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SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

flaviocopes.com

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Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#31

Post by melon_madness »

ecmascript wrote: post #24

He doesn't show any statistics from his own blog to back his theories up. I don't know, I don't think these are any valuable SEO lessons imo. The tl;dr of this post is "I find SEO optimization boring so I just write whatever I want and don't think about it". There is nothing wrong with that statement except that it isn't a SEO lesson. Sure quality over quantity is a good SEO lesson. To provide stuff of value is good…

The article is also very survivorship-bias-y. His blog happened to do fine without him doing any SEO, but that doesn't mean all SEO is pointless.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#32

Post by michaelthiessen »

adriansky wrote: post #15

This always puzzle me about SEO. Let's say you are writing an article that you want to cover in-depth. Which one is better for SEO (both options has the same content): A. Publish all in one long article B. Publish in a series of small articles

A in my experience.

The goal is to answer the question or problem as best as you can.

Typically this means not just giving a one line answer, but expanding and elaborating, going into relevant details and explaining more in-depth.

Often this extra detail will overlap with extra detail from other questions. You can link between articles, but you can also rephrase / repeat ideas.

eg. If you're searching for "Redirect in javascript" or "Simulate link in Javascript", you'll want two separate articles.

You know that the answer is the same for both, but the searcher doesn't. And as you go more in-depth explaining how `window.location` works, you'll end up covering similar material in both articles (which is not duplicate content so Google won't penalize you).

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#33

Post by michaelthiessen »

nonseobeliever wrote: post #23

SEO is an effort made by people to get in front without really offering much. If they'd be oriented on quality more, maybe their success would come more.

Google has gotten very good at weeding out the hacks and tricks that black hat SEOs use (PBNs, spammy links, generated content, keyword stuffing etc.)

These days the most consistent way to get lots of traffic is to provide lots of value and help people.

Google can measure whether people bounce and keep clicking around for better answers to their queries.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#34

Post by michaelthiessen »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

In the last couple months my mental-model of SEO has evolved. Traditionally SEO tends to be defined by things like kwyword density, proper heading tags, page load speed, etc. I don't dispute those, but the perspective is misguided. Ultimately, someone comes to a search engine with a need. The search engine's top priority is to satisfy that need. That's the relationship that matters to the search engine. That's the cu…

Exactly this.

The point of most on/off page SEO things like meta tags and link building is to help Google understand what needs your website can satisfy.

If your content solves problems effectively, and Google understands how to connect you to the people who have those problems, that's when things work.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#35

Post by franze »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

In the last couple months my mental-model of SEO has evolved. Traditionally SEO tends to be defined by things like kwyword density, proper heading tags, page load speed, etc. I don't dispute those, but the perspective is misguided. Ultimately, someone comes to a search engine with a need. The search engine's top priority is to satisfy that need. That's the relationship that matters to the search engine. That's the cu…

Hi, you are on the right track, I wrote a whole book around it. https://gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news

It never was about all that onpage stuff, it always was about the User Google Website triangle.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#37

Post by ceres »

hobabaObama wrote: post #3

tldr; Don't try to fool google. It take genuine efforts with quality of your content to be on top of SEO.

Why do we always assume that Google is some entity with perfect intelligence? Isn't it just a bot? People outsmart it all the time? The very fact that SEO exists means that you can fool Google.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#38

Post by dangerface »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

In the last couple months my mental-model of SEO has evolved. Traditionally SEO tends to be defined by things like kwyword density, proper heading tags, page load speed, etc. I don't dispute those, but the perspective is misguided. Ultimately, someone comes to a search engine with a need. The search engine's top priority is to satisfy that need. That's the relationship that matters to the search engine. That's the cu…

> The priority isn't you. It's the asker.

The priority is the advertiser. I think google has given up on indexing the web and just sends searches to authorities like wikipedia, let's face it thats what the "average user" wants, and best part is the rest of us have to pay to compete.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#39

Post by AndrewStephens »

I blog (for pleasure) and can confirm everything in this article.

The only posts of mine that continue to get hits are advice on C++ and Python coding, while my lovingly crafted hot takes on Star Wars and whatever book I read last week are generally ignored.

I don't care. You write what you want to write, I'll write what I want to write. The important thing is to write something.

Re: SEO lessons learned by writing a blog post every day for two years

#40

Post by dangerface »

zeveb wrote: post #12
userbinator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the quality of the search results I've seen recently, I feel like Google has made the ranking almost random... it's only within the past few years that I've had a lot more of "I'm pretty sure there's more information on this out there, but Google isn't showing it ot me" experiences.

I've had that feeling too, but I wonder if it's because the good old Internet of enthusiasts enthusiastically posting about the things that enthuse them has given way to the faceless content farms to such an extent that even Google isn't able to filter the signal out from the noise. I.e., I wonder if it is not so much their fault for being less good than they used to be as it is their fault for not being so much bett…

The end users have changed from enthusiasts who want detail to average people who want to get caught up on a subject quickly. It seems to be two fold and I think google have just given up trying to filter signal to noise and just promote conglomerates that it sees as authoritative.
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