SEO Knowing The Unknowable

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things,  at all hours of the day; The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme—myself disintegrated,  every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:  Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Can you see Whitman's man leaving a building in Brooklyn? For a brief moment the man walks alone. Moving down the street toward the ferry the man picks up speed. Others join until a shoulder to shoulder mass moves together like one emergent organic organism. Individual is consumed into a chaotic, raucous crowd.

Your next stop...

Suspension of Belief

If movies ask us to suspend disbelief, to consume the fantasy without irony, then Internet marketing and SEO needs suspension of BELIEF. Our beliefs are often wrong as Taleb pointed out in his book The Black Swan. The Black Swan is a Wall Street cautionary tale.

Taleb explains we are pattern seeking and pattern making MACHINES. This is why Internet marketing requires suspension of our beliefs and judgments. To believe you know is arrogance on a mythic scale, old world arrogance, man mistaking himself as a GOD arrogance.

No Internet marketer can stay in such a state long. The web has a way of reminding us whose boss. Actually, there is no boss. We are an emergent crowd headed for a ferry. We are consumed by an emergent collective consciousness.

There is a natural human desire to understand.

It is as if by understanding a small question such as how to profitably increase traffic or raise conversions by a point we tap into answers for larger questions. We believe questions cascade toward understanding. Understanding anything means we have a chance to know all, to glimpse the mind of God.

If we know one pattern the clear human implication is all CAN BE known.

We feel comforted, warm and calm. Don't get too comfortable. Internet marketing is a series of interlinked modeled systems. When models sit on top of other models you can't know anything in an absolute way. We learn 2 + 2 = 4 as if this repeatable math creates truth. Repeating something online doesn't make it true. Repeating something in Internet marketing just means it is repeatable, until the repetition stops.

Repetition never speaks to the future.

Internet marketing's future is always unknowable. Easy to see the source of confusion. When we apply synchronous logic to an asynchronous environment we create illusions, illusions that may repeat but repetition can fly apart at any time. There is no repeatable truth. There is only an observed repetition.

You may play the same cards tomorrow to a drastically different response. The problem isn't in the web, the problem is in US. Any knowing seduces us again. We think our ability to repeat is to know and knowing is certain, sure and absolute.

If we can know one small thing we can know all.

Except we can't, don't and will never. The web is asynchronous, a place where true mathematical randomness exists. We construct sand castles on the beach and forget about the tide. In any truly random asynchronous system entropy is the single governance.

Entropy, the movement to ever increasing randomness, is simultaneously creative and destructive. If you build a sand castle you hope the tide stays out. If you are looking for open beach you hope the tide comes in. Let's model the web as three forces:

• Sand Castle owners.
• Sand Castle builders.
• The Tide.

Owners want to arbitrage castles to builders. Builders want to become owners. The tide doesn't care about owning or building. The tide is a force of nature like weather. You don't change the tide you just surf it.

Castle owners will deny the tide, the force sure to move their prize castle to more random grains of sand. Builders fear the tide. They don't want to build or buy a castle only to have it swept away. The tide doesn't judge or get involved. The tide goes out and comes in, comes in and goes out.

Ownership Is The Problem

You don't OWN your website. You curate, tend, watch and learn from your website, but there is no permanent address. Forget to pay your rental and your sand castle is gone. Violate a gatekeeper's stated or unstated laws and you may be in the docks without a clear understanding of why.

That's because there may be no WHY other than it was your turn. Sure we back fill reasons. If we change this or fix that we are back in the web's graces. The tide will like us again. Not so much. The tide doesn't like, love or hate.

WHY is often unknowable so we anthropomorphize it, we assign human nature, motives and character to the web's weather. If you want to make millions online you must do three things:

• Stop looking for WHY.
• Judge less and do more.
• Live in the infinite NOW that is Internet time.

Looking at web analytics you are looking for testing fodder. Testing is counting to infinity one number at a time, but it makes more money today than yesterday and makes us FEEL better. Yes, we think, there is a ghost in the machine so life has meaning.

Your life does have meaning but not because there is a ghost in the machine. Your life expresses its meaning through the love you make with connections being love's natural ally and amplifier.

SEO The Biggest Sand Castle

We didn't read our Taleb very well. We fell into the trap. We anthropomorphized SEO. Google loved some and hated others. Google is the tide. Google is a natural force, a force without judgment or feeling. SEO is improving so we are doing things "right" again.

Until the tide comes in and everything goes asynchronous again. Taleb's largest warning is to not assume because we can assign value, name characters and assign human values to truly random asynchronous events doesn't mean those assignments are REAL. They are NOT.

There is no REAL. There is only NOW and THAT is the slippery unknowable.

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Walt Whitman, Internet marketer