Lane Ellis (4:25)

Right. Thank you, Jordan. That's a great intro there. You know, in 1948, Winston Churchill famously wrote, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I think we've all heard that and I think this applies to SEO and indeed really to all aspects of our life if you look closely enough. And my own roots date back to 1984 when I was a 16 year old kid starting out on a Commodore 64 computer. My introduction to online communication, which I've kept up till today, had an interesting career working in search and writing about the tech industry. And I had a brief period where I was a professional genealogist for a couple years. And this kind of ties into learning from our roots. Now I worked as a professional genealogist for a couple of years. I love family history, I love hearing people's stories, and I encourage everyone to get out and interview your oldest living relatives while you still can. Even if it's just a phone recording and you don't need to transcribe it right away, you could do it later. Transcriptions are so much Easier today than they used to be when I started out. Have to manually transcribe things. But I wanted to touch on, like you said, how we can build a better SEO future by learning its roots. And I think in particular there are some things we could look at. Doing SEO without knowing its roots is kind of like trying to optimize a website by only looking at a sitemap page. We really need to know and we can benefit from knowing the history of search and SEO. And I would say that the top things we can learn from SEO's roots might start with not reinventing the wheel of search. So many times people aren't even aware that they're trying something that's been done, you know, many times before. And if you don't know your search and SEO history, you may. You're going to face some of these same struggles and not be able to work through them like you would if you, if you were aware that this has been tried many times before. And this is no great mystery. I mean, in a, in a way, it's just very matter of fact. But the more you know about the history of search, the more informed and creative your new SEO tactics can be, I think.

Jordan Cooney (7:06)

Agreed. And one question for you on that lane, because I think this is interesting and like the piece that really stands out to me as I think about the history of search is so much of it is tainted by the notion of spam or the impetus of Google's guidelines, or essentially, to put it in, very brass tacks, I mean, the belief that you're trying to cheat the system. Search has always been discolored by this belief that it needs to, in order for it to work. You need to have a tactic, you need to have a trick. You need to have something that encourages Google to give you preferential treatment. I'm curious how that negative stigma as a part of the history of SEO stands out to you and how that particular part of its roots is beneficial in encouraging all of us to think more in a more complete manner as it pertains to SEO.

Lane Ellis (8:09)

Right. That's certainly a huge part of SEO. It's embedded in its history. I'm an eternal optimist and I've always tried to look at the bright side of search and even working on, you know, everyone is looking for a quick way to jump ahead, like you say, looking for a potential quick fix. But I think we really have to take stock and look back at the fundamentals. And I've always wanted to try to push search forward into a much more positive light and a more positive place where it really is about providing best answer content is the way we put it at top ranked marketing. My friend Lee Odin, who was a PubCon speaker just like you back in the day, he, I don't know if he coined the term best answer content, but he certainly uses it a lot. And I think that kind of ties into like an ideal of what we want search to be. You know, how can we really answer people's questions, what they're searching for? And there's so many elements to SEO it's hard to keep track of them all these days and they're always changing and AI has, you know, only quickened that pace. So there's a lot to consider. But I don't think that means we can't look back and learn from, from the histories of SEO and search. I think it actually might be more important than ever.

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Jordan Cooney (11:12)

No question. And going into that, where the history of SEO has really stood out to you and created these, I think maybe shifts in our industry that enable us to think better about the future. Are there some notable highlights, some key milestones that you believe we should all take stock of and ensure that we've enshrined into our memory to utilize as we look at the future of search and discovery.

Lane Ellis (11:48)

Well, there's a big old list of those kinds of things, and it's hard to know where even to start with a question like that. But I think just by keeping stock of industry pioneers, people like Brett Tabke and Mike Grehan and other folks who have been in it since the very beginning, reading what they've written and following them on social, we're getting to the point where some of the early search pioneers are into their 60s or perhaps even older. And I think it's important to listen to these voices as we move ahead. A lot of folks speak on search, of course, like you and others, but one thing I want to do someday is write a book about search and really interview some of the founders. And I know there have been books about search, but I think it's such a broad topic, and there's so many amazing voices of search pioneers to dig into. So that's on my bucket list of many things to do related to search Someday.

Jordan Cooney (12:57)

There's the pioneers in this industry, right? You mentioned a few of the names. Rand being probably another one. Eric Enga being another one who. Early adopters of the practice of optimization in how we think about investment into our websites as a channel of organic traffic. One of the things that I think stands out to me, and I want to get your point of view, Lane, is this realization that, may it be quality metrics, user signals, building things for people, that's always been at the forefront of really good SEO, like the good stuff, not the spam, not the negative connotations that you typically see, but it's really been centered around this idea of building great things for users that create community, create value for people. And when I think about the history there and what a lot of these early pioneers have not only preached, but shared in their work, is the perpetual improvement of the web as it may be consumed by users. And I want to know from your lens and your experiences why that is so important and why this concept of quality is so difficult to nail down. Because fundamentally, I think that we hear that word a lot and we hear it all over the place and everything, everything from what Google publishes as guidelines to where, what, you know, SEOs are preaching, but it's such a hard thing to just hold on to and truly understand. Why is that? And what. What's your historical reference to this concept of quality as it relates to SEO?

Lane Ellis (14:53)

Well, I think you're absolutely right. Search has such a twisty road of history, sharp bends and going around some of those corners. Things get flung off and lost, and you're not going to see them unless you go back and look and see some of those things. And SEO is always changing. It's always shifting. I think we need to focus on making sure it's headed in a positive direction. Taking the positive elements from SEO in the past and like you say, focusing on how to serve people better. That's been the whole fundamental origin of the web, basically, is doing this. Search is a part of it. You know, if. If you can't find your answer, if it's out there, is. Is it really an answer? And I think we can push search into new directions. Younger SEO workers need to take a look back and see and to see what our pioneers have done in the past. And that's the beautiful thing about learning the history of search is you can make your own journey out of it. Pick out what's important to you in your particular business situation and, you know, tailor it to your clients, wherever that might be, whatever sector. And learning from the past, trials and errors, and then putting your own mark on it, making things your own, keeping in mind, what do you want people to remember you for in search 20 years from now? Add your own uniqueness to what you're doing in search. Get creative, you know, get super smart. Try things that have never been tried before. Go ahead, make some errors, but add your own element, your own unique voice to search.

Jordan Cooney (16:51)

I love that. And as we kind of close out this episode, I want to get your point of view on AI, because obviously this is a huge factor as we look at the year of 2025, and we're early in this year, but how does the future of SEO and AI look to you? And do you have any statements for our listeners as it pertains to these two things merging together?

Lane Ellis (17:15)

Well, it's inevitable, and I'm really excited to see how the story of AI changes search and SEO, how they're going to continue to unfold those stories. And I'm certain we'll see both great advances and inevitable, unforeseen complications along the way. It's bound to happen, and it's certainly a time unlike any other I've seen in my 41 years working in online communications. It's exciting, it's scary, but it's also thrilling. And I'm just happy to be alive to see what is happening with AI and search as we go forward.

Jordan Cooney (17:53)

No question. And that's a great place for us to wrap up this episode of The Voices of Search Podcast. Thank you to Lane Ellis from RL Systems for joining us. If you would like to learn more about Lane, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can also contact him on Bluesky or His handle is A okay, thanks.

Podcast Announcer (18:14)

To Jordan Cooney, the founder of Pre Visible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can contact him on Twitter. His handle is J.T. cooney. That's J T K O E N E. Or you can visit his company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O and a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore. Thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks, and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.comAWT that's Ahrefs a h r e f s.comAWT just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is benjschab B E N J S H A B and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, remember the answers are always in the data.