SEO is Changing – How to Win in 2023

there are some big changes coming to SEO
here's what you need to know
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four years we've had a strategy that has
helped us weather the storm every time
Google updates their algorithm but in
recent times we've started to see some
changes and I think there's more coming
that actually means we need to tweak a
little bit the way that we're creating
content the way that we're ranking and
getting lots of organic traffic through
Google search so in this video I want to
walk through some really specific things
that have been happening and some
changes that I really see coming down
the road so that you can be ahead of the
curve I actually think that I have a
strategy that could help you win in
every single Google algorithm update
going forward and so that's what I'm
going to share here in this video to get
started though I want to share some
really important fundamentals that I
think we need to understand especially
and specifically regarding Google
algorithm updates the biggest mistake I
see every time there's a core algorithm
update is this people reacting reacting
is when we impulsively and emotionally
respond to whatever's going on without
taking the time to think of about it I
prefer that we behave proactively which
can mean that we behave ahead of time
like we know what's coming and we take
the steps that we need to but it also
means slowing down and thinking through
the things that we need to change before
we change them even if word changing as
a result of something that happened to
us reacting impulsively to an algorithm
update is as likely to lead you in the
opposite direction as it is to lead you
in the right direction and in fact it's
far more likely to lead you the wrong
way you will never be able to keep up
with every little change that Google and
other search engines are making so the
important thing is that we need really
core principles to live by and to create
our content by that way we don't have to
radically change everything every time
that Google changes this helps us not
react impulsively it actually helps us
to make small and measured adjustments
when they're merited so here's an
important principle if you don't
actually know what changed don't start
changing stuff on your website with the
latest round I'm going to say round of
core algorithm updates and major updates
made by Google we have seen some real
volatility in the serps and before we
actually knew what happened and honestly
we still don't totally know everything
that's that's happened and we probably
never will but people immediately
started supposing things they started
making changes to their websites and
that has led people down many dangerous
paths we see this all over the web we
even see it within our own project 24
Community particularly among newer
members we'll see multiple threads get
started up where somebody says I just
lost X percent of my traffic what are
you seeing and we're talking like the
day that the traffic loss happens the
day of the update people are immediately
jumping to conclusions and people are
immediately getting scared we call this
fud fear uncertainty and doubt and it's
something that we as experienced
bloggers know that we need to stop more
experienced members almost immediately
will jump onto those threads and say
everybody please just calm down
this happens Google puts out these
updates sometimes we weather the storm
great and sometimes we don't and we need
to slow down and take some time before
we start making changes to our websites
inevitably what we often see on our
websites is even if we had a traffic dip
we'll see that traffic start to pick
back up within a few weeks if that
doesn't start to happen then maybe it's
a good time to start evaluating what may
have actually happened on our website
now there's a flip side to this right we
don't want to react impulsively to an
algorithm update but when real changes
start to happen those who are able to
successfully adapt will not only survive
but they'll Thrive but being adaptable
usually does not mean making large
changes every time we see something
coming down the pipeline it's more like
steering a ship and less like riding in
a go-kart or a bumper car the goal is
not to be quickly making shifts all
along the way and making very very
sudden moves rather when we see
something coming down the pipeline what
we need to do is we need to make
adjustments to make sure that our course
is staying consistently in the right
direction so if you were hit by an
algorithm update and you lost a bunch of
traffic you might be looking at this and
saying okay but what do I do this just
hurt my income substantially there
aren't ways usually to get a whole bunch
of traffic back just overnight but there
are ways that we can increase our income
basically overnight and I'm going to
talk about that issue here in just a
couple of minutes but in short when
there's an algorithm update here's
essentially what you need to do first we
need to slow down we need to take a deep
breath and not let ourselves just get
frantically scared about what's going on
second we need to wait a little bit of
time at least a few days but typically a
few weeks for things to settle so that
we can see and so that we can read some
real analysis of what has actually
happened you see we can read what other
people are analyzing but we can also go
into our own data Google search console
can help us understand what search
queries we were ranking for before that
were not anymore
and that can help us identify specific
content it can help us identify
particular issues that exist on our
website that might be preventing us from
doing well in search the next mistake
and this one's pretty short is taking
Google at face value almost every single
time that Google comes out proactively
and says we are going to make this
update whether it is core web vitals or
the helpful content update or many we
saw in the past before that when they
announce the update ahead of time and
let us know about something that's about
to become a ranking metric
oftentimes what happens is we put a lot
of emphasis on that thing and then when
the algorithm update actually happens
that contains that new update it turns
out that it's just a very very minor
factor and that basically nothing
changes however there are many times
where Google tells us absolutely nothing
and then all of a sudden Wham we just
get whacked with just a crazy core
algorithm update now I won't go so far
as to say don't trust anything Google
says my approach to Google and their
direction is to look at the direction
overall what is it that they're saying
that they want and to try to incorporate
that as a whole Google has a ton of
great support documentation about what
constitutes good content and bad content
what constitutes link schemes and what
constant you know all of the things that
could get your site manually penalized
and all of the things that we should be
doing to ensure that we have the best
possible chance in search rankings but
don't just assume that everything they
said is directly going to correlate to
how you do in rankings look at at the
overall idea and use it to guide the
core principles of the content that you
create okay so now how do we make sure
that we never get hit again these are
the things that I see changing now and
that I think are going to continue to
become more and more important in the
future now first of all there's a lot
that we've taught about SEO here on this
channel and it's still accurate in fact
about a year ago I put out a very long
webinar I'll link to it here I'll put it
in the description as well that goes
through a whole bunch of stuff about SEO
and everything in that video is still
accurate today though I just want to
make a couple little updates to that
that are going to be a good guidance for
you in the future and it's really just
two things the first one is semantic SEO
and over optimization semantic SEO is
essentially that Google is getting
better and better and better at
understanding what words mean not just
what the words are and so a
keywords-based approach to SEO is dead
it's been dying for a long time it is
dead and what I mean by that is people
typing in space specific words and US
using those words or that wording within
our content to try to rank for that
that's not what matters anymore here's
what we're seeing we're often seeing an
article that is not even totally on
point for what the person searched
oftentimes using totally different
wordings so you're seeing articles that
are not perfectly optimized for what the
search was showing up on page one but
here's part of why I think that's
happening for a long time now we've
gotten to where we've seen multiple blog
posts answering the exact same question
in basically the exact same way because
so many people are out there just simply
either either sniping other people's
content literally just stealing it or
just changing the wording on it a little
bit I mean this is all just practically
plagiarism and theft or just using other
people's blog posts as their only
research source and writing their own
version of the same blog post and so
what we were seeing was a whole page one
in Google search results of basically
copy and paste of the exact same answer
in almost the exact same format how
helpful is that for a user who wants to
get multiple perspectives on an answer
it's really not so what are we seeing
we're seeing maybe a couple of blog
posts that answer the question directly
on point but then we're seeing other
pages of content that answer the
question in different ways or provide
different contexts for the answer than
just a straight up answer so what do we
do about this well what it means is we
need to do a better job of creating our
own unique content we need to do a
better job of doing our own original
research but also it's in how we present
the content over optimizing content for
a search engine is done it's over it
used to be that that was important to
rank and now those are things that
Google looks at and says this person is
trying to rank they're not trying to
help a user so what do we do we do need
to continue to think in terms of search
queries we don't just want to write
whatever article comes to our mind and
then hope it answers some questions
within it we need to think about what
question questions people have and do
our search analysis or our keyword
research understand the queries that are
coming in but then we need to create
good resources that answer those
questions within the post but are not
necessarily over optimized for the
search engine we need to be like people
who are talking to people who are
answering questions for people and who
are being helpful
one great way to do this would be to
take multiple queries that you have that
you've identified are real questions
that people are asking but take those
queries that are really closely related
and group them together in a single blog
post and make that blog post a really
good resource we call these query group
posts but we teach in Project 24. these
are often longer but they don't have to
be see here's another thing if a
question is a very very simple question
and you could answer it in 500 Words
Answer it in 500 Words and move on
whether that means you have a really
short article or it means you have a
longer article but that answers multiple
highly related questions that's fine
take as many words as you need but write
as if you were writing in a newspaper
for a person and you really wanted them
to read it that's going to be better
than trying to make sure you write in a
way that Google is going to be able to
easily identify what search query you
intended to rank for the second thing
that's been changing is the importance
of authoritativeness now this isn't like
an overnight change eat is something
Google's been harping on for years and
at first they started with ymyl sites
your money your life sites that were
about money sites that were about health
and people's well-being their life those
kind of sites Google was leaning heavily
on real expertise well now we're seeing
there's so much content on the web
Google wants to only highlight websites
that it finds to be trustworthy that it
finds to have some Authority now there
are a lot of ways to establish Authority
and in a lot of niches having an import
like a credential being a doctor
whatever that doesn't matter in many
niches just having some experience with
the topic is all that really matters but
how do we show that to Google one of the
best ways to show this is through
topical Authority through our content
you see the more content you have on a
more specific topic the more likely the
search engine like Google is to trust
that you have some Authority or at least
some experience and some expertise on
that particular topic So within your
Niche it's important that we identify
sort of sub niches kind of categories
I'm not talking about WordPress
categories I'm talking about like
groupings within a niche if we're
talking about bicycling a grouping of
bicycling is mountain biking but within
mountain biking there's like competitive
mountain biking right there's mountain
bike maintenance we need to group
content and then we need to make sure
that we cover that group of content
pretty thoroughly and not just
superficially
superficial content even if you have a
thousand blog posts on your website it's
going to be treated as superficial and
thin if you don't cover those sub
categories or those pieces of your topic
in great detail so what does this mean
it means I'm going to write blog posts
that I know probably have very little
search volume I'm also going to write
blog posts that I know are going to be
highly competitive because those blog
posts help round out the information on
my website you see basically in every
Niche there's going to be some topics
some search queries that almost nobody's
going to ask but some people will and
sometimes those are search queries that
like it's information people need to
know they just don't know to ask it by
writing that content we make it clear to
the search engines that we know that
topic thoroughly likewise there are
often search queries that almost
everybody is going to ask and yes every
other website in your Niche also has
those articles on them and so it's very
hard to rank if you're a new blogger
write it anyway because if you ignore a
really big important topic within your
Niche then Google looks at your site and
says they don't even cover that really
big important topic within their Niche
how much expertise can they possibly
have along those same lines we want to
make sure that we are branding our
websites more and more and more websites
blog traffic is just transactional
people come to your website they read an
article and they leave and they don't
engage with your brand in any way we
need to change that we need to treat our
websites as a brand we need to create
resources that people want to come back
to that people would want to use having
an email list is great but we want to
make sure that we give people real
reasons to want to sign up and that we
send them really good helpful
information so they will continue to
engage with our brand over and over and
over again other great ways to engage
with people is by creating a podcast
creating a YouTube channel creating
other social media for a long time we
said stay off of social media treadmills
I agree stay off of social media
treadmills what I mean by that is the
work you can do on social media that you
run and run and run and run and run and
get nowhere however creating a Facebook
group having an Instagram page or even a
Facebook page where you do post your
content we're not going to waste a lot
of time there but where we can post our
content and give people a way to engage
with us if we can have a Facebook group
if we have a subreddit if we have a
Discord Community whatever it is and we
are able to engage with people in our
Niche that's going to do a lot to help
your brand is it still possible to write
blog posts put them out there rank do
nothing else and still make a great
income absolutely we are working with
many of our members as well as on some
of our own sites where this is exactly
what we're doing but if you want to
greatly increase your chances of success
these new strategies are really going to
help you I'm so confident that they are
going to succeed that I'm really
starting right now two really big
projects one of them is a cool site
where all the the ink income is going to
go to charity it's something we talked
about on our channel here last week and
you're going to be able to see
everything we do with that website it's
awesome I'm so excited for that project
there's a second project that I'm
starting up in the New Year I'll tell
you about it in January and it's one
that I'm really going to be putting the
pressure on myself to show to prove
exactly how to use these strategies and
you're again going to get to see how we
Implement these strategies on these new
websites going forward now I mentioned
before for those of you who took a hit
to your income I feel for you it's a
really really hard time right now our
the economy is is rough and a lot of
people are really struggling and to have
Google come and just like cut your feet
out from under you can be very very
difficult but when it comes to SEO when
it comes to traffic we can't change
things overnight taking too drastic of
changes can easily have us turning in
totally the wrong direction so I
encourage you to make these adjustments
to slowly improve your branding to
solely improve the traffic to your
website however in the meantime I also
really really encourage you
to take the time to improve the
monetization of your website most
bloggers from what I'm seeing are very
under monetized and there's a lot that
we can do to quickly get our income back
up in fact a while back we did a project
here on this channel where we took a
viewer's website and in about four hours
of work we were able to quadruple the
income coming into his website I'm going
to link to that video here you can see
it here in the end I want to encourage
you to go watch that and see specific
things that we did to dramatically
increase the income on his website that
didn't take a whole lot of work you can
do this blogging is still just a huge
opportunity but we're going to have to
be more methodical about the way we
approach this so that's what we're doing
here on this channel we'll show you
exactly how to do it stay with us we'll
see you next time
foreign
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