Meet Kevin, the SEO manager

Meet Kevin. He works in SEO, which means he spends most of his waking hours fixing things nobody noticed were broken, explaining why deleting 40,000 URLs might be a bad idea, and trying to understand what Google wants approximately six minutes before Google changes its mind.

Kevin shares his working life with Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Ahrefs, Semrush and various other creatures that either help him do his job or actively contribute to his declining mental stability.

His natural habitat includes broken migrations, mysterious traffic drops, canonical disasters, hreflang crimes, 404s, developers pushing to production on Friday afternoon, CEOs asking whether AI can replace the SEO team, and LinkedIn gurus announcing that SEO is dead for the 847th time.

Fortunately, Kevin has coffee.

He also has Winston the cat, who understands technical SEO better than several people Kevin has met professionally.

Kevin the SEO Manager was created by Sandra Junnikkala, originally appeared on LinkedIn, and has now escaped containment and acquired a website of his own.

No SEO managers were harmed in the making of this comic.

Their sanity, however, cannot be guaranteed.

Google Says. Kevin Suffers.

Kevin asks questions. Google refuses to elaborate.

Google Wants Helpful Content. Just Not Yours.

Kevin follows the guidelines. Google changes them.

Kevin Would Never Manipulate Search Results

He simply uses questionable SEO tactics until Google notices. Then he calls them “experiments”.

Every SEO Manager Needs Support

Kevin has ChatGPT — for best practices, survival practices and emergency whisky

SEO Is Easy. Office Politics Is the Hard Part.

Kevin manages rankings, traffic and algorithms — while Steve manages to remain employed.

Kevin’s Emotional Support Cat

Winston offers comfort, reassurance and thoughtful career advice.

Kevin Discovers Everyone Is an SEO Expert

Kevin spent years learning technical SEO, crawling, indexing, internal linking, keyword research and site architecture.

Then he discovered LinkedIn.

Apparently, SEO is dead, technical SEO is unnecessary, internal linking is pointless, keywords don’t matter, and Google will sort everything out by itself.

Kevin is currently reconsidering his entire career.

Not because he believes any of it.

Because some of these people have “SEO Expert” in their headline and are apparently employed. 😂

Kevin has now closed LinkedIn and opened Screaming Frog for emotional support.

When “Best Practice” Sounds Too Boring

Kevin presents a perfectly sensible Q4 SEO strategy: technical fixes, better content and internal linking.

The CEO is unimpressed.

Apparently, sustainable organic growth doesn’t sound nearly exciting enough in a quarterly strategy meeting.

So Kevin does what every experienced SEO Manager eventually learns to do:

Rebrand the exact same work as “summoning the dark forces”.

Suddenly there’s budget. 😂

Sometimes the difference between an SEO recommendation getting rejected and getting funded is simply making it sound sufficiently dangerous.

We Need Something Completely Different

The brief was simple: create something completely different from the competitors.

Kevin does some competitor research.

Five brands. Five websites. Five beautifully different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

So Kevin combines the entire category into one magnificent sentence:

“Unlock some clinically proven science from nature.”

The Brand Manager loves it.

Kevin was joking.

It’s due Thursday. 😂

Another important lesson in corporate life: never say anything sarcastically that could accidentally fit on a PowerPoint slide.

The 360° Digital Strategy

The objective: everything.

The budget: limited.

The deadline: tomorrow.

The creative asset: one beautiful 8K image nobody checked on mobile.

Kevin has officially reached the stage of digital strategy where conventional marketing can no longer help.

“Claude, summon the dark forces.”

Claude responds with a 47-slide strategy deck.

Wrong dark forces. 😂

Somewhere in corporate marketing, this exact meeting is probably happening right now.

Kevin the SEO Manager - Another Day on LinkedIn

Kevin made the tactical error of opening LinkedIn.

Seven minutes later, he discovered that SEO is dead, keywords are dead, technical SEO is dead, internal linking is pointless, AI can do everyone's job, and Google will apparently rank your website through the sheer power of good vibes and great content.

Excellent.

Kevin can finally delete Screaming Frog, cancel Ahrefs, remove all the canonicals, set fire to the redirect map and tell the developers to go home.

Google will figure it out.

✨ Just publish great content. ✨

Meanwhile, somewhere in production, 47,000 URLs have accidentally been noindexed.

Kevin closes LinkedIn.

Kevin opens Screaming Frog.

Kevin still has a job.