07/27/2026
Most eCommerce SEO doesn't fail dramatically.
It decays a few keywords at a time. I went back through fifteen years of numbers for a friend that we support. Their ad spend has run at 3.2% of revenue — most eCommerce businesses spend 10–20%.
That gap is roughly $72,000 over three years, and it's what the unglamorous SEO work was actually worth. Nobody puts that number on a dashboard. Wrote up what built it, what eroded it, and two things any operator can check this week for free.
Decided to write the whole thing up — including two things any operator can check this week, for free, that will tell you more than a $500-a-month proposal will.
You've gotten the call, or the email, or the LinkedIn message. "We can get you on the first page of Google for $500 a month." Lately it's "we can get you mentioned by AI." Same pitch, new noun. Here's what twenty-five years in eCommerce SEO taught me about motion versus action: why the unglamorous w...
