There's no doubt that quite a bit has changed about SEO, and that the field is far more integrated with other aspects of online marketing than it once was. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand pushes back against the idea that effective modern SEO doesn't require any technical expertise, outlining a fantastic list of technical elements that today's SEOs need to know about in order to be truly effective.
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high-resolution image in a new tab!
Video transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm going to do something unusual. I don't usually point out these inconsistencies or sort of take issue with other folks' content on the web, because I generally find that that's not all that valuable and useful. But I'm going to make an exception here.
There is an article by Jayson DeMers, who I think might actually be here in Seattle -- maybe he and I can hang out at some point -- called "Why Modern SEO Requires Almost No Technical Expertise." It was an article that got a shocking amount of traction and attention. On Facebook, it has thousands of shares. On LinkedIn, it did really well. On Twitter, it got a bunch of attention.
Some folks in the SEO world have already pointed out some issues around this. But because of the increasing popularity of this article, and because I think there's, like, this hopefulness from worlds outside of kind of the hardcore SEO world that are looking to this piece and going, "Look, this is great. We don't have to be technical. We don't have to worry about technical things in order to do SEO."
Look, I completely get the appeal of that. I did want to point out some of the reasons why this is not so accurate. At the same time, I don't want to rain on Jayson, because I think that it's very possible he's writing an article for Entrepreneur, maybe he has sort of a commitment to them. Maybe he had no idea that this article was going to spark so much attention and investment. He does make some good points. I think it's just really the title and then some of the messages inside there that I take strong issue with, and so I wanted to bring those up.
First off, some of the good points he did bring up.
One, he wisely says, "You don't need to know how to code or to write and read algorithms in order to do SEO." I totally agree with that. If today you're looking at SEO and you're thinking, "Well, am I going to get more into this subject? Am I going to try investing in SEO? But I don't even know HTML and CSS yet."
Those are good skills to have, and they will help you in SEO, but you don't need them. Jayson's totally right. You don't have to have them, and you can learn and pick up some of these things, and do searches, watch some Whiteboard Fridays, check out some guides, and pick up a lot of that stuff later on as you need it in your career. SEO doesn't have that hard requirement.
And secondly, he makes an intelligent point that we've made many times here at Moz, which is that, broadly speaking, a better user experience is well correlated with better rankings.
You make a great website that delivers great user experience, that provides the answers to searchers' questions and gives them extraordinarily good content, way better than what's out there already in the search results, generally speaking you're going to see happy searchers, and that's going to lead to higher rankings.
But not entirely. There are a lot of other elements that go in here. So I'll bring up some frustrating points around the piece as well.
First off, there's no acknowledgment -- and I find this a little disturbing -- that the ability to read and write code, or even HTML and CSS, which I think are the basic place to start, is helpful or can take your SEO efforts to the next level. I think both of those things are true.
So being able to look at a web page, view source on it, or pull up Firebug in Firefox or something and diagnose what's going on and then go, "Oh, that's why Google is not able to see this content. That's why we're not ranking for this keyword or term, or why even when I enter this exact sentence in quotes into Google, which is on our page, this is why it's not bringing it up. It's because it's loading it after the page from a remote file that Google can't access." These are technical things, and being able to see how that code is built, how it's structured, and what's going on there, very, very helpful.
Some coding knowledge also can take your SEO efforts even further. I mean, so many times, SEOs are stymied by the conversations that we have with our programmers and our developers and the technical staff on our teams. When we can have those conversations intelligently, because at least we understand the principles of how an if-then statement works, or what software engineering best practices are being used, or they can upload something into a GitHub repository, and we can take a look at it there, that kind of stuff is really helpful.
Secondly, I don't like that the article overly reduces all of this information that we have about what we've learned about Google. So he mentions two sources. One is things that Google tells us, and others are SEO experiments. I think both of those are true. Although I'd add that there's sort of a sixth sense of knowledge that we gain over time from looking at many, many search results and kind of having this feel for why things rank, and what might be wrong with a site, and getting really good at that using tools and data as well. There are people who can look at Open Site Explorer and then go, "Aha, I bet this is going to happen." They can look, and 90% of the time they're right.
So he boils this down to, one, write quality content, and two, reduce your bounce rate. Neither of those things are wrong. You should write quality content, although I'd argue there are lots of other forms of quality content that aren't necessarily written -- video, images and graphics, podcasts, lots of other stuff.
And secondly, that just doing those two things is not always enough. So you can see, like many, many folks look and go, "I have quality content. It has a low bounce rate. How come I don't rank better?" Well, your competitors, they're also going to have quality content with a low bounce rate. That's not a very high bar.
Also, frustratingly, this really gets in my craw. I don't think "write quality content" means anything. You tell me. When you hear that, to me that is a totally non-actionable, non-useful phrase that's a piece of advice that is so generic as to be discardable. So I really wish that there was more substance behind that.
The article also makes, in my opinion, the totally inaccurate claim that modern SEO really is reduced to "the happier your users are when they visit your site, the higher you're going to rank."
Wow. Okay. Again, I think broadly these things are correlated. User happiness and rank is broadly correlated, but it's not a one to one. This is not like a, "Oh, well, that's a 1.0 correlation."
I would guess that the correlation is probably closer to like the page authority range. I bet it's like 0.35 or something correlation. If you were to actually measure this broadly across the web and say like, "Hey, were you happier with result one, two, three, four, or five," the ordering would not be perfect at all. It probably wouldn't even be close.
There's a ton of reasons why sometimes someone who ranks on Page 2 or Page 3 or doesn't rank at all for a query is doing a better piece of content than the person who does rank well or ranks on Page 1, Position 1.
Then the article suggests five and sort of a half steps to successful modern SEO, which I think is a really incomplete list. So Jayson gives us;
- Good on-site experience
- Writing good content
- Getting others to acknowledge you as an authority
- Rising in social popularity
- Earning local relevance
- Dealing with modern CMS systems (which he notes most modern CMS systems are SEO-friendly)
The thing is there's nothing actually wrong with any of these. They're all, generally speaking, correct, either directly or indirectly related to SEO. The one about local relevance, I have some issue with, because he doesn't note that there's a separate algorithm for sort of how local SEO is done and how Google ranks local sites in maps and in their local search results. Also not noted is that rising in social popularity won't necessarily directly help your SEO, although it can have indirect and positive benefits.
I feel like this list is super incomplete. Okay, I brainstormed just off the top of my head in the 10 minutes before we filmed this video a list. The list was so long that, as you can see, I filled up the whole whiteboard and then didn't have any more room. I'm not going to bother to erase and go try and be absolutely complete.
But there's a huge, huge number of things that are important, critically important for technical SEO. If you don't know how to do these things, you are sunk in many cases. You can't be an effective SEO analyst, or consultant, or in-house team member, because you simply can't diagnose the potential problems, rectify those potential problems, identify strategies that your competitors are using, be able to diagnose a traffic gain or loss. You have to have these skills in order to do that.
I'll run through these quickly, but really the idea is just that this list is so huge and so long that I think it's very, very, very wrong to say technical SEO is behind us. I almost feel like the opposite is true.
We have to be able to understand things like;
- Content rendering and indexability
- Crawl structure, internal links, JavaScript, Ajax. If something's post-loading after the page and Google's not able to index it, or there are links that are accessible via JavaScript or Ajax, maybe Google can't necessarily see those or isn't crawling them as effectively, or is crawling them, but isn't assigning them as much link weight as they might be assigning other stuff, and you've made it tough to link to them externally, and so they can't crawl it.
- Disabling crawling and/or indexing of thin or incomplete or non-search-targeted content. We have a bunch of search results pages. Should we use rel=prev/next? Should we robots.txt those out? Should we disallow from crawling with meta robots? Should we rel=canonical them to other pages? Should we exclude them via the protocols inside Google Webmaster Tools, which is now Google Search Console?
- Managing redirects, domain migrations, content updates. A new piece of content comes out, replacing an old piece of content, what do we do with that old piece of content? What's the best practice? It varies by different things. We have a whole Whiteboard Friday about the different things that you could do with that. What about a big redirect or a domain migration? You buy another company and you're redirecting their site to your site. You have to understand things about subdomain structures versus subfolders, which, again, we've done another Whiteboard Friday about that.
- Proper error codes, downtime procedures, and not found pages. If your 404 pages turn out to all be 200 pages, well, now you've made a big error there, and Google could be crawling tons of 404 pages that they think are real pages, because you've made it a status code 200, or you've used a 404 code when you should have used a 410, which is a permanently removed, to be able to get it completely out of the indexes, as opposed to having Google revisit it and keep it in the index.
Downtime procedures. So there's specifically a... I can't even remember. It's a 5xx code that you can use. Maybe it was a 503 or something that you can use that's like, "Revisit later. We're having some downtime right now." Google urges you to use that specific code rather than using a 404, which tells them, "This page is now an error."
Disney had that problem a while ago, if you guys remember, where they 404ed all their pages during an hour of downtime, and then their homepage, when you searched for Disney World, was, like, "Not found." Oh, jeez, Disney World, not so good.
- International and multi-language targeting issues. I won't go into that. But you have to know the protocols there. Duplicate content, syndication, scrapers. How do we handle all that? Somebody else wants to take our content, put it on their site, what should we do? Someone's scraping our content. What can we do? We have duplicate content on our own site. What should we do?
- Diagnosing traffic drops via analytics and metrics. Being able to look at a rankings report, being able to look at analytics connecting those up and trying to see: Why did we go up or down? Did we have less pages being indexed, more pages being indexed, more pages getting traffic less, more keywords less?
- Understanding advanced search parameters. Today, just today, I was checking out the related parameter in Google, which is fascinating for most sites. Well, for Moz, weirdly, related:oursite.com shows nothing. But for virtually every other sit, well, most other sites on the web, it does show some really interesting data, and you can see how Google is connecting up, essentially, intentions and topics from different sites and pages, which can be fascinating, could expose opportunities for links, could expose understanding of how they view your site versus your competition or who they think your competition is.
Then there are tons of parameters, like in URL and in anchor, and da, da, da, da. In anchor doesn't work anymore, never mind about that one.
I have to go faster, because we're just going to run out of these. Like, come on. Interpreting and leveraging data in Google Search Console. If you don't know how to use that, Google could be telling you, you have all sorts of errors, and you don't know what they are.
- Leveraging topic modeling and extraction. Using all these cool tools that are coming out for better keyword research and better on-page targeting. I talked about a couple of those at MozCon, like MonkeyLearn. There's the new Moz Context API, which will be coming out soon, around that. There's the Alchemy API, which a lot of folks really like and use.
- Identifying and extracting opportunities based on site crawls. You run a Screaming Frog crawl on your site and you're going, "Oh, here's all these problems and issues." If you don't have these technical skills, you can't diagnose that. You can't figure out what's wrong. You can't figure out what needs fixing, what needs addressing.
- Using rich snippet format to stand out in the SERPs. This is just getting a better click-through rate, which can seriously help your site and obviously your traffic.
- Applying Google-supported protocols like rel=canonical, meta description, rel=prev/next, hreflang, robots.txt, meta robots, x robots, NOODP, XML sitemaps, rel=nofollow. The list goes on and on and on. If you're not technical, you don't know what those are, you think you just need to write good content and lower your bounce rate, it's not going to work.
- Using APIs from services like AdWords or MozScape, or hrefs from Majestic, or SEM refs from SearchScape or Alchemy API. Those APIs can have powerful things that they can do for your site. There are some powerful problems they could help you solve if you know how to use them. It's actually not that hard to write something, even inside a Google Doc or Excel, to pull from an API and get some data in there. There's a bunch of good tutorials out there. Richard Baxter has one, Annie Cushing has one, I think Distilled has some. So really cool stuff there.
- Diagnosing page load speed issues, which goes right to what Jayson was talking about. You need that fast-loading page. Well, if you don't have any technical skills, you can't figure out why your page might not be loading quickly.
- Diagnosing mobile friendliness issues
- Advising app developers on the new protocols around App deep linking, so that you can get the content from your mobile apps into the web search results on mobile devices. Awesome. Super powerful. Potentially crazy powerful, as mobile search is becoming bigger than desktop.
Okay, I'm going to take a deep breath and relax. I don't know Jayson's intention, and in fact, if he were in this room, he'd be like, "No, I totally agree with all those things. I wrote the article in a rush. I had no idea it was going to be big. I was just trying to make the broader points around you don't have to be a coder in order to do SEO." That's completely fine.
So I'm not going to try and rain criticism down on him. But I think if you're reading that article, or you're seeing it in your feed, or your clients are, or your boss is, or other folks are in your world, maybe you can point them to this Whiteboard Friday and let them know, no, that's not quite right. There's a ton of technical SEO that is required in 2015 and will be for years to come, I think, that SEOs have to have in order to be effective at their jobs.
All right, everyone. Look forward to some great comments, and we'll see you again next time for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
BTW - I wanted to call out some other content from Jayson that I think has been really good. I feel like I got a bit harsh in some of the moments of this Whiteboard Friday, which isn't cool. I've written plenty of pieces with which I later disagreed or felt needed clarification. No slight on Jayson personally or professionally intended. Some of his solid content included:
Hopefully, he doesn't mind my critiques with his piece. He's clearly a prolific author in our field, and as someone who's contributed my fair share of not-entirely-accurate content, I should be more empathetic.
p.s. For a great Technical SEO Checklist, check out Geoff Kenyon's post from earlier this year on Moz.
Hi Rand,
Your points are perfectly valid and you weren't being too harsh. As you mentioned technical SEO is extremely important and (most importantly) fun!
Hi Rand,
You weren't too harsh, Truth remains the truth. I am also one of the followers of Jayson like others,. Except that article, he shared so many important technical things before. :)
I wish what he claimed were true - currently dealing with a technical SEO nightmare! Alas.
Certainly not too harsh, I feel his article was very surprising. Still, good of you to give a balanced perspective on his published work, despite your original not being harsh at all, just on-point.
Anyway. Excellent WBF and cracking shirt.
Absolutely agreed with the points you raised here Rand. Modern SEO is all about your technical expertise with a true marketer's mindset. Playing with bids on Adwords and other APIs for promotion can be termed easier and I would say does not quite require that much of a technical knowledge but Modern SEO is different than playing with these APIs.
This one is awesome Rand. Creativity, technical skills are vice versa regards to SEO space. Hopefully Jayson does not mind this but surely he will get some direct traffic on this blog for sure ;)
I got your point, if you have specific content with the good targeting approach than you have good chance to get search visibility, but there are exceptional like you point out. There are many factors to make your site better in search and i think Jayson have his own perspective & that content is shared such an amazing numbers as people find it useful.
Overall, tactical approach is required with the specific analytics skills. Great WBF Rand! Love the stuff :)
Pass me the name of your barber Rand - I'll send the boys round!
Good idea :)
Great links to check out Rand & thanks for those. That being said, I don't think you were being too harsh. This is one of my favourite WBF posts in the past year, maybe two. It's full of great info, addresses something we won't want to become incorrect "common knowledge" and helps the industry a bit that way. It also gives us technical factors to consider (and a great link to Geoff's post, which was invaluable.)
All of that together - a great WBF!
Nice breakdown of Jayson's article Rand. Here's a gif displaying your frustration: https://makeagif.com/i/VJnYio :)
I absolutely agree with your points and I think being a top SEO in the industry it was your responsibility to tell others that one need to learn about technical SEO. Your advise well help others in career.
I don't think so you were harsh in the video. Yes, being an SEO expert, we need to have knowledge of technical and strategic thinking in order to make the page perfect as it should be according SEO.
Hi Rand.
Modern SEO is not easy, is filled with challenges, works best when experience and Knowledge are applied. I challenge myself to try to learn something new everyday.
It's true that some people tried using backend tactics and deceptive tricks in the early days of SEO, but it would be a mischaracterization of the industry to say that was common. There were things that did work well that required some work, and some thought and some understanding of things like marketing, and that seems to be missed in the original article.
The article also says that SEO can be done without any technical knowledge of how a website works, or how Google Works. I disagree. Mostly because I want to know how those things work. That's part of the fun of being an SEO to me. I don't want to design or develop websites, or design or develop search engines; but I really enjoy helping make websites work better, get found a little easier; especially by the audience whom those sites target, and helping searchers to make the Web better for them as well.
There are a lot of technical issues involving how websites work, how servers that websites are hosted upon work, about how search engines work when they try to index content found on Web pages. Knowing some stuff about HTML and Cascading Style Sheets work, how content hosted on servers behaves, and how search engines gather information and store it to serve it to others who may search for it, makes it easier to be an SEO; to be an effective SEO who has some idea of how to get things accomplished.
The original article also states that the only things anyone knows about SEO has come from SEOs experiments, or from relying upon Google to tell us about how SEOs work. I disagree. I've been reading Patents and whitepapers written by people from the search engines for more than a decade now. It's been an educational experience, and has revealed a lot about how search engines work; how they crawl pages, how they store data, about how they display results.
That article also tells us that the wisdom of what has been learned about SEO can be combined to statements that are so simple that they are almost meaningless, such as “write quality content” or “reduce your bounce rate. How does one define "quality Content?" Saying "reduce your bounce rate" is a little like saying to keep people on your pages longer. Yes, having better content than other people, and doing things to keep them on your pages longer are both good things to do.
There are many things in SEO that it's good to do, such as:
1. Creating a clear click path through the URLs of a site, so that a search engine visits every page you want indexed, and analyzes its content. Knowing how to do this well requires knowing about hyperlinks, canonical link elements, pagination markup. meta robots elements, URL Parameter handling, sub domains, http protocols.
2. Learn about Schema.org Markup, and use it on pages to help those pages show up in search results with rich snippets. That markup can also help your content rank better in search results, because it sends a more precise signal about the data on your pages. Using schema also means that you are including content on your pages as data in the form that the creators of those schemas thought were important for the topics your pages are about
3. Learn to understand HTML Markup, so that you can make your pages look like you want them to look. You can use a CMS (Content management System), but none of those are perfect out of the box, from an SEO stance, and need help and tweaking. Know enough HTML so that you can make intelligent decisions about how your pages look, and how they are constructed.
4. There are helpful tools you can use to improve the quality of your pages, and learning how to use those can make the SEO on your pages better. These include Google's Search Console (the old webmaster tools), Bing Webmaster Tools, Screaming Frog SEO Crawler, and many third party tool makers that can help you do keyword research, track rankings, create content, research your competitors.
5. Learn about Analytics, so that you can find out more about the people who visit your pages, where they go on your pages, what they do on your pages. There are also social analytics tools, that you can use to track social activity involving your website. It can help improve the visibility of your site and business to be involved in social networks, and finding a way to track some of that involvement and your interactions with others can be helpful.
There's technology involved in the creation and operation of your website, and knowing something about how that works can help your site be more effective, in an intelligent manner.
Modern SEO is challenging; that's part of the fun.
Well said Bill
Hear, hear Bill! Having technical knowledge of websites and how they are developed has dramatically decreased the amount of 'seo training' we need to give new hires. Usually the "SEO's" we run into who don't have development knowledge tend to lean towards the spammy side of SEO knowledge. Seems to be their go to methods.
This all it said by Bill
We need a new term for "SEO Lite"
I feel like the two of you are talking about two different things entirely.
You're actually talking about the promise of the headline. About SEO in all its glory.
He wrote about how non-technical optimizing content has become, definitely not the headline of his piece.
While I disagree with some of his points even if the headline was about optimizing content, this is the same message given to small businesses everywhere who just want to run a WordPress website and make sure their post is as visible to Google as possible. I think we need a term that talks about how to "categorize" a piece of content for Google. That way it wouldn't get lumped into the "optimizing a website" bucket, which is a different skill entirely.
When a book is published and put in a library, it's added to the Dewey Decimal system, so someone looking for it could find it. That's different than a librarian who is experienced in tracking what people check out, pulling all the most often checked out books by mystery authors and putting them on display at the front of the library, or an author who works hard to get his book promoted by libraries and bookstores across the country. it's this sort of difference I feel is akin to what we're talking about.
At its core, I feel like the broad definition of SEO, is core to why two people could have such different perspectives.
On a side note:
This is an excellent example of how to challenge someone without making it personal. Your positive attitude (and that of everyone at Moz) is why I love this site so much.
love the example of the librarian pulling popular books!!
Good analogy Patrick. I think the worry I'd have is the library patrons attempting to offer librarian services to libraries in need - we can't reduce the many, archaic, non-obvious elements of library science to something anyone who can read & write can do anymore than we can reduce the job of technical SEOs. Doing so in either case doesn't serve the client (the library or the website/business) well.
I like the idea of "SEO lite"!
You’re right - there’s a ton of appeal to the masses wanting to add SEO to their titles & LinkedIn profiles, to underestimate the technical skills really required to be effective. My guess is that's partly why the article received so much attention.
The point about ‘offering a good onsite experience' - this one, IMO, has an implied “for the human visitor” (which I consider more of the end goal), seems to completely miss the idea of creating a “good onsite experience” for search bots… which requires all the technical things you listed & more, and is really the action necessary to get to that end goal.
One thing I’ve noticed in my own experience as an SEO is that over time, I’ve started considering a lot of the things I originally thought were very technical & was even intimidated by (being an editor/writer/PR person getting into SEO about 7 years ago), to not be so technical anymore. And a big part of that is how most of us, as SEOs trying to get things done already, have had to grossly simplify technical fixes/tactics when talking with non-technical clients.
The other thing is how many tools out there claim to nearly 'take the technical out of search marketing' - whether it’s one of many campaign management/auto-optimizers for paid search or Google Tag Manager “making it easy for marketers to add / update website tags” (Really?? Maybe it’s easy to hit ‘publish,’ but getting your tags that hold critical json-ld or conversion tracking to actually work - not so "easy"!). And I’m sorry, but I haven’t come across a tool that doesn’t require either technical skills to know how to configure the tool settings (esp. for paid search tools) or technical understanding of what to do with all the reported data (crawl diagnostics, for example).
It’s an interesting balance we have to keep - talking about what we do in a way that’s simple & clear so we can get things implemented, while not devaluing or writing off the years it took (at least for me) to obtain advanced/technical SEO skills.
I’ll have to go back to re-watch this WBF anytime I start to oversimplify…
Well said Sheena! Reminds me of the name AJ Kohn chose for his blog - Blind Five Year Old - to describe how search engine bots act on the web :-)
Sometime technical things are hardest to be diagnosed.
Example - most of modern CMS using themes from 3rd party designers. And on some of them you're dealing with interesting things as tabbing content or "click to expand" or something similar. Sad story is that you can get algorithmic filter because that and then no one can help you. From technical point of view - information is here and can be crawled, from user point of view - it's ok, from crawler point of view - "hidden content" and you need to wait months for next refresh.
That's why it's extremely important when see CMS themes to check for everything that can be dangerous later. This also can include your page loading speed. Most of current WordPress instances for example loading almost 10 CSS, 20 JS, and least 2 fonts files. This killing page loading speed and rendering speed specially on mobile sites.
Most of current CMS are pretty good in indexability and crawlability but seems that we need next generation of designers with speed and SEO in their mind.
Good point, Peter, totally agree with you :)
You're right. There are a lot of themes out there that will hinder organic efforts. I started as a writer with a technical side. Not that I knew much about SEO at the start, but I had a business/marketing background and I wasn't afraid of code, or hours of research. But the heavy development/design aspects weren't immediately obvious.
Now I can consistently speed up a poor, but viable, sites. Which is pretty handy, even if I don't get the redesign/realign job. Rabbit holes, man. :D
Totally agree, and I don't think you were too harsh - I think it's brave to be able to constructively criticise someone's points in public (I guess because I can tell you're not the kind of person to want to do that) when the need is there and you did it with understanding and respect. I commented to say that I think Jayson's post can apply for basic and beginners SEO, so refocusing his post and title towards that would work really well. I agree that any non-technical SEOer is going to get into difficulties soon enough if they move past the real basics and don't have the technical know-how to help them troubleshoot problems or get into detail.
And on a side-note, one of my favourite things about SEO is that I get to use knowledge in technical and creative and analytical and all kinds of other areas of skill - I love the variety!
Me too! Science + data + creativity + detective-work is what has made SEO so attractive to me for so long.
Yes, oh boy I love the detective element. If my job was purely to work on new clients that were struggling for some unknown reason and do the investigating needed to set them on the right path, I'd be so happy. Love a new mystery to solve!
hey Rand,
I've gotta say one of the things I truly love about Moz is how darn respectful & good-natured you & the team are (TAGFEE, of course). You approached this topic in a manner that, I think, Jayson could appreciate & enjoy too. You're not lambasting him. You're not throwing him under the bus. You're engaging in a discussion. And even going so far as to give him positive shout-outs in the comments. Well done.
Anyhow, I just had to send some appreciation your way. Keep up the good work.
Now, I'm off to go beef up on my technical SEO skills. I hear they're important...
Andy
Thanks Andy! We strive to make sure that, even when we disagree strongly, we stay TAGFEE in our responses.
Hello Rand,
Count me too,in the list of the persons who were very very very surprised after reading Jayson Article. Most of the non seo may have started doing SEO on their own after reading that, but without learning and technical knowledge they won't run on a long path for sure. Most of the people without SEO experience, may feel he is correct. Thing is, you cant ignore technical part.
How the SEO, without technical skills will redirect a redesign website? Without knowledge of Redirection, Scripts, Schema formation, CMS issues for large websites (List not ends here), How anyone can do/start their SEO campaign? Some things Jayson mention is correct like content quality, user experience but rest of the things were so frustrating. You are right that may be he didn't knew that article will reach to far. One thing is clear that if the people found the content with easy solution (wrong in this case), they will hike that like this. I don't know what was Jayson's Intention, but that article was a Question on the SEOs work worldwide.
Man, 'CMS systems'... it's like my old nemesis 'NIC card'. What does non-technical SEO look like anyway? It probably looks a lot like extended meta tags given serious thought/research. :)
Sure, there are definitely soft skills involved. The ability to craft a solid email can help. But you can't accomplish much without some kind of technical proficiency.
A couple of days ago I found a site that has likely been blocked by robots.txt, since it launched three years ago. It had content. It was also on a well-tuned dedicated Lightspeed server. It was just that one stupid, entirely avoidable, flaw which has cost them dearly.
No one paid attention to the search results. No one paid attention to analytics. No one employed basic technical SEO.
They have some Facebook feel-good points. They have local listings. They also have Disallow: /.
Good point, Travis, but you talk about the "fancy" Social and IT guys, not the real deep-tech Seo's :)
That was actually the point. I did a little research, and contacted one of the company's freelance people. Where I was informed the owner was something of a 'webophobe' (their word, not mine) and they had spent large amounts of money on their server over the years. So I looked into it a little further.
Sure enough... the headers showed a very fast Lightspeed server, which is blocking search engine bots as fast as it can. Yes, the content they have could use some work. But they just botched it terribly on the front end.
No amount of 'great content' or 'authority' can generate organic traffic, when one doesn't know enough to allow legit bots to crawl a site. It's not like it was premium/pay-walled content. Just a local business with an infuriatingly preventable flaw in their deployment.
"Infuriatingly preventable" - I like that phrase. We see tons of these issues all the time with websites, though most are more complex than a straight robots.txt block.... Ouch. Definitely a good reason to learn the technical parts of SEO.
that´s right
After reading Jayson's post on entrepreneur.com, I have got the sense he wanted to write an article to reassure entrepreneurs that you don't have to have technical knowledge to do/start SEO. Obviously he oversimplified it and the applications of his advice can be technical. A better title for his article would be: how to start SEO if you don't have technical knowledge. In that case Rand wouldn't be emotional like this :-)
Exactly Edon,
Your suggested title justifies.
The original article did raise some questions from some misinformed clients, this video will be an excellent future resource, thank you Rand.
Very glad to help - I certainly worried that folks outside the SEO profession might get the wrong idea (especially when it did so well on Facebook).
Hi Rand,
There a say that if you want more you have to give more. So being an SEO specialist implies every point you talked about in this Whiteboard and I believe there are more. The point is that if the SEO is to be done correct and complete we need to have technical expertise. Otherwise each time we see something going wrong, wondering why without involving some technical stuff won't solve the problem.
I am glad that in 2015 we can move forward from just inserting some keywords and checking up from time to time the website's pages rankings and analytics. I should be more because users are requesting us more involvement in order to offer us more interest.
Best regards,
M.
Wow. I have read Jayson article and I have issue with it. You need to have technical understanding of SEO. Rand makes some very good points here. How can you assist a customer if you do not understand Debugging , Critical Rendering Path, DOM or even On Page Factors. Just to mention a few. What about basic HTML, CSS and scripting. Not saying you have to master the subject but to understand it. This saying comes to mind "Jack of all trades, master of none". Rand makes some great points in this weeks Whiteboard Friday. I don’t think you were hard on Jayson sometimes you have set the record straight.
I'm a developer turned SEO and the advantage I have in terms of being able to deliver changes as well as propose solutions in addition to accelerating the process, have given me a significant leg up certainly vs what agencies have been able to offer.
So your non technical SEO can definitely help you reach the same goals but your technical SEO can get you there a lot faster.
Maybe Jason should take a look at the Moz Q&A section.
I appreciate everyone's comments and love the invigorating discussion my article has generated! Here's my response:
https://www.audiencebloom.com/2015/08/lets-get-technical-a-follow-up-to-why-modern-seo-requires-almost-no-technical-expertise/
Hi Jayson,
The article raised some good points, but as you said on the follow-up article, some points were "misinterpreted, oversimplified, or flat-out ignored".
An article about SEO will surely generate a lot of traffic from people who actually do the craft. I think the discussion generated that amount of traction because the title somehow encourages small-medium businesses not to avail services from an SEO company since they can do it on their own. This will hurt the very jobs of freelancers and small offshore firms that can actually offer the service at a lower cost.
The article was written very well, and as I said earlier, you have raised some good points. It was just that it reached the wrong audience.
Hi Rand.
It's a bit worrying really knowing all these new people will be putting SEO to thier name especially when someone pays for a service with them and they know nothing about render blocking javascript, css above the fold content, htacess files, databases to name but a few.
Not to mention that most agencies that brand themselves as an "SEO Company" offers nothing but a set of link packages that are potentially harmful to your website.
Amazing stuff. Loved this WBF and it become my favorite till date. Thanks Rand!
Regards,
Nitin Manchanda (A Technical SEO)
Wow Rand. Whiteboard Friday hits yet another new high. So much sense and truth in 17 minutes. Plus I need to take some of what you take before these, and avoid your barber.
Seriously great value in this video, so thank you.
A little caffeine goes a long way!
Hi Rand,
You have a good point towards the Modern SEO. That required all these things that you mentioned above to become more user and Technical friendly so that User and Search Engine Bots can access your site. Search engines always give value those pages who have good and relevant traffic to their respective site. Thanks for sharing your valuable knowledge with us.
i love the sixth sense bit as that come with experience and it is hard to explain most of the time...
Gotta love it when Rand gets annoyed. :)
As someone who's rooted in web design, I think that design, HTML, and CSS knowledge is crucial for true understanding and implementation of SEO. If you can't adjust the content on your website without angering your creative team, you're going to have a lot of problems. If you can't produce a blog post that looks good and has good interactive usability, you're going to have a lot of problems.
Hi Rand,
It's not even about being technical. It's about having an 'analytical mind'. And people with technical background do develop their 'analytical thinking' while learning and practicing coding.
I am not saying a sales person cannot become a good SEO, but it does come to mind that to attend a business school the requirement is to be good at maths, although there si not a lot of math in management.
(Some fields of business involve more math than others. So you could be a marketing major and you probably will never have to solve calculus problems. On the other side if you are into accounting I don't see how you gonna survive without math.
It's exactly the same with SEO. When you are doing content marketing probably you do not need much knowledge of HTML and CSS. But when trying to understand why on Earth Google is not crawling your pages a basic understanding will get you out of trouble in front of your boss. Blink. Lol )
Awesome Rand!! I would say "SEO's need to get their hands dirty in order to learn something that's outstanding. Basics are something which you got to get hold off and evolve over with additional developments. It's a gradual process and no one can claim to be an industry leader as the industry itself is continuously changing and if SEO's don't keep up with those changes, they would become obsolete. I love Jason articles no doubt and it's really great to see two veterans putting their thoughts together and coming up with s set of checklists for those who wanna grow in this field. Rand, Do you think certification play any role in SEO in showcasing your expertise until n unless one has hands on experience over core optimization issues? What do you think?
While I'm a big fan of education programs like Market Motive, I'm not sure that our field will embrace certification anytime soon. There have been many attempts over the years, but nothing's stuck so far, probably because SEO is such a self-taught profession.
Well said and thank you. I've seen the same sentiments expressed in Jayson's article creeping in to more and more "me too" and "small biz" blog posts about SEO, so a well-spoken rant is definitely timely.
In my more zen moments, I like to remind myself that SEO has always been a three-legged stool (technical, onpage and offpage) with each leg bearing a differing amount of weight depending on the lean of the ass that's on it.
Liz Micik
Every Whiteboard Friday brings lots of challenging aspects of SEO techniques. Before reading Whiteboard Friday, one common thought runs in my mind that what are the things which i have not discovered about SEO. Again a worth read.. Great work Rand.
On point Rand. Not harsh, just to the point that SEO is a "Lazy" Job and easy to do. It's super technical and Jason's post just didn't really make sense.
Hi rand. it is really very helpful. specially the points where you discussed about geo targeting. i have a site (howpk) that rank well in my native country. but not in other countries. where as i didn't set any geographical area in google console (GWT)
Hi Rand,
I agree, it's essential to have technical knowledge, and future vision, to get a good SEO strategy.
This article makes some very good points and really hammers home the idea that what you really need for good SEO is a combination of all types of thinking. There really is a tendency to think we always know best, which can lead non technical people to discount the necessity of technical people and vice versa. Apart from that, I also think it's a lot easier for people with a technical background to understand articles written for those without one than the other way around. That's why a lot of articles on SEO techniques (such as this one) cater to the layman.
Nice article Rand. I am agree with you.
Awesome Rand! The notion that SEO isn't all that technical would be completely false.
I feel like search engine requirements more and more strict, in fact, more and more simple. The role of SEO is no longer so large. Look at my website, keywords: chopped strand mat fiberglass, new sites, and did not do much SEO, I focus on the contents of the above, just started to operate 1 months, feeling good. Please help me analyze.
I apologize if someone already pointed this out, I did read most of the comments but not all. Here is a link to case study how Entrepreneur Magazine used Technical SEO to achieve an "estimated return of over $2 million dollars PER MONTH". https://www.seoinc.com/case-studies/seo/entrepreneu...
Also, THANK YOU so much Rand! I am new to the digital marketing industry and The Whiteboard Fridays and MOZ content has been paramount in helping my knowledge and capabilities!
Well, I hope the 2 of you do end up hanging out together, over a local craft brew perhaps? I really liked your video delivery - comically expressive and quite engaging ;0)
If there's a point to be made somewhere between these different slants, here is what (i) think it is:
Experienced SEO's are pretty familiar with the cited technical, and as you point out, improvements in the console (etc.) make these easier and easier to identify and manage. So ... (i) think the "socialization" of algorithms (naturalization? humanization? anthropomorphism?) is becoming the more important trend, therefore ...
It's not so much the engine we need to figure out these days ... its our "searcher persona's" and the myriad of circumstances that motivate our searcher. In other words, I find myself spending a LOT more time analyzing actual (human) search queries than I do algorithm changes.
I wrote an article about this, but it sucks, because I'm nobody.
Cheers!
Hey Rand,
Where did you get your hair cut? Is it Africa?? I can clearly see a map of Africa in your head. I guess your hairstyler didn't charge for messing you up :D
Nice video on this topic "Why Effective, Modern SEO Requires" I saw uploaded video nicely designed and put awesome information in content.by this blog post i learned new think about seo.Training on Google adword and Analytics.
Hi guys! while many of you may be SEO experts I am just a Front End developer trying to get some basic understanding of SEO but so far it looks to me that all SEO experts are just guessing what may work or may not work! I have being reading several SEO blogs and many strategies are in totally discrepancy from the others. I really apologized if I am too harsh but after reading 20 articles about SEO I feel more confuse than before!
I have seen some couple of articles that say you don't have to know coding to do SEO. In a way, I have felt down about it since I was originally a coder and now focus on the technical part of SEO. Its good to hear from Rand that knowing how to code greatly helps in SEO.
Just got a moral boost. Thanks Rand.
Amazing video Rand.
In my opinion Technical SEO is the future!
It`s a viral today to have a very solid skills and understanding of how Search Engines actually works ( both crawling and indexing ) and most importantly to actually test and play with it.
hello to all bloggers i am new to to seo platform and im intrested in blogging can u all give some suggestions to me to develop in this feild.
Great article , was useful part of the structure !
There is no second thought that sometimes learning in reverse order helps. As I'm exactly doing the same now, digging deep into all the incredible posts shared by SEO magnets here on Moz planet. Next, as far as I understood about SEO factors, keeping the quality content aside, there are quick page loading and mobile friendliness take over the other SEO factors. But this post is filled with many crucial factors affecting SEO and ranking and will finally help me to deliver better SEO. Thanks for the exuberant information.
OH Jayson DeMers!!!! hahah I know him. I've been reading his stuff. Recently, I even wrote about him and corrected him on some things he was wrong on a post he wrote-- for entrepreneur magazine-- that were totally inaccurate. Actually at one point, he made me start questioning my marketing degree and my Mobile Devevlopent/SEO career altogether, in that being a good writer gives you more credibility than skills or knowledge lol-- no offense but it is true in so many cases.
Great video. This has been my complaint!!! for years-- of the reason why writers should not get so involved in this field. They have a HUGE voice and impact on what happens in the SEO world (and digital marketing in general). Some of them are even considered experts. The reason why is because most technical people don't have the storytelling skills as writers do. But one thing is that some writers (not all) write and comment on SEO, and another entire thing is when they appoint themselves experts and have a huge following (the case of this Moz video). Very dangerous and it has caused a lot of harm to the SEO community. It's not only this guy Jason, but there are hundreds of writers doing this-- writers like from Forbes or entrepreneur. In fact, I predicted this 10 years ago, that writers and good storytellers were going to take over this industry in terms of mainstream media--and I was right.
The other day I was watching a video and reading a blog post from this genius guy on intelligence data and search engines-- he is a programmer data scientist-- and no one knows about him. Something has to be done so good SEOs have a voice, not just the writers.
Perhaps moz could accept great posts from unknown but great SEOs with fantastic information, and just give these technical people some help with copyediting. A sort of outreach for great technical people around the world (where English is not their first language) or those with not so great writing skills, but great insight and years of knowledge-- Just a humble idea/opinion.
I now it sounds harsh, but it is about time someone says something. Thanks Moz!
REALLY late comment but I was watching this again (for the 3rd or 4th time) and sending the link to someone to watch.
Has anyone seen a similar deconstruction of the skills that go into web development? I know that's a pretty general request but I often have the same issue trying to help non tech people understand everything that goes into building a site (or even a page). UX, Usability, Design, Testing, Analytics and SEO considerations etc.
Awesome video btw, use it all the time to explain to people that SEO isn't just subscribing to a service or program and clicking a few buttons. :-)
Hey Rand, how was your blood pressure after recording that? ;) #Rhetorical
seo = little technique + great content + promoting your great content + build some backlink
Hey Rand,
SEO is so easy and obvious, anyone can be incredibly successful with absolutely no technical knowledge.
And that is why everyone has all the search traffic they could ever want and forums are filled with people who are deliriously happy and successful, unburdened by everyday problems.
If only, right?
Great post! In my case I yes know about technical seo, because before I studied System Engineer. In some cases is important the knowledgement when I talk with de developers about times.
Rand, on point. Especially QUALITY CONTENT. ugh... or our favorite 'high quality links'. My lord. Rising above the noise is really difficult these days.
i agree and disagree with you Rand. My thinking is since beginning SEO person is asked to do coding, conversion, cintent or technical optimisation and analytics. ..
The way SEO has changed we should now have two clear roles. SEO coding specialist and SEO marketing specialist. How a person with coding experience can also understand user behaviour, defining right funnel, improving user experience, using social media. . So my view is if you are a SEO marketing person you need different set of skills than traditional coding practices of SEO.
Hi Rand,
I totally agree with your point. technical skills helps to increase website user experience, performance improvement, html code validator issues etc. specially for on-page seo optimization.
Very Nicely Explain why any business need Technical SEO, Although some business might not understand the power of SEO but still they need it.
Very well done Sir Rand Fishkin
The best post I have ever read on the technical term of SEO. I come to know a lots of new thing from reading this post. Thank You.
I don't mind that technics are very advanced... :(
I get what Jayson is trying to convey, but if you start (as a novice) trying to do all the things that he mentions in his post:
"Make your site aesthetically pleasing. Make it easy for your users to find exactly what they’re looking for. Make your site fast, and optimized for any device (this one you may need a coder’s help for, admittedly)."
I challenge anyone to not either seek the advice of a developer or desperately want to learn everything yourself. Knowing how to do digital marketing better is what drives us all and it has been massively oversimplified in Jayson's article : (
I absolutely agree with you on site speed. This one topic alone is a very in-depth subject, ranging from making sure images are optimized, to making sure your CMS isn't bogged down by poorly coded plugins, to making sure your server itself is quickly accessible from many locations. Not to mention that, if you plan on getting big, being sure your server can handle all those connections.
Rand,
I love it. It is great to see you with some passion. I will have to agree with you on your points. I have spent months researching trending bloggers and sites that are growing quickly. I think some have stumbled upon "lucky SEO" and done a great job with rankings. But, they are one in a billion. The others have nailed it with quality SEO and implamenting a mix of both.
You were not harsh at all. I agree 100% with you. In fact it is articles like that that make our job harder. Our job is to educate and help our clients in an honest and valuable way. This type of article breeds the wrong attitude to Website Optimisation/Evolution
The one thing I enjoy most about 'modern SEO' is the blend of skills that are now required. It has changed the way we work over the years and it is certainly for the better. We are now a team of Technicians, Designers, Analysts and Creatives all working together and communicating on creative solutions. It is fun!!
Giving credit, socially or otherwise, to these articles is just like fertilizing your weeds. Something grows but it is not helpful.
Constructive criticism unlocks new paradigms of knowledge and I believe your intention was the same. You raised some very valid points that requires Jason's response and I am sure he will. Would love to see if he can come up here so we may learn more about it.
Diplomatically handled. Well done Rand.
LMAO, Note to the general public: If you are going to hire someone for SEO and that he or she thinks that Modern SEO Requires Almost No Technical Expertise this person is obviously a neophyte and has no idea what the hell he or she is talking about.
One of the best things you can do for your website, is to have it as technically as sound as possible. Especially if you are targeting a popular keyword. If your keyword phrase is "purple neck braces for giraffes" ok a technicality here, technical SEO won't make or break your first page results.
He didn't by chance have "I am a stupid newbie" tattooed on his forehead??!
Or perhaps it sheer link baiting brilliance on his part -- that's something I would do because a s an elite SEO person it is very important to be a master..... wait for it.. wait for it .... say it with me ,,,,, manipulator
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand pushes back against the idea that effective modern SEO [sic]
Rand are you reffering to yourself in the third person?? lol
In that case Bill Scott will wish you a very happy weekend, "happy weekend"
Whiteboard Friday introductions are typically written by a member of our audience development team, who post them to the blog. Would be pretty odd if I used the third person to refer to myself!
I really enjoyed this whiteboard friday. I have raise my seo technically skills. thanks rand
Technical SEO is very important, not only from a search engine perspective. Remember, Google Search Engine is a product with a brand to protect! They absolutely do not want to send the bulk of their search traffic to crappy, problematic, slow, non mobile friendly, spammy websites. That is why upholding the integrity of their algorithm updates is so important to them, it's their quality control to continue being the #1 Search engine, and to continue to do so, they must provide the best results (best performing websites with specific search content) to their users!
Bottom line is, even if you produce quality content, but your website performs crappy, your pages will not rank as high as they could if technical seo were performed correctly. Now, as an SEO expert, have some pride in the way your website performs, your users will appreciate it, and search engines will reward you with more traffic!
Hi Rand, Agree .. with you. I would like to see some way of getting backlinks that actually work for getting better ranking in next whiteboard friday.
Try to cover this topics, as efficient ways to get quality weblinks that actually work for gett good ranking.
Nothing like a great article to set the SEO chicken coop on fire. :-)
I agree that every website needs to have a few technical details in place. A good navigational structure and content recommendations make it easy for search engines and visitors to find and consume your content. And every author will get better mileage out of his content with a little knowledge about optimization and presentation.
But, once you have those basics in place, a good author can get by with five minutes of SEO per day.
However, most people are not good authors or they are simply promoting products without anything remarkable to make their site popular. These folks need SEO, or maybe a magician to make their site visible.
So, the great content producer can get by with five minutes of SEO per day and some expert assistance at the start and occasionally thereafter. But most people don't have the content producing abilities to pull this off. Thus the need for SEOs, magicians, and simply honest people to tell them that their content sucks or their biz plan has a very low probability of success.
Rand, great post! This is a very good point. Many marketing people ignore technical SEO which is very very important.
In modern SEO every single little technical detail matters!
Awesome SEO tips and information which is being provided. I from the core of my heart really appreciate this blog.Thank you for sharing such good recommendations.Its a very helpful article for the people who want to gain knowledge about modern SEO requirement !!
A great blog post for modern SEO.
Thank you.
Sure, it sounds easiest to learn the ropes without digging into tedious and technical stuff. However, I would continually run into dead ends--problems with no context for solving them. This sneaky awareness keeps coming over me that the more I can supplement what I am doing with knowledge about tech stuff, the better. I'm starving to comprehend what's going on in the spheres surrounding my daily tasks, like coding (including knowing the difference between the dev jobs and css design), servers, diagnostic software and more. As an SEO newbie, I find this post affirming.
This may be the best WBF ever. In the Middle Ages scholars famously debated how many angels could fit on the tip of a pin. Rand demonstrates how much pure SEO knowledge can fit into 17 little minutes. Thanks so much Rand.
I think your five points would be enough for me cause I don't have technical skills, I am OK with it or I should do something else for my site
Awesome post Rand!
It really takes a strong approach from all three components. Our designer is heavily involved in our SEO presence.
Our SEO Strategy for Trellis involves consistently improving our website design, adding new valuable pages, building products that will hopefully generate interest, new customers, and backlinks, as well as creating quality content on our blog or via white papers / ebooks.
This is all we can accomplish given our limited resources which is part of the strategic approach per company.
I think if your resources are very limited your best bets are to focus on content / blogging and social media which can be done internally, requiring no third party costs.
[link removed by editor]
Maybe he's just a smart guy and he link bated everyone, including the great Rand Fishkin :)
I didn't read the original article. I know this is a SEO blog and all. But honestly, as a business owner, the SEO 'expert' of five years ago is what his article seems to be about. It's responding to the 'experts' who would give talks about 'seo experts' who when you pinned them down after the chamber of commerce meeting would merely suggest keyword stuffing.
Not meaning any disrespect to anyone who has read or will read this blog. It was a real trend and I sat through multiple presentations at meetups. Anyone who questioned that mentioning 52 repeats of 'quickbooks' on one page was perhaps out of line poohed by the 'expert.'
Talking about the technical aspects of SEO is a good way to wipe away those concerns about those 'experts' of five years ago.
Ooph. That's rough indeed. And yes, I didn't want to assume bad intent on Jayson's part - just to dissuade anyone investing in SEO today to make sure they're aware of and considering the many technical aspects of our field.
Amazing Article rand, thank you
Thank you Rand! The "write good content" and "create a good user experience" is so over done on the web. This needed to be clarified by a trusted, recognized authority!
While it would be nice to think that search engine optimization can be handled without having to know many technical issues, I believe that you are totally justified in calling out that article. Having a basic understanding of HTML and CSS goes hand-in-hand with SEO, and it definitely contributes to conversation with team members that have a job of creating the visual aspects of a website. With constantly changing guidelines from Google, it's imperative that an individual operating in the SEO arena understands how to keep the contents of a website in alignment with those changing guidelines. We all know that websites get stale over time, and you pointed out technical issues that must be addressed to keep rankings intact. Understanding proper error codes, managing redirects and having the ability to diagnose traffic are all technical issues that must be understood.
Rand and the entire MOZ team this is a great WBF and also tackles a point that Yes BASIC SEO can be accomplished with little to no technical knowledge but what divides the SEO'er that is a good and great is more about the technical aspects that are given to a task, its more the analyzing, creation, and overall evolving strategy that is put in place.
Although articles like this make it difficult to discuss tactics when clients bring up this type of content as you then have to pin point every move you make instead of just providing awesome rankings and a great site. I would say that most in the community know that this is a technical role and with that you need to constantly build your strengths. For example I took a recent course on Logo design and also Web Design to add to my skill set when analyzing the UX of some of my clients sites.
All in all when a client receives good SEO they are really getting a technical expert that shaped a site into a marketing or information giving machine.
Hi Rand,
Over the last 9 years I've had to force myself to learn SEO in order to compete in my industry. I religiously watch every whiteboard Friday, because you guys do a great job keep me technically informed.
Back to Jayson DeMers, in addition to the article mentioned above, he recently wrote an article titled "Is SEO Dead". It appears to me that he is pearly trying to capture the attention of his readers, that would obviously be a topic of interest if there is any truth to it. I recently changed my site from http to https, and I can tell you first hand that was technical SEO challenge that overall helped my rankings.
Long story short, I'm secretly hoping my competition starts listening to Jason DeMers more :)
Hi Rand,
I am literary shocked to see the BIG list of technical SEO skills. I know it's required some technical skills to play well in the field SEO but your list is quit big than I thought. However, thanks for pointing the gaps of this article.
Great stuff @Rand! The article just seemed to over simplify SEO. Technical SEO is still very important and wont be leaving any time soon. A simple look at the quick list - redirects, error codes, canonical tags, mobile or responsive webpages, diagnose & analyze site analytics - these are all technical issues that marketers need to be aware of.
Hi Rand,
You have a really strong case for technical SEO and to me no SEO team/business would be able to produce great results without these skills.
You mentioned another Whiteboard Friday about updating page content and best practices but I couldn't find it searching moz.com or Google. Would you mind adding a link to it in the comments for easier access?
Thanks!
This is the paragraph where Rand references other Whiteboard Fridays. I've included what I think are the correct links to those specific posts below.
"Managing redirects, domain migrations, content updates. A new piece of content comes out, replacing an old piece of content, what do we do with that old piece of content? What's the best practice? It varies by different things. We have a whole Whiteboard Friday about the different things that you could do with that. What about a big redirect or a domain migration? You buy another company and you're redirecting their site to your site. You have to understand things about subdomain structures versus subfolders, which, again, we've done another Whiteboard Friday about that."
Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands? - Whiteboard Friday
Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday
Yes! Thank you Donna.
Thanks for sharing Donna. I just watched both these sessions, and unfortunately none is tackling the following part of what Rand mentions: "content updates. A new piece of content comes out, replacing an old piece of content, what do we do with that old piece of content? What's the best practice? It varies by different things. We have a whole Whiteboard Friday about the different things that you could do with that.".
So what I was hoping for was to look into those best practices for updating/replacing old content with new content. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Always more to learn and hear on this subject...thank you!.
for me the most important think on seo is still backlink.. link building, is already show the result at my job
Totally my favorite part is at 14:56 when Rand makes a fist and says "it's not going to work". Totally thinking about stealing that clip to show to clients when they suggest stupid stuff. Thanks Rand!
Hi Rand,
Thanks for another brilliant whiteboard Friday, I always learn so much in a short period of time!
For those of us, like myself, who are relatively new to SEO and are looking to learn all about the technical SEO factors you have discussed, where would you recommend starting?
Sometimes, it can get a little overwhelming and many sites have different opinions. So, I'd love to know what you think would be the most important things to learn about first and what articles/sites you would recommend to achieve this?
Thanks so much!
Jayson DeMers article is laughable if you work on any legacy sites with numerous technical SEO issues, having no technical experience means you are instantly missing a huge percentage of potential traffic. What is more worrying is that so called credible sites run this content with no editorial checks, tho Entrepreneur.com probably isn't the most credible.
Hello Rand,
You made some good points there and i would be agree with that. Having a great content and social popularity does not make you rank on the top in search engine, you will be needed some technical knowledge and stuffs to be there. And its not only about rank higher but also for getting more targeted costumers. As competition goes high and high, technical skills became more important, so definitely technical expertise required in modern SEO.
To be frank, I am looking forward to see Jason's comment/reaction on this WBF..
Hi Rand,
This reminds me of the time when some SEOs in the past said that link building is SEO but (Genuine SEOs know) it was not true. Now some SEOs have started saying Content Marketing is the new SEO. Which is again not true.
I think today SEO is more technical that it has ever been.
When Google introduced the PageRank and gave importance to links the whole focus was shifted to getting links and gave rise to the link spam and a bad reputation for the SEO industry. Similarly now people think that if we regularly go on adding content then the SEO is taken care of. This can result into a content spam which again will need some update stronger than a Panda update.
SEO and content marketing are two different industries. Your SEO may or may not create content for you and at the same time your content creator or writer may or may not optimize your site. No doubt that every piece of quality content gives a boost to your search presence provided your site has been optimized wisely for the search engines and the search engines can easily index and extract the right context of the content to make it prominently visible on the search results for their users.
SEO makes the site capable of being indexed and SEO is that unbalanced force which sets the ball rolling and gives it an initial speed. The push of the regular quality content converts the speed to velocity and acceleration. Yes the right content gives it a direction which converts the scalar quantity of the initial speed to the vector quantity by giving it the right direction.The content cannot get a direction and go far if it does not have the potential for the initial speed which is determined by the SEO of the site.
Content Marketing or content creation and sharing is not the new SEO but undoubtedly it is an essential strategy to future proof your search engine presence.
If we value our industry and want to establish the true identity of the SEO industry, I think we should not propagate content marketing as the new SEO just like in the past some SEOs propagated Link Building to be SEO and brought a bad name for the industry. A Content creator needs to have knowledge about the concerned industry for which you want to create content but a SEO needs to have knowledge about the search engines , their algorithms , updates, webmaster tools, analytics,etc.
If your site is not optimized for search engines then it is like a body at rest in the invisible web. When you optimize the site it becomes capable of getting the search presence and is displaced from the invisible web to the search engine index and gathers speed. The regular quality content and sharing give it a direction and it gathers velocity and further acceleration to reach the targeted destination.
I have a detailed blog post on my blog which explains why Content Marketing is not the new SEO. https://www.webpro.in/content-marketing-is-a-great-...
SEO is a necessity, Content Creation is a strategy and Social Media is a channel...
Google also needs SEO else they would not have posted a vacancy for SEO Manager on their careers portal:
https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=134435001&
I think when you're commenting on an important post, you should come up with your own thoughts. I am sorry to say but the complete paragraphs from your comment are copied.
Thanks,
Hello Umar,
You should get your facts clear before making such remarks. May I know from where has my comment been copied?
If you mean the Webpro blog then yes these views were written by me in one of my past posts which I have mentioned in the comment above.
These are my own thoughts indeed.
Mam,
The point that I raised was, when commenting on other posts it's not a good practice to totally copied the content from other article even if it's written by you. The best way to reference your article is to give an overview in the context of the post you're commenting on and then include your source link for the reference.
I really have no idea why people took my remarks as harsh.
Thanks,
Sometimes Umar when you have already written about something so strongly then reproducing the same content which is contextual and relevant is logical.
Hope you agree with me Rand?
I had come across the same situation in 2013 when a client told me after the Panda Update only adding content is enough. In response to that I had written the blog post mentioned and had explained why SEO is not only about content. When I read this post it reminded me of that situation and had a déjà vu feeling .
Posts which glorify one aspect and call it SEO are ruining the reputation of the SEO industry. Earlier it was link building and now it is content marketing. SEO in fact not only benefits the website owner but also makes the WWW a better place technically. It is because of technical SEO that search engines can improve their search results as the implementation of technical SEO makes the search engines index ,crawl and co relate sites to relevant content correctly.
Apart from understanding the algorithms SEOs need to understand the standard norms of web design and development which will make the web a better place and websites robust technically.Technical SEO also helps websites apply technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web which directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites from the WWW and the search engine perspective.
It's a great way to get your content duplicated on a powerful site. :-)
hello EGOL,
I think its repurposing of content not duplicating content. :)
Hello Umar,
To be frank, people taking your remark as harsh because in your comment regarding copied content to Ahuja, seems some over-smartness (I hope you took it in positive way). Because. moz has a great team of community, even Erica is sr. community manager so they has better idea what is copied.
I agreed what point you tried to make there, but still that does not make any sense because she also tried to explain about the thing in better manner with an example.
So, it would be good if we all talk about WBF rather than any others mistake.