SEO Is Becoming Advice Theater

Nick LeRoy posted something that should sting the entire industry:

Not only are we pumping out endless “best lists”…
we’re fabricating advice from the “best/top SEOs” without proof.

And he’s right.

SEO has always had myths, but lately it’s drifting into something worse:

performance without substance.

The Checklist Era Is Over

For years, SEO content has been dominated by the same recycled rituals:

• optimize your alt text

• name your files properly

• add keywords in headers

• publish “ultimate guides”

• repeat what worked in 2016

Most of it isn’t wrong.

It’s just… irrelevant as strategy.

Because today, those things are table stakes.

Not differentiation.

Source: Niki Leroy X

Hygiene Isn’t Strategy

Alt text matters.
File names matter.

But they matter the way brushing your teeth matters.

It doesn’t make you an athlete.

It just makes you not broken.

The industry mistake is confusing hygiene with leverage.

AI Search Doesn’t Reward Rituals

In AI-shaped retrieval environments, ranking isn’t triggered by checkboxes.

It emerges from:

• interpretability

• coherence

• entity alignment

• trust continuity

• citation-worthiness

The question is no longer:

“Did you optimize the filename?”

It’s:

Did the system understand what this page is, and should it trust it?

We Need Fewer Lists, More Evidence

SEO doesn’t need more advice factories.

It needs more honesty:

• tested insights

• real uncertainty

• context-aware strategy

• less cosplay expertise

The era of “best practices” as religion is fading.

What replaces it is meaning.

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