Web3 has a gatekeeping problem | Opinion
Leon County is stepping into a bold new era of sports—one that secures our reputation as the world’s undisputed Capital of Cross Country. On Saturday, January 10, 2026, our community will open its arms to the world as we welcome the World Athletics Cross Country Championships Tallahassee 26 to Leon County’s Apalachee Regional Park (ARP).
Essentially the Olympics of the sport of cross country, this event marks the very first world championship sporting event ever to be held in Leon County.
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When more than 500 elite athletes representing 65 countries arrive to chase world titles, it will mark a milestone over 15 years in the making—and a moment that will define Leon County’s legacy as a destination capable of hosting the world’s most prestigious sports competitions. This moment did not happen overnight. It is the result of vision, persistence, and collaboration that began in 2009 with an idea and a belief: that our community could build a world-class cross-country venue unlike anything in the nation.
Leon County invested in that vision at Apalachee Regional Park, and now the world’s greatest athletes are coming here to make history in our community.
For this championship event, Leon County government’s tourism team, Visit Tallahassee, leveraged the strength of Florida’s global brand: sunshine, blue waters, natural landscapes, and world-renowned attractions.
The world championship course itself is a tribute to Florida’s natural beauty. There will be six custom-designed elements that bring Tallahassee, Leon County and Florida’s identity to life: a replica of our historic Capitol building; a rollercoaster honoring the state’s world-famous attractions; a sand pit representing 100 miles of coastline; a water feature symbolizing Florida’s oceans, springs, lakes, and rivers; Alligator Alley, where runners will navigate alligator-shaped logs carved from fallen trees at Apalachee Regional Park; and a mud section paying homage to the Florida Everglades.
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As one of the most important international sporting events to be held in the U.S.A. in 2026, this is Leon County’s chance to put our best foot forward. Thousands of spectators, coaches, officials, and fans will travel from around the world, generating an estimated $4.3 million in economic impact. From hotels and restaurants to attractions, shops, and both large and small businesses, the community will feel the energy and economic lift.
We also want our residents to be at the heart of this moment. We invite everyone to join us for all the action—come see the championship races of the world’s fastest runners and, better yet, put a team together and join the Worlds Fun Run: Florida Edition. Choose the 2K or 4K, and all finishers receive a spectacular medal. For those unable to attend in person, the event will be broadcast in 70 countries worldwide on NBC/Peacock, showcasing Leon County to millions of viewers.
A portion of event proceeds will support Leon County Schools’ cross country and track & field programs, ensuring the next generation of runners benefit from this global stage. When you buy a ticket or register a team, you’re not just watching history—you’re investing in our kids and our local economy.
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And there’s more. On Sunday following the World Championships, Tallahassee will host the USA Track & Field Club Cross Country Championships, bringing in hundreds more athletes and teams for a weekend that will further elevate our destination and showcase our capacity to host premier sporting events.
Here’s how to get involved:
January 10, 2026, is our moment. The course is ready. Leon County is ready. And together, we will welcome the world to Leon County.
Learn more about the World Athletics Cross Country Championships Tallahassee 26, purchase tickets, and join the excitement at VisitTallahassee.com/WXC26.
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Christian Caban was elected to the Leon County Commission to represent District 2 in 2022 and currently serves as 2025-2026 chairman.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Leon County is about to enter the World Championship era | Opinion

After more than 15 years in enterprise SEO across six major corporations, I’ve seen more careers derailed by internal politics than by Google updates.
Many SEOs moving from agency to in-house assume that staying current with algorithms and improving rankings will be enough.
In reality, the harder work is navigating the organization and the people within it.
Agency life rewards deliverables and reports. Corporate life runs on relationships, repeatable processes, the right platforms, and visible performance – all carrying equal weight with technical skill.
The following lessons reflect where SEOs can grow, avoid common pitfalls, and build sustainable careers inside complex enterprises.
Landing an SEO role in the corporate world today is less about chasing postings and more about positioning yourself as the obvious choice before you ever apply.
Hiring teams look for someone who connects well, presents a clear professional narrative, and shows measurable impact.
Most resumes submitted through job portals get filtered out by automated systems before a recruiter ever sees them.
Job boards like LinkedIn can be research tools.
When you find a role that fits, look for someone inside the company who can refer you – internal referrals dramatically increase your chances of an interview.
If you’re early in your career, build relationships long before you need them.
Find mentors through ADPList, attend local meetups, and join SEO and AI workshops or virtual conferences.
These touchpoints often matter more than submitting formal applications. In today’s market, your network is your application.
You’re an SEO – use the same skills you apply to websites on your own professional presence.
Start by choosing two “primary keywords” for your career: a job title and an industry.
If you already have experience in a specific vertical, lean into it.
If you don’t, pick an industry you genuinely understand or care about so you can speak to its audience and problems with credibility.
Use LinkedIn as a search engine. Include your soft skills, technical strengths, marketing competencies, and the industry terms hiring managers are scanning for.
Keep unrelated hobbies off your profile unless they support the roles you want.
If you wouldn’t include “yoga enthusiast” on a landing page targeting enterprise SaaS buyers, it shouldn’t be on your LinkedIn unless your goal is to work for a yoga brand.
And learn to talk about yourself clearly. Many SEOs are introverted or default to giving full credit to the team. That’s admirable in the workplace, but interviews require precision about what you led, influenced, or delivered. You can stay humble while still being direct.
Make sure all your touchpoints – resume, LinkedIn, portfolio, GitHub if relevant, personal site – align.
Recruiters and hiring managers will check multiple sources.
Consistency helps them see your strengths quickly and positions you as someone who understands how to present a unified brand.
Resumes today need to be concise, scannable, and impact-driven.
One page is ideal unless you have 10+ years of experience or leadership roles that warrant a second page.
Lead with outcomes instead of responsibilities:
Use action verbs that convey ownership – led, optimized, increased, launched – and tailor each bullet to the role you’re applying for.
Hiring managers want to see how your experience connects to their specific challenges, whether that’s:
List the tools that matter for enterprise SEO, but keep the list purposeful.
A handful of relevant platforms – Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Semrush, Botify, BrightEdge – shows breadth without turning your resume into an acronym block.
Your summary should point forward. Highlight your:
Make it clear that you think beyond rankings – that you understand SEO’s role in product, content, and business outcomes.
Formatting still matters. Use white space, short bullets, and metric-first phrasing so your biggest wins stand out instantly.
Save the file as your full name. Little details help you look polished in a crowded field.
Leave out:
To build a long-term career in SEO, you have to become a student of how everything connects.
Search isn’t just algorithms or rankings – it’s the intersection of people, technology, and business.
You don’t need to master every discipline, but you do need to understand how they influence one another:
For instance:
You move from executor to strategist when you connect these pillars. That’s when SEO becomes more than optimization – it becomes influence.
Dig deeper: Enterprise SEO is built to bleed – Here’s how to build it right
A career isn’t shaped only by what you know – it’s shaped by how you grow.
In corporate SEO, growth comes from navigating people, priorities, and pace as much as mastering algorithms.
These lessons reflect the choices that determine whether your career moves forward or stalls:
Growth often happens when you change environments, not when you stay in one too long.
After a few years in the same company, it’s easy to get typecast as “the SEO person” instead of a strategic partner.
Organizations anchor you to the role they hired you for, even as your skills expand.
Moving every one to three years exposes you to new leadership styles, challenges, and technologies – all of which sharpen your instincts and broaden your range.
For SEOs, each transition teaches you what actually drives growth and how to earn credibility quickly by aligning teams and delivering impact.
Not every meeting needs your voice.
Early in my career, I believed credibility came from speaking first and often. I later learned that listening is one of the strongest leadership skills.
It reveals what drives decisions, who holds influence, and where priorities truly sit.
For SEOs, understanding the room before jumping in often leads to sharper, more relevant recommendations – and they’re harder for stakeholders to dismiss because you’re grounding them in what the team already values.
The opposite of constant talking isn’t silence – it’s strategy.
Knowing when to speak is an underrated professional skill, especially in large organizations where timing and tone matter as much as insight.
A well-placed comment that bridges teams, clarifies a decision, or protects performance can shift the entire conversation.
Speak with intention, not frequency, and your influence will grow even when your airtime doesn’t.
Results only matter if the right people see them.
Many SEOs assume that hard work will naturally lead to recognition, but visibility is a skill.
Frame your wins in terms leaders care about – revenue impact, efficiency gains, customer experience improvements.
Bring them to leadership reviews, all-hands meetings, and retrospectives so others understand how SEO supports bigger goals.
Build relationships with people who can advocate for you when opportunities arise. Influence isn’t just about execution – it’s about making your impact legible and memorable.
Keep a running log of your work, conversations, and metrics.
I block time every Friday to summarize the week across three areas: meeting outcomes, task updates, and wins.
Some managers want these updates – others don’t.
Either way, they help you track progress and build a record you can reference later.
Tools can help – I’ve used GitHub Issues, simple .txt files, and, more recently, a Chat Agent that compiles my notes into summaries.
These logs save hours when someone asks about a past decision or when you’re updating your resume for a job search.
Whether you share them or keep them for yourself, they create clarity and evidence of your contributions over time.
Meetings can quickly overtake your day.
The most effective SEOs protect time for analysis, writing, and strategic thinking – the work that actually moves projects forward.
Block dedicated focus time, decline meetings where your presence isn’t essential, and suggest asynchronous updates when appropriate.
Protecting your time isn’t selfish. It prevents burnout and keeps you delivering work that matters.
It’s natural to reference past employers, but constant comparison can make you seem resistant to new ideas or unaware of context.
Every organization has its own culture, pace, and priorities.
Share relevant frameworks when they help, but adapt to the environment you’re in.
Your credibility grows when you focus on what works here – not on what worked there.
Dig deeper: The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them)
No SEO operates in isolation.
In enterprise environments, success depends on engineers who make optimizations possible, analysts who surface insights, and product managers who balance priorities.
Navigating these relationships requires empathy, patience, and strategy.
Often, your ability to guide discussions, document decisions, and build trust matters more than technical skill.
When you collaborate with intention, SEO becomes less about convincing others to care and more about creating shared ownership of the outcome.
Some of the most effective leadership moments come from asking the right questions rather than supplying the answer.
Many of my biggest wins happened when I helped stakeholders arrive at the solution themselves.
When people believe they’ve discovered the path forward, they take greater ownership and champion the outcome.
This is especially powerful in SEO, where teams may be hesitant to adopt recommendations.
Asking questions shifts conversations from resistance to curiosity and reframes SEO as a shared opportunity instead of an external directive.
Influence grows when collaboration feels like discovery, not pressure.
In large organizations, memory fades quickly.
Document ideas, decisions, experiments, and notable conversations so you have a clear record when questions resurface months later.
Documentation turns “I think” into “I know,” strengthening your credibility and protecting your work.
Whether you keep notes in shared documents, project tools, or automation-assisted summaries, the goal is the same – create a defensible trail of how decisions were made and what impact followed.
When leadership asks about traffic shifts or delayed recommendations, your written history becomes both insight and insurance.
Collaboration matters, but discernment protects your momentum.
Not everyone who agrees in a meeting is invested in follow-through.
Politics, shifting priorities, or competing metrics often influence behavior more than logic.
Learn who reliably delivers and who disappears when accountability is needed.
For SEOs, true allies in engineering, product, or analytics can make or break execution.
Align with those who follow through and stay cautious around those who view SEO as competition.
Protect your credibility by choosing collaboration with intention, not assumption.
The engineers, analysts, IT admins, and product managers beside you often carry projects across the finish line.
Early in my career, I made the mistake of treating these partners as support rather than as collaborators. Their expertise is what turns strategy into action.
Treat them as equals who share ownership of outcomes. Involve them early, respect their constraints, and acknowledge their contributions.
When partners feel valued, they become advocates – raising SEO needs in rooms you may not be in.
The strongest SEO wins aren’t solo efforts; they come from relationships built on mutual respect and shared momentum.
Dig deeper: The design thinking approach to enterprise SEO
Sustaining a long-term SEO career requires more than technical skill – it requires balance, boundaries, and emotional resilience.
Constant algorithm changes, shifting priorities, and cross-team dependencies can drain you if you don’t protect your energy.
Mental well-being isn’t a luxury – it’s a strategy for longevity.
When you manage your mindset with the same discipline you apply to a site audit, you gain clarity, patience, and perspective – all qualities that make you more effective.
Early in my career, I worried rankings would collapse the moment I took time off.
They never did – but my judgment did when exhaustion set in.
Burnout distorts perspective, makes you reactive to data, and limits strategic thinking.
Rest isn’t indulgence, it’s maintenance.
Search is a long game measured in quarters, not days.
A week offline is recoverable. Burnout is not.
Protect your energy with the same discipline you protect a site’s uptime.
Much of SEO happens behind the scenes, and visibility doesn’t always follow impact. When someone praises your work, save it.
Short notes from peers, partners, or managers become valuable artifacts during promotion cycles or job searches.
Collecting this feedback isn’t about ego – it’s about building equity and giving yourself a factual record of how you support the business.
Every team has someone whose burnout becomes contagious. Don’t become that person.
Positivity doesn’t mean ignoring problems – it means creating space for solutions.
I once put a direct report on a performance improvement plan after his frustration began affecting morale.
After delivering the notice, I took him to lunch for an honest, empathetic conversation. That moment shifted everything.
His attitude improved, he worked his way off the PIP, and he later became a director at another company.
Compassion doesn’t replace accountability, but it makes growth possible. Leadership is as much about tone as it is about tactics.
In corporate life, meetings multiply faster than progress. Dependencies shift.
Priorities change without warning. Build a cushion into your timelines. If you think something will take a week, plan for 10 days.
For SEOs, many delays sit outside your control – engineering queues, content operations bottlenecks, competing releases.
A buffer protects your credibility and keeps expectations grounded. Underpromise and overdeliver isn’t cliché – it’s survival.
Leadership skepticism about SEO is rarely personal. It’s usually about budgets, bandwidth, or competing bets.
Early in my career, I saw every pushback as a critique of my competence.
Over time, I learned it was part of the negotiation process.
When an initiative is deprioritized, it doesn’t mean your expertise has lost value – it means resources moved elsewhere.
Anchor conversations in business impact, not identity. Influence lasts longer when driven by logic rather than frustration.
There was a time when I wasted energy debating SEO theories or venting about internal politics.
It felt good in the moment but changed nothing. My credibility grew the day I stopped trying to win arguments and started aiming for outcomes.
When disagreements arise, document your position, present the data clearly, and move on.
Rising above gossip doesn’t mean disengagement – it means choosing professionalism over noise.
SEO isn’t emergency medicine, though corporate urgency can make it feel that way.
Most “crises” come from impatience with the slow, cumulative nature of search. Daily fluctuations rarely matter when the trendline is healthy.
Remind stakeholders – and yourself – that meaningful growth takes time.
When pressure for overnight results rises, stay grounded. The long game always wins.
Work can challenge and fulfill you, but it shouldn’t define you.
The most effective professionals invest in relationships and interests outside the company.
Detaching your identity from your job doesn’t weaken your ambition – it stabilizes it.
When your sense of worth isn’t tied to the next quarterly metric, you lead with more confidence and less fear.
Success becomes sustainable when life stays bigger than work.
Dig deeper: SEO’s future isn’t content. It’s governance
Fifteen years in corporate SEO have taught me that technical skill is only half the job.
The other half is navigating people, priorities, and perspective.
Algorithms will evolve, tools will change, and org charts will shift, but your ability to adapt, communicate, and lead determines how far you go.
Success in SEO isn’t about chasing every update or proving you’re the smartest person in the room.
It’s about building trust, creating clarity, and sustaining momentum through both wins and setbacks.
The most impactful SEOs aren’t just tacticians.
They’re translators, connecting data to business strategy, ideas to execution, and people to purpose.
When you recognize that your influence extends beyond rankings, you move from contributor to catalyst.
SEO may begin with optimization, but the real work is shaping how organizations think, act, and grow. That’s the craft worth mastering.
When a TV commercial makes people feel something, it doesn’t just win in the moment – it sparks curiosity, drives searches, and fuels conversions.
That’s why the “Breaking TV Ads Report,” jointly launched by Kinetiq and DAIVID, deserves a spot on every search marketer’s radar.
The monthly report ranks the top-performing new TV ads in the U.S., blending Kinetiq’s real-time TV ad detection with DAIVID’s AI-driven creative analytics to uncover which ads broke through, why they resonated, and what brands can learn from their success.
It’s a powerful reminder that search doesn’t start on Google – it starts in the mind.
As Barney Worfolk-Smith, chief growth officer at DAIVID, recently told me in an email:
The first edition of the “Breaking TV Ads Report” highlighted a commercial that checks every emotional and strategic box: Indeed’s “What If LeBron James’ Skills Were Never Seen?”
The ad traces James’s journey from his early life to his work with the LeBron James Family Foundation, connecting it to Indeed’s “skills-first” hiring message.
It resonated not only because of its star power but because it made viewers feel something authentic.
The ad generated 11% higher intense positive emotion and 7% higher attention than the average U.S. TV ad, per DAIVID’s data.
It was joined in the top 10 by campaigns from TikTok (twice), Subaru, and Taco Bell, with emotional themes centered on family, mentorship, and belonging.

These aren’t just nice stories – they’re search triggers.
When people connect emotionally with a brand message, they’re more likely to act on it – often by turning to Google or YouTube for more information, reviews, or purchase options.
Dig deeper: Brand + performance: The secret to maximizing ad ROI
Back in 2011, Google introduced the concept of “The Zero Moment of Truth.”
But the ZMOT stage in the buying journey – when consumers research a product or service online before making a purchase – was the “new” second step.
The first step remained “stimulus,” and it could be “a TV ad.”
Many search marketers focus on what happens in the second ZMOT stage, because we can measure impressions, clicks, and conversions on mobile and laptop screens.
And we ignore the stimulus step because it is sucking money out of our marketing budgets.
But several studies over the past decade have shown that the impact of TV advertising extends directly into search behavior:
Put simply: when a campaign captures attention on TV, search demand spikes – often within minutes.
For SEO and PPC professionals, this presents a clear opportunity to anticipate and capitalize on those moments.
Several major brands have already proven that when TV storytelling and search strategy work together, both channels perform better.
Apple’s product launches are masterclasses in cross-channel momentum.
Every time a new iPhone ad airs, search volume for terms like “iPhone 17 Pro Max” or “iPhone 17 release date” skyrockets.
Apple’s branded search traffic increases by up to 40% in the days following a major campaign, according to Semrush.

Apple intentionally designs its TV creative to generate questions – not answer them – encouraging viewers to seek out more details online.
That’s where Apple’s search-optimized landing pages, YouTube product videos, and paid search campaigns complete the journey.
Progressive’s long-running “Flo” campaign shows how consistent creative storytelling translates into search intent.
The insurance brand’s TV spots spark curiosity around characters, slogans, and offers – leading to measurable spikes in branded searches such as “Progressive car insurance” and “Flo from Progressive.”

The brand’s media team aligns paid search and display campaigns with national TV flighting schedules, ensuring that when interest peaks, search ads and organic results are ready to capture demand.
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign is another classic case of TV leading to search.
The original “Share a Coke” campaign was launched in Australia in 2011 and involved replacing the Coca-Cola logo on bottles with hundreds of popular first names.
This personalization strategy was a global success, encouraging consumers to find bottles with their names and share them with friends and loved ones, which boosted sales and created emotional connections with the brand.
The latest “Share a Coke” campaign is a global relaunch targeting Gen Z with a focus on digital experiences and authentic, in-person connections.
It features personalized cans, a digital “Memory Maker” tool for creating shareable videos, and a partnership with McDonald’s.
Consumers can find names on bottles or use a QR code to customize bottles – a creative hook that’s sent millions to Google searching “custom Coke” or “share a Coke names.”

The campaign’s success wasn’t just creative; it was data-driven.
By tracking spikes in branded search and social mentions, Coca-Cola refined its targeting and extended the campaign’s life cycle online.
Dig deeper: Hyper-personalization in PPC: Using data to deliver tailored ad experiences
What makes the new “Breaking TV Ads” report particularly valuable is its data-driven framework for measuring creative effectiveness.
Kinetiq’s proprietary ad detection technology identifies every ad that first airs across 210 U.S. DMAs and 15 streaming apps, capturing over a million daily detections.
DAIVID’s AI then evaluates each ad’s emotional response, attention, and brand recall, creating a creative effectiveness score (CES) – a composite metric that mirrors how audiences actually experience content.
In a media landscape increasingly defined by short attention spans and fragmented screens, this data provides a rare window into why certain stories break through – and how that resonance correlates with downstream behaviors like search and site visits.
As Kinetiq CEO Kevin Kohn put it, the partnership “gives marketers a holistic view of the TV and CTV advertising landscape – not just what aired, but why it resonated.”
That’s exactly the kind of insight performance marketers need to connect the dots between creative resonance and measurable outcomes.
Dig deeper: Your ads are dying: How to spot and stop creative fatigue before it tanks performance
In February 2025, Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, revealed that:
So, search marketers can apply the latest findings from the Breaking TV Ads Report in several ways:
Search has long been viewed as a response channel – the final step in a consumer journey. But that view is outdated.
Today’s most successful campaigns use search as a connective tissue between offline inspiration and online action.
Whether it’s a QR code at the end of a TV ad, a YouTube masthead following a primetime spot, or a Google Shopping ad that captures post-broadcast demand – search is the bridge between storytelling and sales.
As more brands invest in connected TV (CTV) and streaming, the line between “brand” and “performance” marketing will continue to blur.
Creative effectiveness data helps close that gap – showing which emotional and visual cues are most likely to drive measurable search and conversion behavior.
Ultimately, reports like “Breaking TV Ads” remind us that the most powerful search strategy begins long before the query.
It begins with attention and emotion, and, increasingly, on the biggest screen in the house.
Dig deeper: How connected TV advertising drives search demand
