How to make your best SEO work for you. SEO Is dead or too competitive to bother with. Here’s why that’s not the full picture. If you gave up on search traffic last time.
Because it felt impossible to compete.
Or because you heard SEO was a dying strategy.
I want to offer a more accurate, encouraging picture of what’s actually going on.
Where This Belief Comes From
It’s true that certain broad, high-competition search terms are dominated by massive websites with huge budgets and years of history.
Terms like “make money online” or “best side hustle” are essentially unwinnable for a beginner.
If you were targeting terms like that last time, it’s completely understandable that it felt hopeless.
You were competing in a category that genuinely was too competitive for where you were starting from.
How to make your best SEO
What This Belief Gets Wrong
The mistake isn’t believing SEO is hard for broad terms — it genuinely is.
The mistake is generalizing that difficulty to all search traffic.
When the reality is that specific, narrower search phrases remain very achievable for a new site, even today.
Competition isn’t uniform across every possible search term; it’s concentrated heavily around the broad, obvious ones everyone tries first.
The Opportunity Hiding in Specificity
Instead of “make money online.”
A phrase like “is [AI-Powered Digital Marketing Business] worth it for someone with no experience.”
It has far less competition because far fewer sites target that exact, specific question.
Fewer people search it, true, but the people who do are much closer to an actual buying decision.
And you have a genuinely realistic shot at actually ranking for it.
How to make your best SEO
Why Beginners Often Miss This
New affiliate marketers often gravitate toward broad terms because they sound bigger and more impressive.
And because keyword tools show high search volume next to them, which feels appealing.
But high search volume paired with impossible competition produces exactly zero traffic for a new site.
Lower volume paired with realistic competition produces actual, real traffic you can build on.
What Changed (and What Didn’t) in Search
Search engines have gotten better at understanding genuinely helpful, specific content.
And worse at rewarding thin, generic content stuffed with keywords.
This works in favor of small, focused sites that answer specific questions thoroughly.
And against the kind of low-effort mass content that used to rank through sheer volume.
In some real ways, search has become more accessible for genuinely useful beginner content, not less.
Reassessing What “Competitive” Actually Means for You
Competitive isn’t a single, universal state — it’s specific to each search phrase.
Some phrases in your niche are genuinely too competitive for a new site.
Many others, especially specific, longer, question-based phrases, are entirely within reach.
How to make your best SEO
A Practical Way to Test This Yourself
Search a specific, narrow question in your niche.
Something detailed, not broad — and look at what’s currently ranking.
If you see large, established sites clearly dominating, that particular phrase may be tough.
If you see smaller, less polished sites ranking, or the search results feel thin and unimpressive.
That’s a real signal that there’s room for genuinely helpful content to break through.
Why This Might Change Your Whole Approach This Time
If your last attempt targeted broad, competitive terms and got you nowhere.
Try shifting toward specific, narrower questions.
The kind a real person types in when they’re close to a decision.
That could produce very different results this time, even using much of the same underlying content skills you already have.
How to make your best SEO
Pick three specific, narrow questions your ideal reader might actually search for.
And look at what’s currently ranking for each one.
Notice which ones feel genuinely reachable, rather than assuming the whole topic is closed off.
And if this post helped you, share it with someone else.
That’s genuinely the best way to help me keep writing more of this.
PS. Here’s a blog post that talks more about this topic.
Sheldon Mohl