Aligned Incentives: Why We're Betting on Email and Paid, not SEO

No one knows what search will look like six months from now, let alone in a few years. The pace of change is accelerating rapidly. Anyone building an SEO strategy today is building on shifting ground.

But SEO takes time. A long time. Months before you see traffic. Years before you see a return. And even then, no one can promise it’ll work. Every SEO expert I’ve ever met says the same thing: There are no guarantees. Google rolls out algorithm updates constantly. Each one can reshape the rules overnight. That’s only going to accelerate as generative AI reshapes the search experience.

Signal Lab isn’t against SEO. We just believe SEO in 2025 is riskier than ever, and plenty of businesses are focused on perfecting the fundamentals before rolling the dice.

Incentives Matter More Than Channels

When we talk with clients about where to focus, we look at incentives first. When the goals of all parties align — users, brands, and platforms — the strategy tends to scale and stay stable. When those goals are out of sync, it’s hard to get results, even if the tactic is popular.

Let’s look at a few key examples:

Paid advertising

Paid advertising works because everyone involved is pulling in the same direction. Brands define the goals: clicks, signups, conversions. Platforms are financially motivated to help them hit those goals. Users click on relevant ads because they’re actually looking for something. It works, and it’s measurable.

Email marketing

Email is similar. Users opt in. They’ve raised their hands and said, “Yes, I want to hear from you.” Brands send content that people have asked for. Inbox providers filter messages to make sure everything’s organized. Everyone’s expectations are clear and aligned.

Search: Once aligned, now fractured

For a long time, search was also built on aligned incentives. Users wanted answers. Search engines helped them find those answers through links. And site owners were happy to provide content in exchange for traffic.

That alignment is breaking down.

Search engines figured out long ago that users don’t really want to visit a bunch of different websites. They want quick answers. And with SERP features and now generative AI, Google and others can give users what they want without sending traffic elsewhere. The user stays happy. The search engine keeps them on-site longer, which means more ads and more data. But the site owner (the one who made the content) gets left out.

The numbers back this up. In 2024, 60% of searches were zero-click, meaning users got what they needed without visiting a single website. That number is expected to rise to 70% in 2025. And anyone who’s used Perplexity or Google’s new AI summaries likely expects it to go even higher.

This matters because the entire point of SEO is to earn visits that turn into leads or customers. But if most users get what they need directly from the search engine, then the value of that content starts to collapse. You’re still doing the work of publishing, optimizing, and updating content, but the payoff never arrives. Without traffic, you lose the chance to build trust, capture data, and guide the buyer journey.

Our Focus is on Aligned Channels

We’re placing our bets on the channels where the goals are still aligned. Not because they’re trendy. Not because they’re easy. But because they help us do what marketing is supposed to do in a reliable way:

Make sure people know your product exists.

Build enough trust that people want to buy it.

Email and paid display are both scalable and predictable, built on clear incentive structures. We know how they work. We know how they break. We know how to fix them when they do.

We understand business owners need to take risks. They make bets all the time, and even now, we think SEO is a decent bet to place in the context of placing lots of bets.

We wouldn't bet the farm on it, though.

At Signal Lab, we want to do work where we can predict outcomes with a higher degree of certainty, which is why we're referring SEO inquiries to other agencies.

Our guiding principle is that if you're looking for long-term growth, the place to start is where all parties want the same outcome. That’s where trust is built. That’s where deals get made. When incentives are aligned, you're not fighting the system; you’re working with it.