you never have to make

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the call while somebody's on the phone being lovely at you.

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Last thing, and then I'll shut up.

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My friend Holly Christie said something to me while I was writing

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about this for my newsletter, and I've not been able to shake it.

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Giving something back is part of the work.

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Supporting other people in getting the right advice raises the

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standard of the whole industry.

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She's right, and it matters more in my industry than most, because the alternative

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to good free advice is not no advice. It's that idiot on LinkedIn selling a

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£1,500 AI search audit that doesn't mention the 404 errors on your site.

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Every decent free thing somebody publishes is one less business getting fleeced.

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I'll take that trade all day long.

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If this made you rethink what's on your website, what you're

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offering on social media, what you're putting in your newsletter —

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make sure you're following SEO Fucking What on whichever app

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you're listening to right now,

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so you don't miss the next one.

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And if you want my SEO knowledge in one place, my Non-Wanky On-Page

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SEO course is at nonwankyseo.com.

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Everything I do for clients laid out so that you can do it yourself.

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And because I believe in what I say here, and in my newsletter, and on

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LinkedIn — right now, that course is free.

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Go and have a look: nonwankyseo.com. And if you know someone who's been told

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to keep their expertise to themselves and can't work out why their website

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is invisible, send them this episode.

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Until next time: get found, make money, and give your shit away.