From the Distilled Live meetup on 2 February 2017. A guide to how we shouldn't take received SEO best practices for granted, and how we can double check received wisdom with empirical evidence.

1. Are the first things you learnt
about SEO still true?
Sam Nemzer

3. Set up laptop
NBED image

7. Title tags should be 50-60 characters

8. Title tags should be 50-60 characters
https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool

9. Titles over 60 characters will be truncated

10. The data

11. Things change over time

12. Things change over time

13. Titles are getting longer

14. Why are titles getting longer?

17. The distribution is getting wider

18. Why are title lengths varying more?

19. 2014

20. Titles are now breaking on whole words

21. It’s not about what I found

22. It’s about questioning received ideas

23. 3 SEO “facts” we take for granted

24. 1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your
rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your
legwork for you

25. 1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your
rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your
legwork for you

26. A user is not a user

27. A session is not a session

28. Your traffic might not actually be from
your website

29. dis.tl/capper-measure

30. https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/
Adblock is killing your
analytics data

31. Solution:
Corroborate with another data source
(Server log-based analytics)

32. 1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your
rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your
legwork for you

36. Exact agreement 19%of the time
Average difference 5.3 positions

37. Exact agreement 21%of the time
Average difference 6.9positions

38. Exact agreement 22%of the time
Average difference 4.5positions

39. Rank Tracking does serve a purpose

40. Useful for tracking trends over time and
aggregate, top-level data

41. Just don’t read too much into the
specifics

42. Corroborate with multiple sources where
possible

43. 1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your
rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your
legwork for you

44. We used to think that we need to
optimise a page for every possible
keyword

45. Now we think that exact keywords don’t
matter - Google will work things out…

46. I did some research...
dis.tl/keyword-synonyms
10 sets of 10 close synonym keywords

47. I did some research...
dis.tl/keyword-synonyms
10 sets of 10 close synonym keywords
On average only 60% of results are shared between top 10 results

48. Not the solution:
Stuff your page with every possible
variation of a keyword

49. The solution:
Understand the subtle differences in
intent between variations, and make your
pages satisfy that intent

50. Honesty time:
Most of what I found out will be wrong or
irrelevant in 6 months

51. It’s not about what I learnt.
It’s about encouraging you to do it for
yourself.

52. Thanks