The SEO industry is a minefield of mis-information.
Normally it would be easy to say this is because of there being thousands of chancers who will say anything, but the truth is it’s the opposite.
If you stick 5 SEO’s in a room, there is a pretty big chance they will disagree with one another and a number of SEO ideals.
You will also hear the dreaded “It Depends” at least 13 times.
Most SEO expertise comes from experience rather than a book, or a £48 All-In-One SEO course.
SEO’s will often have different experiences of the exact same thing because we are all dancing to Google’s tune at the end of the day.
Based on my 16 years in the field, here are some SEO observations I have come across that I believe to be utter codswallop.
Backlinks Don’t Matter
Gary Illyes came out a few weeks back and claimed that backlinks are no longer a “top 3 ranking factor” whatever that means.
People lost their bloody minds!
Many simply ignored his sentiment that they are still important and jumped right to “Told you links don’t matter!”
What?
Backlinks are the lifeblood of how Google crawls, discovers and ultimately indexes content.
To say they aren’t important anymore is like saying that your car’s tires don’t need air anymore.
Argh! – Lame analogy.
The ranking writhing of individual links to a site may have diminished over the years, but the fact remains that backlinks are still vital.
Ask any SEO that has worked in Gaming or FinTech how they got on without links.
The responses will tell you how important links still are to any successful SEO campaign.
Caveat:
Please don’t go out and buy 62 links for £28 from a link broker who is good at writing email subject lines!
Any link building activity or campaign should be built on data and analysis.
Find what you need, where you need them from and how many you need, then earn them!
Your Content must Be As Long As Possible
I can’t count how many people I have had conversations with that go like this:
Person: “I don’t understand why my content isn’t ranking. It is 8000 worlds long with pictures and everything”
Me: “Great, Is it any good?”
Person: “Of course, It’s detailed long-form content”
I then go away to check the page/s in question and find that the length is the only thing worth shouting about.
Your content can be as long as you like, contain as many words as you like or have as many bullet points as you like. If you don’t meet a certain quality threshold it will not rank.
Google’s vision is to serve the most helpful content for any particular search query as possible.
Some quality points to keep in mind when creating/analysing content:
- Does the content satisfy search intent?
- Does your content provide value compared to other pages in those results?
- Is the information original?
- Does the content come across as trustworthy?
- Is it written by an expert in the field?
- Is the page overrun by intrusive ads?
Focus on the quality of the content and its ability to provide the answer you promised.
The length is largely unimportant, and most very long content is basically unreadable anyway.
Caveat:
The list of quality signals above is not exhaustive. There are many elements that should be analysed or considered when you create or update content.
The end goal should always be to satisfy a reader/user rather than an algorithm.
Google Penalises Duplicate Content
Nope.
In fact, Google understands that duplicate content is part of the internet and unlikely to be stopped.
What it endeavours to do is to identify it, and act accordingly.
If two sites have the same content it won’t serve both for the same query. This is counter-productive.
What it will do algorithmically is decide which version of the content is best, and serve that version.
That doesn’t mean the other version was penalised. It means the algorithm did its job.
This is yet another reason to make sure your content is original and better that what is currently available. Simple.
What about on-site duplicates you say?
Firstly, if you have two pages on one site that contain the same content, that has to be addressed.
Find the reason for it, and make the necessary changes.
In some cases, usually due to site functionality or structure, it is not possible to avoid.
If this is the case Google provides tools such as Canonical tags to tell it: “Hey, we know these pages are duplicate, this is the original to be considered for indexing.”
Be Aware: As with most fun and games with Google, it sometimes chooses to ignore or select a different Canonical so be aware this could happen.
That’s a rant for another blog post!
Conclusion
There are so many more SEO myths out there. I’ve covered these three as they seem to be most relevant based on client conversations I have had recently.
As with any SEO advice, insight or idea, always make sure to get second opinions.
We aren’t flawless. We aren’t perfect, and if any SEO claims they are, run.
