SEO Growth Hacking

What Is SEO Growth Hacking?

SEO growth hacking is testing cheap, fast ways to win search traffic, then keeping what works. Sean Ellis says he coined the term in 2010, in a post that called a growth hacker "a person whose true north is growth". In SEO that tends to mean programmatic pages, Reddit, viral stunts and tools built to rank.

Is Growth Hacking Still a Thing?

Growth hacking is still a thing, though the name has gone out of fashion. The work moved under other labels, such as building in public and indie hacking. Edward Sturm's YouTube handle is @buildinpublic, and Jacky Chou numbered his Building in Public videos by the day, so the experiments here come with dates and results.

Where SEO Growth Hacks Go Wrong

SEO growth hacks go wrong when the hack is the product. Google's spam policies cover scaled content, doorways and publishing on a host site to borrow its ranking signals, and all three started life as somebody's clever trick. Programmatic pages work when each one has something of its own to offer, and fail when only the city name changes. On Reddit, David G Quaid draws the line between spam and organic in the Reddit row above.

How Often SEO Shows Cover Growth Hacking

SEO shows cover growth hacking in waves, and one long Building in Public run explains the biggest bar. The SEO TV index holds 401 videos and episodes on growth hacks, programmatic SEO, viral content and building in public from 19 shows, and 11 of them are from the past 12 months.