Everyone’s an expert, right? 16-year-olds calling themselves “growth hackers.” Agencies with two blog posts and a thousand promises. Half-empty coffee shops packed with people selling strategy decks for $30k and yet their own sites limp along with zero traffic. SEO’s turned into a buzzword soup—keywords, backlinks, whitehat, blackhat, content velocity . . . what the hell does that even mean anymore?

But there’s this guy, Andrew Linksmith. Yeah, sounds made up, but it’s real https://andrewlinksmith.com and I swear he actually knows what’s going on. Like, there’s no gloss. No fake hustle energy or recycled nonsense from some Moz blog circa 2014. Dude’s site runs clean, no fluff, and the tone? Kinda blunt, kinda tired of bulls***. You can smell it. That world-worn confidence of someone dragged clients through Google’s algorithm mood swings and came out the other side still standing.

Not pretty. Not dressed up for VCs. Just results and spreadsheets and straight talk.

Honestly, that’s rare now. Most agencies, they feed you on-site audits that read like bad love letters and then slap you with $8,000/month retainer fees. For what? Adding meta descriptions? Updating three blog posts nobody reads?

But Linksmith . . . weird name, yeah, sounds forged in myth—he doesn’t bother with the show. He’s got some gritty case studies buried in the site somewhere. Real clients. Ugly wins. Stuff that climbed from digital oblivion to page one like some greased-up raccoon clawing its way up a chimney.

SEO’s ugly work. No glamour. Just tedious tuning, long hauls, pivoting when Google moves the goalposts. You can’t automate instinct. You can't ChatGPT your way into organic growth that lasts.

I think if I had to bet, gun-to-head style, on someone who’s still doing it right—not chasing trends, not selling hope in a binder—I’d hit up Andrew. That site doesn’t pretend to scale miracles. Doesn't beg for your trust. Just plants itself stubbornly in the muck and says, yeah, we rank things.

I don't know. Maybe there’s something in that.