There\u2019s something undeniably alluring about playing the armchair quarterback. From the safety of the sidelines, it\u2019s easy to critique, hypothesize, and pontificate about what others should have done differently. It\u2019s low risk, high reward\u2014at least for the pundit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But without skin in the game, most critiques are hollow. They lack the depth, context, and humility that come from being in the arena, where decisions have consequences, and the lessons you learn are earned in the trenches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take the recent uproar over HubSpot\u2019s SEO traffic drop. It\u2019s a case study in why armchair quarterbacking often misses the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, Ryan Law shared a post on LinkedIn<\/a> that set the SEO world ablaze. According to Ahrefs, HubSpot\u2019s blog traffic dropped from 7.5M clicks in September to 2M in January. Cue the hot takes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commentary was loud, dramatic, and, unsurprisingly, lacking nuance (outside of a handful of posts that I appreciated, many from former or current HubSpotters). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what the critics missed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, that strategy doesn\u2019t work for everyone. We\u2019ve actively been telling<\/a> companies not to copy HubSpot\u2019s playbook since we started our agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The more interesting story here isn\u2019t what HubSpot should or shouldn\u2019t have done (also c\u2019mon, they inspired a generation of content marketers whether or not you think they should have written about the shrug emoji\u2026) <\/p>\n\n\n\n The more interesting story here is that we as an industry are shockingly quick to cast stones from the outside based on a single traffic screenshot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Deborah Carver summed it up perfectly:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just think it\u2019s curious that people think they understand a content strategy story from a single chart. We, as a population of business professionals, maybe are not as good at understanding data and storytelling as we think we are.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That last sentence is key: we\u2019re often not as good at interpreting data\u2014or the context behind it\u2014as we think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, so here\u2019s my diatribe on armchair critics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First, there\u2019s no cost to being wrong. Pundits can post bold takes like \u201cSEO is dead\u201d or \u201cHubSpot dropped the ball\u201d or a million other takeaways without facing any repercussions if they\u2019re off the mark. They reap the rewards of engagement\u2014likes, shares, comments\u2014without bearing any of the risks associated with being in the arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Nassim Taleb said in Skin in the Game<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t tell me what you \u2018think,\u2019 just tell me what\u2019s in your portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there aren\u2019t too many HubSpots in critics\u2019 portfolios. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the asymmetric reality of critique:<\/p>\n\n\n\n HubSpot’s SEO team has a challenging job. They\u2019re not just theorizing about content strategy; they\u2019re iterating at scale, navigating constraints (and a highly volatile search landscape), and making high-stakes decisions that impact revenue, brand perception, and market positioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the reality of being in the arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Armchair critics don\u2019t have the same context or real skin in the game. Their observations often lack the humility that comes from experiencing failure or the nuance that comes from solving real-world problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most common mistakes armchair quarterbacks make is falling victim to the halo effect<\/strong>\u2014the tendency to reconstruct success or failure stories by cherry-picking data points that support the end result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s how it plays out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Books like Good to Great<\/em> exemplify this phenomenon. They analyze a handful of \u201cwinning\u201d companies and attribute their success to specific strategies, ignoring the countless others who employed the same tactics but failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider Neil Patel\u2019s recent viral claim<\/a> that 16 companies stopped posting on social media, saw a 94% traffic decline, and lost 6% in revenue. It\u2019s an arresting data point, but without details about methodology\u2014selection bias, control groups, and timeframes\u2014it\u2019s just another speculative narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics on HubSpot’s traffic drop have pointed to \u201clow average word counts\u201d and \u201cAI-driven snippets\u201d as causes, but these explanations are reductive, a veritable Rorschach test for pundits (particularly when they haven\u2019t even done a cursory check into Ahrefs let alone the actual internal data). <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what can we learn from this? The same lessons I always talk about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And obviously, I have to throw that old Teddy Roosevelt line in here somewhere:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is not the critic who counts…The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a sort of funny flip, I remember when I was at HubSpot, I stumbled on a blog post analyzing one of my campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While the author praised it, they also made questionable assumptions about our strategy. Rather, I should say, they got it almost entirely wrong. Their analysis, while flattering, felt shallow\u2014because they lacked access to the data and constraints that informed our decisions. The campaign they praised was actually fairly lackluster in results \u00af\\_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af<\/p>\n\n\n\n My friend\u00a0Ryan Farley<\/a>\u00a0once wrote this incredible piece (that has since, sadly, been removed from the web – but thank you way back machine) on \u201cfake case studies,\u201d where he is essentially talking about breakdowns of successful companies by outsiders that attempt to reverse engineer the simple steps that led them to succeed. In it, he wrote:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese case studies are cheap and intellectually dishonest. They are harmful because they can mislead people, no matter how good their intentions. When you produce this stuff, there\u2019s a chance that someone actually tries to apply the \u2018lessons\u2019 you are teaching. When answers are tough to come by, it\u2019s easy to want an easy answer or to be able to simply adapt what another has found success with.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I get that these are fun to read, and they are easy to write. But the truly hard things about running and building a generational business, or even a world class organic growth strategy, cannot be boiled down into a single prescriptive blog post by someone who didn\u2019t work on it or even talk to someone who did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Critiquing from the sidelines is easy. Execution is hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to make it abundantly clear here that I find HubSpot\u2019s traffic drop just as interesting as everyone else does. Maybe more so given I’m an ex-employee. I\u2019m not saying that you can\u2019t learn anything from what happens outside of your own company or analytics account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not even saying that I\u2019m immune to armchair quarterbacking. I\u2019m out here chirping all the time! It\u2019s a human tendency, this gossip thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We called our newsletter Field Notes because we wanted it to reflect actual experiences and lessons we were learning from working, hands-on, with marketing leaders to drive growth. And as such, I felt I had to a) give my alma mater a little credibility for building such an iconic SEO program that it caused the \u201ctraffic drop heard around the world and b) remind us to be mindful of low context analyses and opinions in this space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Per usual, JH Scherck (I know you love it when I mentioned you in these) has the perfect encapsulation here<\/a>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe SEO community never misses a chance to try and diagnose and armchair quarterback a path to recovery for a well known site that’s been hit. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n HubSpot is operating at a scale most of us can’t comprehend. These reactionary tactical suggestions are useless and lack context+acumen\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For those in the arena: keep going. Critiques may be loud, but the lessons we learn through action are what truly count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want more insights like this? Subscribe to our <\/a>Field <\/a>Notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s something undeniably alluring about playing the armchair quarterback. From…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[184,25],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-field-notes","8":"category-seo"},"yoast_head":"\n\n
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Skin in the Game: Why Critique Without Stakes is Cheap<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Halo Effect: How Cherry-Picking Misleads<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Why Context and Execution Matter<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Success Case Studies: It Goes Both Ways<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Postscript <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n