What Is The SEO Pie Theory?

So I’ve been doing a bit of consulting lately. Sometimes it’s by call  and other times people catch me giving out free advice on Twitter or in the YouTube comments. One thing that I regularly explain to beginners is something that I’m going to call, The SEO Pie Theory.

I’m regularly asked questions like:

• how many links do I need to rank?
• if I redirect this domain, will I rank?
• will X rank my site?

The answer is never that simple. Unless you’re doing some sort of churn and burn strategy, your SEO strategy should be though of as a pie graph. I explained this theory first briefly in my video below, where I answer 3 of the most asked questions when it comes to selling SEO services. The second question is where the pie chart comes into play.

Essentially, there is not just one straight forward answer to how can I rank my website? 

Your SEO strategy must contain several aspects, especially if you’re in local SEO. This is exactly why there’s so many SEO consultants, because no one knows what aspects they need to improve or don’t have.

Is your on site SEO up to par? How do you know? What are all of the aspects of on site SEO? This is just one aspect of your SEO strategy and it is quite in depth.

Suppose that our onpage is only optimized 1/3 of what it should be. If we use the graph in the video (which is not entirely accurate, but just a random example), then we are missing out on 20% of our optimization right there.

I should also note, that the graph in the video changes across keywords. Obviously review signals only matter to local results, except maybe in product search terms. Social signals and video embeds may hold more power when it comes to ranking for video search phrases, etc.

I’m going to be using this term in the future, so when I say The SEO Pie Theory, you’ll know I mean a diversified SEO strategy that encompasses several aspects.