The One Thing Agriculture and SEO have in Common

Although farming has at first sight little to do with Search Engine Optimization, these fields of expertise have one thing in common…

…it is all about growth.

In agriculture, there are two parallel perceptions, or a clash of paradigms (P.T. Kidd, 2012) about how growth should be achieved. The conventional and the traditional methodology. I prefer to refer to these as industrialized versus natural. These same clashing concepts can be applied to the growth of website traffic.

Clash of Paradigms

My last two topics were about organic growth. One about the production of organic compost, the other about cultivating organic traffic. It is not a coincidence that I prefer the natural or traditional methods.

The reason is that none of the industrialized methods are sustainable. As soon as the input is removed, the entire system stops to work.

What will happen without Input in your system?

What happens when you stop buying traffic? Your carefully designed click funnels become worthless.
What happens with cropland after half a century of chemical fertilizers?
You end up with depleted soils were nothing grows.

But what happens when you stop feeding content?
Organic searches keep coming in on the existing content!
What happens when all natural cycles are established in a living soil? Plants keeps growing!

The organic growth systems keeps working because of the cyclic character of sustainable growth. The feedback mechanism that comes very close to a perpetual mobile. Once up and running, it needs little inputs to keep going.

The Organic Alternative

The wheel keeps spinning around and round with the slightest effort.

Compare that with a diesel powered truck. It may break through some walls, but once out of fuel it comes to a dead still.

Industrializing Organic Growth

These two extreme point of view may seem incompatible, but I’d like to think of the possibilities to industrialize organic growth. Using modern techniques, to scale up the natural process.

Reference

Kidd, Paul T. “The role of the internet of things in enabling sustainable agriculture in Europe.” International Journal of RF Technologies 3.1 (2012): 67-83.