Every so often, someone in SEO announces “f*** keywords” or a similar sentiment. It’s not really a “hot take.” Moreover, it’s something that we see time and again.

Sometimes it’s a fair reaction to how reluctant some people in the industry are to change. Other times it feels more like a meme response, or a flex. A way to show you’ve moved on from old-school SEO without saying much about what you do differently, exaggerating a tension between pro/anti keywords without understanding it.

I have some sympathy for the sentiment for sure. I’ve worked on too many campaigns where success came down to whether a handful of keywords went up or down. Once those rankings became THE GOAL, it was easy to spend more time explaining two dropped places than asking whether we met the primary business need.…