“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” said Obi-Wan Kenobi . It came back to me this week when I read a LinkedIn post from Rand Fishkin , which opened with a sentence I’ve never seen him write before: “I almost never write blog posts anymore, but this one felt necessary.” Screenshot from LinkedIn, May 2026 I’ve been reading Rand’s blog posts for more than 20 years, and when he says something feels necessary, it’s worth stopping for. The TL;DR for his article is this: “Ignore traffic. Make inimitable products. Shift your priorities away from ‘great content’ on your own site and toward ‘great marketing’ on the platforms where your audience pays attention. Influence is the new traffic.” What Rand Is Actually Saying For 25 years, Google told websites to make great content, and they’d sort out the rest. Rand’s argument is that this was always incomplete advice, but it kinda, sorta worked – until now.…