Fed up with watching charlatans and self-proclaimed “AI SEO gurus” rake in cash and followers by selling absolute bollocks? Yeah, me too.

 This is SEO Fu*king What. I'm Nikki, and I help business owners like you to get found in search and make money from your website

In this no-bullshit episode, I’m explaining:

• Why the “SEO is dead” crowd keeps shouting the loudest
• The real reason AI content farms never win long-term
• How to spot the red flags (and the actual strategies that still work)

If you care about sustainable SEO that actually ranks, this

one’s for you.

This episode is all about the total dickheads who are offering terrible advice that could fuck up your website and its SEO.

You'll learn a lot from it.

But you'll get even better results from your SEO by having me in your corner - https://nikki-pilkington.com/seo-training/

Want to check out more episodes? https://seofuckingwhatpodcast.co.uk/

I'm fucking tired. Tired of watching dickhead

shysters win while the rest of us fight for SEO. Best

practice. If you're exhausted too good,

that means you're doing it right.

This is SEO. Fucking what? I'm Nicky and I've been doing SEO

for over 30 years. Back when we called it promoting

websites. I help small business owners and marketing

directors get found on Google and make money from their websites.

And today? Today I'm not ranting about a specific

tactic or calling out one particular dickhead. Today I'm

telling you why I'm tired, why you're probably

tired too, and why that exhaustion might be the only

thing keeping this fucking industry from turning into

a complete dumpster fire.

See, this is a thing that I usually don't say out loud. I'm

knackered. Properly, bone deep tired.

And it's not from doing SEO work. I love the work.

It's from fighting the same battles over and over again

and watching absolute charlatans, shysters and

dickheads get bigger platforms, more followers

and more money than people actually doing this

properly. Every single week I see

the same old bollocks repackaged as something new.

Black hat tactics from 2010 being sold

as AI powered growth hacks. Link

schemes that got people penalized a decade ago, now

called strategic link building opportunities.

Keyword stuffing dressed up as semantic optimization.

It's the same shit, different bucket.

And the worst part, it fucking works.

Not the tactics, those will still fuck your website up. But the

marketing works. The loudest voice wins.

The person promising rankings in 30 days gets the

client. While those of us saying this takes time and

consistent effort sound like we're trying to upsell someone on

premium services they don't need. I'm

tired of being the person who has to explain why the cheap,

quick solution will cost you 10 times more in six

months when Google catches up with you. I'm

tired of cleaning up after these assholes.

I'm tired of watching business owners get burned, lose

trust in SEO entirely, and then struggle to compete because they're

scared to try again. And do you know

what really fucks me off? The AI

guru crowd. You know, the ones they've

been declaring SEO is dead for the past two years

while simultaneously selling courses on SEO,

offering SEO services, optimizing their own content to rank

on Google. The sheer fucking audacity of it.

Search is changing, they say, while their

posts and their websites are optimized to fuck.

Traditional SEO doesn't work anymore, they say

from their perfectly chunked blog posts that rank for their Target

terms. They're like people selling fire extinguishers

while running round setting fires and then claiming fire

safety is outdated.

Let me give you some examples of the stuff that's currently making me want to

throw my laptop out of the fucking window. First

of all, the AI will do your SEO for you mob. These

dickheads are selling tools that pump out hundreds of AI

generated blog posts with zero strategy, zero

understanding of search intent, and zero chance of actually helping your business.

They're creating massive content farms that Google is

increasingly ignoring while charging businesses thousands for the

privilege of filling their websites with mediocre shite.

And when those sites don't rank, when traffic doesn't materialize, it

doesn't matter. The gurus have moved on to the next big thing.

They're selling AI content optimization or AI

powered link building or whatever the fuck else they can stick AI in

front of to make it sound innovative.

Secondly, the resurgence of old black hat tactics

dressed up in new clothes private blog networks.

Second, the resurgence of old black hat tactics dressed up in

new clothes private blog networks are back, baby.

Except now they're called niche edits or editorial placements

or some other bollocks that makes them sound legitimate. It's still

paying for links on dodgy websites. It still violates

Google's guidelines. It will still fuck you over

eventually. But the sales pitch works because they show

you the short term wins. Look, we got this client from page

five to page one in two weeks, okay? And where will

they be in six months when Google works out what you've done?

Nowhere. Or even worse, penalized.

Third, the SEO is dead. Long live Geo Crowd

Generative Engine Optimization. We've talked about this

before, but it bears repeating if someone is selling

you expertise in optimizing for something that barely

exists. Yet while Google is still working out what the fuck it

even wants to do with AI overviews, they're taking the piss.

They're guessing best. They're applying existing

SEO best practice and calling it something new.

Worse, they're making shit up entirely.

Now you might be thinking, but Nikki, why do you care? Let

the charlatans be charlatans. Focus on your own clients. And

believe me, I've tried that. But here's why I can't just

ignore it. Because real businesses are

getting hurt. I'm talking about the small business

owner who spent five grand on an SEO agency promising

first page ranking in 30 days only to watch their traffic

disappear entirely when Google penalized their site.

I'm talking about the marketing director who got sold a

massive AI content project that produced 500 blog

posts that nobody reads. And Google doesn't rank.

These aren't faceless corporations with massive marketing budgets.

They're people trying to compete, trying to get customers,

sometimes just trying to keep their businesses alive. And they're

being sold expensive bullshit by people who either don't

know better or just don't fucking care. And then

there's the bigger picture. Every time someone gets burned by

dodgy SEO, they lose trust in all SEO. They

think the whole industry is a scam. They stop investing in the stuff

that actually works. Good content, proper technical SEO,

genuine link building, decent user experience. They

either give up entirely or they try to do it themselves, with no guidance,

following advice from the same gurus who fucked them over in the

first place. It's exhausting watching this

cycle repeat. New business owner discovers SEO,

gets excited, finds the loudest expert, follows their advice,

gets burned, thinks all SEO is shit, including the good stuff,

struggles to compete, tries to do it themselves, messes it up a little bit

more, eventually tries again and hopefully finds someone

decent this time, who has to handhold them throughout the whole

fucking process. So

why do I keep doing this? Why keep fighting when the

charlatans have bigger platforms and better marketing? I'll

tell you why in just a moment. So why do I keep banging this drum?

Why keep calling out the bullshit when it feels like shouting into the

void? Well, because someone has to.

Because if everyone who knows better just focuses on their

own clients and ignores the noise, the noise wins.

The tossers become the dominant voice, their advice

becomes the standard. It'll be regurgitated

by search engines, by blog posts, by other people, by

AI, and then we're all fucked because

Google's going to keep changing things to combat the bollock tactics,

which makes everything harder for those of us doing it properly.

And I keep going because I remember what it was like starting out

in this industry when it was still figuring itself out,

when we were all learning together, sharing what worked,

calling out what didn't. Before it became this massive

industry full of gurus and courses and tools that

promise miracles. I keep going because every time

I help a business owner understand why their previous agency's approach was

bollocks, every time I show them what good SEO

actually looks like, and every time I show them that their traffic has

grown because we did things properly, that's worth it.

That's the bit that isn't exhausting.

And honestly, I keep going because I'm stubborn as fuck.

These dickheads aren't going to win just because they're louder. They're not

going to ruin an entire industry just because they've mastered

LinkedIn engagement pods and know how to game the algorithm.

So what do you actually do with this information? How do you protect

yourself from the bullshit when you're trying to find good SEO help or

work out which advice to follow? First of all,

be immediately suspicious of anyone promising specific

rankings or traffic numbers within a specific time frame.

First page in 30 days is almost always bollocks.

Good SEO takes time. If they're telling you

otherwise, they're either lying or they're using tactics that could

get you penalised. Secondly, if

someone's main expertise is AI SEO or

geo or whatever the latest buzzword is, ask them what they were

doing two years ago. If they've pivoted from

crypto or dropshipping or whatever else was trendy a couple of years

ago, they're probably not who you want doing your SEO.

Third of all, is that a thing? I don't know. Thirdly,

look for the people talking about boring shit.

Proper SEO is mostly boring. It's technical

audits and content strategy and link building relationships and gradual

improvements. It's testing and tracking and testing again.

It's tweaking and reporting. If someone's advice

sounds too exciting, too easy, too quick, it

probably is. Fourthly,

trust your exhaustion. If you're tired of fighting for best

practice, if you're knackered from trying to do things properly while

watching others take shortcuts, if you're frustrated that the right

approach takes longer than the dodgy one, that exhaustion means you're

probably on the right track. The easy path is usually the wrong one

in SEO. And finally, find your

people, the ones who are also tired. The ones

also calling out the bollocks. The ones doing the boring, proper

SEO work that gets results over months and not weeks. We

might not have the biggest networks, we might not have the most interaction,

but we're doing our best for our clients, not just

selling you bollocks. I'm still tired.

Recording this hasn't suddenly made me less knackered, but

I feel a bit better having said it out loud. If you're tired too,

you're not alone. And if you're tired because you're trying to do things properly

while everyone around you is taking shortcoming cuts, that's a good

sign. It means you give a shit. If this

resonated with you, make sure you're following SEO. What?

In whatever app you're listening in right now. And if you want to

commiserate about the state of the industry or you need someone to

tell you whether the advice you're getting is bollocks, find me via

my website or on LinkedIn. So until

next time, keep fighting the good fight. Fight even when you're

knackered because me, someone has to.