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The SEO Hall of Fame: The Best Employees Show Up Consistently

Written by: Michael Hardy Tags: jobs-career

Published: Dec 23, 2025  |  Last Updated: Jan 2, 2026

Albert Einstein or Cal Ripken? 

The average career batting average of baseball Hall of Fame inductees is .303. 

During the 2025 Major League Baseball season, only 6 out of 780 players achieved a batting average of .303 or higher: about 1%. 

Cal Ripken Jr is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 2007, receiving 98.53% of the votes. Ripken's career batting average was .267. 

Not everyone is a genius in every field of endeavor. Even Albert Einstein "recognized his personal failures" in relationships with loved ones. He was a generational scientist, but Einstein acknowledged his attempts at marriage as "a project in which I grossly failed, twice." 

Most reliable SEOs aren't gurus with huge followings

Familiar faces perenially appear on the stages of SEO conferences around the world. They dominate the public discussions around strategies, tactics, opportunities, and the future of our craft. 

Presenters are the celebrities of our industry, and they receive the most attention. But of conference attendees, only about 2% of SEO practitioners will ever give a presentation at an industry conference. 

So how are vast majority of professional baseball players and SEO practitioners achieving success, if they are by definition so ordinary? 

Woody Allen may have said it best: "Showing up is 80 percent of life."

Interpretation: Reliability is an essential requisite for success. You don't have to be Albert Einstein or Shohei Ohtani to deliver meaningful value to your clients.

The folks that deliver meaningful value, are the ones that get hired again, and referred out to others. This is how you build a reputation based on doing great work, which earns you more great work through word of mouth. 

Imagine you are a business owner (or the general manager of a Major League Baseball franchise). Who do you want on your team?

Consider characteristics that create predictability

1. Teammates who show up: They are reliable, take their responsibilities seriously, and don't need to be prodded.
2. Teammates who care: They do great work because they genuinely care about their clients and want to help them to succeed.
3. Teammates who bring good energy: They bring can-do attitude and are supportive of coworkers and clients.  
4. Pulling the levers every day: Those who show up and are consistent, will deliver better numbers than those who strike out most of the time waiting for that one grand slam. 

The MVPs of your company are the ones doing the actual work 

Do business owners want an Einstein who can identify obscure opportunities that are brilliant but virtually impossible to operationalize on an SMB marketing budget?

Or would they prefer hiring an SEO expert who shows up every day, listens, and implements incremental improvements that compound over time to improve the business owner's bottom line? 

There's a reason Cal Ripken is known as "The Iron Man": 

• He showed up every day ready to play. 
• He gave his best effort every game. 
• He put the team's success ahead of his own. 

That's how most us will earn our place in the SEO Hall of Fame.