The Real Truth About SEO in 2023

getting your business found in search is
actually pretty easy I mean there are
thousands of experts online with plenty
to say on the subject so with all that
free-flowing advice number one rankings
are as good as right around the corner
which is what I would be saying if the
internet wasn't so full of bad and
outdated SEO information that can
actually keep you off of the first page
of Google forever now these are a few of
the worst yet extremely persistent
pieces of SEO advice that you may have
heard and maybe you're still following
on your website we'll talk about why
it's bad advice how it's probably
keeping you off the first page of Google
and what you should be following instead
so when you make these simple shifts
you're going to be really surprised how
your results can start turning around
the first piece of bad advice that
keywords are King so most SEO advice
goes a little something like this step
one research your keywords step two
write content that uses those keywords
as many times as possible step three
profit
now don't get me wrong keywords are
important but they aren't the be-all and
all they used to be and here's why
Google's pretty much in the business of
being a lot smarter than you or I even
if there are intelligences of the
artificial variety so even if your web
page doesn't use the exact phrase
dentist in Akron Ohio 17 times if you
can tell the pages for a dentist in
Akron you can safely bet they know too
so you may be thinking okay fair enough
but adding my keyword 100 times couldn't
hurt right actually it can think about
what happens when you see a keyword
jammed into a page over and over again
does it read well is it persuasive
probably not right because it's hard to
balance keyword stuffing with
well-crafted convincing copywriting so
when you focus on keywords and keywords
alone you're actually ignoring one of
Google's most important ranking factors
how your site visitors react to your
content so if you scare them off with
stilted wording they're just gonna
bounce pretty quick and that can hurt
your ability to rank in the future not
to mention you just chased off a
potential customer bummer so rather than
picking a keyword to use and reuse over
and over again just use it a few times
in a few key places like in the top
headline in a sub headline and maybe
once or twice in the regular body copy
other than that if you talk about what
you do in an engaging way you'll
naturally use some of the words that
Google would expect to find on a page in
your industry plus you'll be freed up to
build a really strong case for why your
prospects should work with you win-win
bad SEO advice number two link building
is dead now before you dust Dr black
suit I am here to tell you the nail
isn't in that coffin quite yet so there
was a time in the early days of the
World Wide Web where backlinks or
websites linking to other websites were
pretty much the only signal that Google
had to gauge how popular authoritative
or good a website is the way it went was
the web page with the most sites linking
to it won the race because hey more
sites are linking to it therefore it
must be the best one now smash cut to
today when like I said Google
she be smart
[Music]
clever girl so some SEO experts out
there have swung way too hard the other
way and claim that since Google's so
smart links don't even matter anymore
just focus on creating great content
they said the rest will take care of
itself they said I wish while it's true
that backlinks don't rain quite as
Supreme as they did back in 1998 they do
still pack a punch so by focusing
completely on only what goes on your
website without ever doing any work to
try to get other relevant high quality
websites to link to yours
you'll get absolutely eaten alive by
your competition who is
told ya so yeah backlinks are still
pretty key to high rankings and here are
a few tips to make sure that you get
them right first make sure you only
chase after links from high quality real
websites and make sure those websites
are related to your Niche right if
you're an interior designer getting a
link from a pet blog isn't going to do
much for you
you're useless to me
now if you want to build these links
yourself you can write guest posts for
Relevant blogs or even go on relevant
podcasts as an expert guest and they'll
usually link back to whatever page you
want them to but if you're going to pay
for those links make sure you know what
you're paying for now I generally like
to pay more for higher quality links on
a real blog that people actually read as
opposed to a bunch of spammy links that
are on these really sketchy looking
websites that are pretty much just there
for the purpose of selling links on they
call those private blog networks and
their garbage
bad advice number three there's a
perfect length for SEO now I get it
people love hard and fast rules to live
by always wait 30 minutes after eating
before swimming drink Pedialyte with
vodka to avoid hangovers and write your
web pages to be at least a thousand
words so while I happen to agree with
the first two the last one's just plain
wrong and can lead to some pretty
uninspired writing I remember back in
high school when we had to write a
three-page book report on Catcher in the
Rye actually was more closely based on
the Cliff's Notes of Catcher in the Rye
but we'll keep that just between you and
me but when you have a length to hit
what do most of us do we Pat it baby we
double space we use more words than
necessary to say the same thing and that
extra length isn't what's going to help
you backlinko actually did a study back
in 2016 analyzing 11.8 million Google
search results to see if there's
actually anything to this word count
thing their study revealed that the
average page one result on Google
contained
1890 words of content so as you might
expect people took that tidbit and ran
with it what the study can't tell us
though is if that word count itself was
behind the rankings or if a longer page
just happens to contain more useful
information that Google and site
visitors can grab onto than a shorter
one spoiler alert it's the second one so
rather than focusing on word count alone
focus on being more thorough and
complete than your top competition bad
advice number four your website has to
be lightning fast to rank I can't tell
you how many of my students and YouTube
viewers come to me saying that they got
a really low score in Google page speed
insights and they're ready to just
eliminate every image on their website
in order to get into the green zone so
they can have a better chance of ranking
in searches now don't get me wrong page
speed matters a lot however it won't
necessarily cause your website to
dramatically increase or decrease in
rankings now the truth is they tend to
treat page speed as more of a tiebreaker
between two otherwise equally weighted
pages and in fact Google representative
scary Ilias Martin split and John
Mueller recently chatted in the search
off the Record podcast about why that is
you can make a really fast empty page
but that doesn't mean that it's
necessarily a good result for people so
rather than stripping your website down
to the point of black text on a bear
white page which isn't going to be very
appetizing for your visitors
what the is this you're much better
off trying to make your site feel fast
while keeping all the richness that
comes with images and video that's
really going to help you sell what
you're offering and to help you do that
just use the nitro pack plug-in which is
going to reduce your image file sizes
and it's going to add a lazy loading
feature to your site which essentially
just prioritizes loading only what the
user sees when they first get to your
website then after that they start
loading the rest of the content bit by
bit as they start to scroll down to your
users it feels really fast and they
still get the full experience bad advice
number five social media will help you
rank so since the early 2010s every SEO
blog you can read has been inundated
with posts about this idea of social
signals as a new ranking Factor these
posts basically theorize that Google was
really heavily weighing everything from
how many likes and shares your web pages
got on Facebook to your number of
followers to your social media posts
themselves it was wrong then and it's
even more wrong today so here's a really
brief timeline of how it all went down
in 2010 Google said that this wasn't a
thing in 2012 they said they were trying
it this is pretty much where Google Plus
came from if you remember that then in
2014 they admitted that it didn't work
out and was once again not a thing so
does this mean that you shouldn't
concentrate on social anymore not at all
so if social is in line with other
aspects of your marketing strategy it
certainly has its place but don't expect
the stuff you post on Instagram or even
one of your blog posts going viral over
on LinkedIn to help you with ranking and
search at least not directly we know
that backlinks are a ranking factor and
we also know that social media can get
more eyeballs on your site's content and
that can lead to more people linking to
that content but that's it so what what
exactly does work for good SEO I've got
this video for you to watch next and
it's going to show you the handful of
simple things you can do that will
really move the needle for you much
faster so click this video right here
and I'll show you just how easy it is
I'll see you there