SEO: Debunking The Myths

SEO
+ some stuff that actually works*
*For now…

Problem with the
SEO Industry
is…

Rankings
58%Engagement
23%
Conversions
10%
Jet Skis
9%
SEOs Q1 2019
Rankings Engagement Conversions Jet Skis

Churn & burn tactics
make us all look like
Snake Oil salesmen

Source*
A weird mix of vague or overly scientific explanations

Even in if you’re in
the search
business…
Knowing what will
actually work &
what’s yesterday’s
news is a struggle

1. Actually works
2. Works sometimes
3. Is without a doubt…
Today

Algorithm updates
Subjective ranking factors
Making it extremely difficult for some to suggest worthwhile or up to date strategies & tactics

The world of search
& even marketing is
relative.
What works for
brand A won’t
always work for
brand B

It takes time.
Very few tactics in the world
of search move the needle
quickly.
It’s a marathon not a sprint.
21

“Google’s signals
are striving to equate
to real human trust”
- Nicola Payne

Stuff I hope you’ve heard of!
You don’t have to take notes - You can have my slide deck and the links to any sources I cite
[ ]

Meta Keywords are really
important for rankings

Google had
been ignoring
meta keywords
for a lot longer
Matt Cutts officially denounced meta keywords 10 years ago…
Image credit 1 & Image credit 2
*Google Webmasters
*Search Engine Land
*Yoast
Back when this guy was PM…

META KEYWORDS META TAGS
Page Titles
Viewport
Meta Description
Lang Tags
Robots
With other valuable Meta Tags
VsVs
Don’t confuse Meta Keywords

“A YouTube video on site
will help your domain
rank higher”
#1

SEO wives' tale started
by Nate Elliot back in
09
Any given video in the index stands about a 50
times better chance of appearing on the first
page of results than any given text page in the
index. – Source

It was quickly
recanted…
“These findings are now almost
4 years old, and are almost
certainly no longer accurate”

N.B. - Video SEO is a thing!
- on page with schema
- Video XML sitemaps
- transcripts / CC and content
Youtube is the 2nd largest search
engine, valuable source of referral
traffic (if you can do it well)

Social sharing and
signals help improve
SEO

Google did mention it used
social signals 9ish years ago
But they’ve repeatedly
refuted it
But can also help get your
flywheel spinning.

High Bounce Rate
+ Pogo Sticking
kills rankings!

Google doesn’t use
pogo sticking as a signal
“We try not to use signals like that
when it comes to search. I think
that’s really hard to refine and say
“well, we could turn this into a
ranking factor. So I would not worry
about things like that.”

Stuff which is a bit confusing…

JavaScript doesn’t matter
when it comes to visibility
and rankings
– Google can read it as
long its in the HTML
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>SEO FOR DA
GOOGLES Here</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="
<CENTER><IMG SRC=""
ALIGN="BOTTOM"> <
<HR>
<a href="http://somegreatsite.
is a link to another nifty site
<H1>You spammer</H1>
<H2>I can haz cheesburger</
Send me mail at <a href=
"mailto:support</BODY>
</HTML>

What’s JavaSript?
Programming language
commonly used to create
interactive effects

Statement comes
from Google’s
John Mueller

JS doesn’t matter when it comes to visibility and rankings –
Google can read it as long its in the HTML
Moved to JS

Drop in organic

Google would like to get here but we’ve not seen any evidence to suggest this is the case yet
Switched to Ruby
On Rails

JS doesn’t matter when it comes to visibility and rankings – Google
can read it as long its in the HTML
Google are even releasing a video series on how to optimize around JS along with an opensource tool called the ‘Rendertron’
which will help you dynamically render content between client-side rendered or pre-rendered content for specific user agents. No
idea what that means? Me neither, if you suspect you’ve got JS on site – throw it at your web devs or agency

Subdomains don’t matter
when it comes to domain
relevance and rankings.
Google can figure it out.
domain.com
blog.domain.com domain.com.fr

Subdomains don’t matter when it comes to domain relevance
and rankings. Google can figure it out – John Mueller

Subdomains don’t matter when it comes to domain relevance
and rankings. Google can figure it out – John Mueller
Again, Google would like to get here but we’ve not seen any evidence to suggest this is the case
yet

Google can figure it out
domain.com
blog.domain.com domain.com.fr

Google can figure it out
domain.com
domain.com/fr/blogdomain.com/en/blog

Keep everything on a single to
domain to make the most of your
relevance and authority.
sub.domain.comsub.domain.com
When it’s ok to use a
subdomain:
• When your hands are tied
• Content doesn’t need to rank
e.g. conversion / PPC landing
pages
• Multiple CMS that can’t sit on
the same domain – e.g. Magento
+ a WordPress blog (you can
spoof the domain at the DNS
level if you’re clever)

When retiring, removing
or deleting a page you
should always 301
redirect to similar
content.
301 - redirect

When it comes to
eCommerce…
@MrLukeCarthy
recommends keeping
those discontinued
products up!

• They rank
• They’re getting traffic

• They rank
• You can internally link to
an alternative / newer
product

• They rank
• You can internally link to
an alternative / newer
product
• Much better UX than
being 301’d to a parent
category page
- Just exclude it from internal search

{Cool things and answering your questions}

“Does UX affect
rankings?”
What says UX more than a guy writing
backwards on a clear glass board…

Yisssss, it definitely does*
*Or there’s a symbiotic relationship between the two

Google’s changing
Usability factors are a
big deal these days
Good Usability
=
Good Experience
+

Introduction of:
(machine learning algorithm that just
analyses intent and behaviour) **
• Chrome UX Report
• Lighthouse
• RankBrain**
• Mobile Friendly Test
• PageSpeed Insights

Source
• Time to First interactive
(speed)
• First meaningful paint
(speed)
• Click data or CTR
(Context / relevance)
• Pogo sticking [although it’s
supposedly not a big deal…]
User metrics like:
Giphy*

Is it ok to use the
phrase “link
juice”?

Please don’t! – it sounds icky
Just say “authority”, “link equity” or anything else really…

“Is link building still
the most significant
part of SEO?”

No, well, kind of, ish… for now anyway

Anecdotally Google’s
Andrey Lipattsev listed:
1. Content (relevance)
2. Links (trust)
3. RankBrain (intent)
As the most significant signals
Source

- Antiquated metric
- Easy to manipulate
- Google’s getting smarter
Check out John Mueller’s AMA
Problem with backlinks…

“blogging help static
content rank?”
Giphy

Not always, depends on the blog strategy.

In Ste’s experience,
in and of itself some
posts don’t push up
broad search.
If it’s linking (as part of
a pillar strategy) it’s
more likely improve.
You’ll still see lots of
longtail traffic from
your inbound content.

Noisy Little Monkey
Talked at the hug about improving broad search – read the write up

Noisy Little Monkey
It’ll walk you through how to create a pillar strategy

“What are the top 3
things we need to
keep in mind when
optimising sites for
mobile?”
Giphy

I done a talk on this 4 years ago
Thanks for listening… (DW, no one was listening)

1. Speed
2. UX / mobile friendly
3. Content / Intent
Check out dev.google.com for mobile
optimisation best practice
AMP is worth looking @ if you create a lot
of editorial content / mobile visits.

“What are the things to
prioritise to boost traffic
/ SEO when creating a
brand new website on a
new domain??”
SEO

How long is a piece of string?

New site, existing business?
• Page to page 301s
• remove no-index / disallow in robots.txt
• remove no index in meta robots
• check canonicals for http https www non www
Just download our launch checklist!
bit.ly/GaggleLaunchChecklist

New site, new business?
1. Competitive Analysis
a) Speed
b) content relevance
c) Visibility
d) backlink authority
2 . Shore up those weaknesses
3. Spot opportunities tactics they’re not leveraging
4. Get budget for Paid

SEO: Debunking The Myths

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