The Monty Hall Problem and Other SEO Logic Traps: Behind Which Door is Your Keyword?

Last Updated on February 17, 2024

How Logical Thinking Can Help You Optimise for Search Engines

• Confirmation Bias: When Your Brain Plays Favourites
• Don’t Be a Goat! How the Monty Hall Problem Can Hurt Your SEO
• SEO & Second Chances: When to Cut Bait, Not Keywords
• Survivorship Bias: Seeing Only the Highly Ranked Keywords
• How You Can Use Logical Thinking to Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation

Confirmation Bias: When Your Brain Plays Favourites

While we may pride ourselves on our smarts, the most common stumbling block we all encounter is just plain stubborness. We all fall victim to what is known as confirmation bias. Of all our logical thinking errors, this is by far the most prevelant.

Confirmation bias happens when we favour information that confirms our beliefs while ignoring the rest. We do it all the time. While this daily mental shortcut might save us time, it often leads to:

• + Filtered social media: Algorithms feeding us what we like, share, and comment on, creating echo chambers.
• + One-sided debates: We stick to news platforms and even conversations that reinforce our opinions.
• + Bad judgement: Interpreting actions and results based on our biases instead of neutral observations.

Unsure about your confirmation bias? Challenge yourself! Seek out diverse perspectives, question your assumptions, and trust the data. Clear thinking starts with recognizing our blind spots, which isn’t always easy.

How Confirmation Bias Can Hurt Your SEO

SEO is a lot of work, so it would be a shame if you were sabotaging your own hard work, right? Here are just a few ways confirmation bias might impact your SEO efforts:

1. Keyword Selection: Choosing keywords you believe will perform well based on your assumptions or preferences, rather than conducting thorough research to identify the most effective ones for your target audience.
2. Content Creation: Developing content that aligns with your own perspectives or opinions, rather than addressing the needs and interests of your target audience. This happens when we build website structures too – how many website menues are built from the inside facing out, right?
3. Link Building: Focusing on acquiring links from sources you see as being authoritative, popular, or relevant, without considering alternative link-building strategies that could be more effective. Niche links for the win!
4. Analytics Interpretation: Selectively interpreting analytics data to reinforce your existing beliefs about the success of your SEO efforts, rather than objectively assessing the performance of your website.

It’s important to approach any of your SEO efforts with a critical mindset. Rely on data-driven insights rather than personal biases or assumptions.

Test different strategies, and regularly analyze performance metrics to make informed decisions about your SEO tactics. Reach out to colleagues and your customers for feedback too; they can often help identify and challenge potential biases in your SEO strategies.

Don’t Be a Goat! How the Monty Hall Problem Can Hurt Your SEO

The Monty Hall Problem is a probability puzzle named after Monty Hall, the host of the game show Let’s Make a Deal. You might be familiar with it from the famous scene in the movie 21 too.

Imagine you are on a game show and presented with three doors: behind one door is a prize (maybe a new car), but behind the other two doors are goats. You choose a door, let’s say door number 1.

The host, who knows what’s behind each door, then opens one of the unchosen doors, revealing a goat (let’s say door number 3). He then gives you the option to either stick with your original choice (door number 1) or switch to the remaining unopened door (door number 2).

Should you stick with your original choice or switch to the other door?

Most people intuitively think that switching and not switching have equal odds of winning the prize, since there are only two doors left, 50/50 right? However, the surprising answer is that switching doors actually doubles your chances of winning the prize!

Mind Blown! Here’s the explanation:

• + When you initially choose a door, there is a 1/3 chance it has the prize and a 2/3 chance it does not.
• + When the host reveals a goat behind another door, he is not simply eliminating one losing option; he is revealing which of the two losing options you didn’t choose.
• + Since there were initially two losing options and the host eliminates one, the remaining unopened door now concentrates all the 2/3 probability of having the prize.
• + So, switching to the other door gives you a 2/3 chance of winning, while sticking with your original choice only gives you a 1/3 chance.

Reality Check: How Switching May Hurt Your SEO

The Monty Hall Problem is a wakeup call. It challenges our intuition and highlights the importance of considering all available information when making decisions. It demonstrates that sometimes, seemingly logical reasoning can lead to incorrect conclusions. In a nutshell: you should switch rather than fight. (Remember those Tareyton commercials?)

In the problem, switching doors offers a chance of immediate gain. Similarly, some SEO tactics focus on quick wins, which can provide short-term ranking boosts but ultimately harm your site’s authority and credibility in the long run.

BUT – SEO, like any Inbound Marketing strategy, is a long game. Stick with it!

SEO & Second Chances: When to Cut Bait, Not Keywords

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Don’t throw good money after bad”. Well, another trick we play on ourselves, is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. This is when we persist with an activity because we’ve already invested time, money, or effort into it. Even when it’s clear that the costs outweigh the benefits, it’s often difficult for us to cut our losses and move on.

This happens to us a lot. (In fact, the saying dates back to the Giovanni Torriano’s “Select Italian Proverbs” written in 1662)

• + We stay in a job we dislike because we’ve been there for years.
• + We finish watching a boring series because we we watched the first episodes.
• + We continuing to pour time or money into a failing relationship – business or personal.

Why do we persist throwing good after bad?

• + We hate losing things more than we value gaining new things. Giving up feels like we’re losing what we’ve already put in.
• + Confirmation bias: Our old friend! We tend to seek information that confirms our existing choices, ignoring evidence that suggests quitting might be better.
• + The more we invest, the more we feel obligated to see it through. This is one reason many people stay in bad personal relationships.

How can we avoid falling into the sunk cost trap?

• + Don’t let past experiences cloud your judgment. Ask yourself, “Would I start this today knowing what I know now?”
• + Ask yourself, What else could you do with your time, money, and effort if you weren’t stuck?
• + Before you start, define when it’s time to walk away, regardless of what you’ve invested.

Recognising sunk costs is the first step to overcoming them. Don’t shy away from difficult decisions, even if it means taking a loss. Sometimes avoiding losses is the best investment!

Survivorship Bias: Seeing Only the Highly Ranked Keywords

Survivorship bias is another tricky cognitive trap you should avoid. Survivorship bias occurs when we focus only on the entities that have “survived” a selection process, ignoring those that didn’t. It’s at the heart of the “fail faster” concept.

Looking only at the winners leads to overestimating our probability of success while often underestimating the challenges or risks involved.

Best Examples of Survivorship Bias:

• + Where it all started: World War II airplanes returning from their mission. Looking only at the ones that returned with bullet holes suggests armoring where they were hit. But ignoring those shot down painted an incomplete picture.
• + Investment advice: Seeing only successful investors creates an unrealistic expectation of returns, neglecting those who failed.
• + Self-help books: Success stories might make their strategies seem universally effective, disregarding those who didn’t find success with them.

Why does it happen?

• + Availability: We readily see and hear about the “survivors,” while the failures often remain invisible.
• + Confirmation bias: We tend to seek information that supports our existing beliefs, reinforcing the impression that success is easy.
• + Misinterpreting correlation as causation: Just because someone did something and succeeded doesn’t mean it caused their success.

How to avoid it:

• + Seek out counterfactuals: Imagine and consider those who didn’t “survive.”
• + for representative samples: Ensure your data includes both successes and failures.
• + Be skeptical of anecdotal evidence: Single stories don’t necessarily reflect the whole picture.
• + Consider alternative explanations: Don’t automatically attribute success to specific factors without exploring other possibilities.

Remember: By recognizing survivorship bias, you can make more informed decisions and avoid unrealistic expectations. Always strive for a complete picture, not just the shiny examples on the surface.

How You Can Use Logical Thinking to Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation

While it’s interesting to explore how these logical fallacies might be applied to your online marketing and search engine optimisation, it’s important to remember that they shouldn’t be used as actual strategies. The takeaway from this article is simply this: “Think Better”.

The Monty Hall Problem and SEO:

While switching doors in a game show might be better than sticking with your initial choice, doesn’t translate well to SEO. Why? It suggests constantly changing strategies based on random results, neglecting long-term planning and data-driven decisions.

SEO is a long game. Stick with your strategy until you have enough data to see the results.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy and SEO:

Clinging to outdated or ineffective strategies simply because you’ve already invested time and resources. It’s one really good wake up call to listen to! YOu don’t necessarily double your chances by doubling down.

While past efforts shouldn’t be ignored, blindly persisting with SEO tactics that failed to deliver can obviously hinder your progress.

SEO takes time, but if the numbers are telling you to move on, do it!

Survivorship Bias and SEO:

This bias means you are focusing only on successful websites, and ignoring those that failed. This can lead to unrealistic expectations and potentially harmful strategies. In SEO, it’s crucial to consider the broader landscape and learn from diverse experiences.

Don’t base your SEO strategy solely on what highly successful websites are doing. Look into the factors that might not be applicable to your specific target audience, product, or service.

The same can be said for chasing highly ranked keywords and hashtags. Not everyone is your customer. Instead, rank at the top for those keywords and hashtags with less traffic. The name of the game is visibility.

Find Out More About Search Engine Optimisation

If you want to build sustainable SEO success, focus on data-driven insights, best practices, and ethical SEO strategies. Remember, SEO is a long game, and sound decision-making based on accurate information is key. Don’t be a slave to logical fallacies.

Logical thinking in SEO means ditching your gut feelings & embracing data. Numbers don’t lie! Analyze, research, prioritize relevance, and avoid quick fixes or emotional decisions. Search Engine Optimisation takes time, but so does building anything worthwhile.

If you would like to find out more about SEO, you can read more of my articles right here.

Content credentials: Main article image Generated with AI ∙ February 11, 2024 at 4:30 PM