"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes" — it's a quote that's actually quite applicable when it comes to writing for SEO. Much of the advice given to copywriters, journalists, editors, and other content creators for SEO writing is dangerously out of date, leaning on practices that were once tried and true but that could now get your site penalized.
In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, we hope you enjoy a brief history lesson on what should be avoided, what used to work and no longer does, and a brief 5-step process you should start using today for writing content that'll get you to the front of the SERPs.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about writing for SEO and what that means in 2018.
So writing for SEO has had a long history, and it meant something many years ago that it does not mean today. Unfortunately, I see a lot of bad advice, terrible advice out there for journalists and editors and authors of all kinds about what you need to do in terms of writing for SEO, meaning writing to get you to the top of search engines.
"Writing for SEO" in 2001
Now, let's be clear, some of this stuff is mired in pure mythology. But some of it is mired in historical fact that just hasn't been updated. So let's talk about what writing for SEO used to be back in 2001, how it evolved in sort of the middle era of 2008, let's say, and then what it means today in 2018.
So, back in the day, writing for SEO did mean things like...
I. Keyword stuffing
If you wanted to rank highly in early search engines, especially the late '90s into the early 2000s, keyword stuffing was a real tactic that really did have effectiveness. So SEOs would cram keywords into all sorts of tags and locations.
II. They would use and reuse a bunch of different variants, slight keyword variants
So if I'm targeting the word blue watches, I would have blue watch, blue watches, blue watch accessory, blue watch accessories, blue watches accessory, blue watches accessories, ridiculous little variants on plurals because the search engines were not great at figuring out that all these things sort of had the same intent and meant the same thing. So raw, rough keyword matching, exact keyword matching was part of SEO.
III. Keyword use in every tag possible
If there was a tag, you'd cram keywords into it.
IV. Domain name and subdomain keyword use
So this is why you saw that brands would be outranked by, to use our example, blue-watch-accessories.bluewatchaccessories.info, that kind of silly stuff would be ranking. Some of it even maintained for a while.
V. SEO writing was writing for engines and then trying not to annoy or piss off users
So, a lot of the time, people would want to cloak. They'd want to show one set of content to the search engines and another set to searchers, to actual users, because they knew that if they showed this dense, keyword-stuffed content to users, they'd be turned off and they wouldn't find it credible and they'd go somewhere else.
"Writing for SEO" in 2008
2008, we evolve on a bunch of these fronts, but not all of them and certainly not perfectly.
I. Keywords are still important in important locations
II. Exact matching still matters in a lot of places. So people were crafting unique pages even for keywords that shared the same intent.
Blue watches and blue timepieces might have two different pages. Blue watch and blue watches could even have two separate pages and do effectively well in 2008. 2018, that's not the case anymore.
III. Domain names were definitely less powerful, subdomains more so, but still influential
They still had some play in the engines. You still saw a lot of debates back in '08 about whether to create a keyword-rich domain.
IV. Since links in 2008 were overwhelmingly powerful rather than on-page signals, writing in order to get links is incredibly prized
In fact, it still is, but we'll talk about the evolution of that a little bit.
"Writing for SEO" in 2018
So now let's jump another decade forward. We're in 2018. This year, what does writing for SEO mean? Well, a bunch of things.
I. Solving the searcher's query matter most -- writing that doesn't do this tends not to rank well (for long)
Because engines have gotten so much better, Google in particular, but Bing as well, have gotten so much better at essentially optimizing for solving the searcher's task, helping them accomplish the thing that they wanted to accomplish, the writing that does the best job of solving the searcher's task tends to be the most highly prized. Stuff that doesn't, writing that doesn't do that, doesn't tend to rank well, doesn't tend to rank for long. You can sometimes get to the top of the search results, but you will almost certainly invariably be taken out by someone who does a great job of solving the searcher's query.
II. Intent matching matters a lot more in 2018 than exact keyword matching.
Today, no credible SEO would tell you to create a page for blue watch and blue watches or blue watch accessories and blue watch accessory or even blue timepieces and blue watches, maybe if you're targeting clocks too. In this case, it's really about figuring out what is the searcher's intent. If many keywords share the same intent, you know what? We're going to go ahead and create a single page that serves that intent and all of the keywords or at least many of the keywords that that intent is represented by.
III. Only a few tags are still absolutely crucial to doing SEO correctly.
So SEO writing today, there are really only two that are not very fungible. Those are the title element and the body content. That's not to say that you can't rank without using the keyword in these two places, just that it would be inadvisable to do so. This is both because of search engines and also because of searchers. When you see the keyword that you search for in the title element of the page in the search results, you are more inclined to click on it than if you don't see it. So it's possible that some click-baity headline could outrank a keyword-rich headline. But the best SEO writers are mixing both of those. We have a Whiteboard Friday about headline writing on just that topic.
A few other ones, however, a few other tags are nice to have in 2018 still. Those include:
Headline tags (the H1, the H2),
URL field, so if you can make your URL include the words and phrases that people are searching for, that is mildly helpful. It's both helpful for searchers who see the URL and would think, "Oh, okay, that is referring to the thing that I want," as well as for people who copy and paste the URL and share it with each other, or people who link with the URL and, thus, the anchor text is carried across by that URL and those keywords in there.
The meta description, not used for rankings, but it is read by searchers. When they see a meta description that includes the words and phrases that they've queried, they are more likely to think this will be a relevant result and more likely to click it. More clicks, as long as the engagement is high, tends to mean better rankings.
The image alt attribute, which is helpful both for regular search results, but particularly helpful for Google Images, which, as you may know from watching Whiteboard Friday, Google Images gets a tremendous amount of search traffic even on its own.
IV. Employing words, phrases, and concepts that Google's identified as sort of commonly associated with the query
This can provide a significant boost. We've seen some really interesting experimentation on this front, where folks will essentially take a piece of content, add in missing words and phrases that other pages that are highly ranking in Google have associated with those correct words and phrases.
In our example, I frequently use "New York neighborhoods," and a page that's missing words like Brooklyn, Harlem, Manhattan, Staten Island, that's weird, right? Google is going to be much more likely to rank the page that includes these borough names than one that doesn't for that particular query, because they've learned to associate that text with relevance for the query "New York neighborhoods."
What I do want to make clear here is this does not mean LSI or some other particular tactic. LSI is an old-school, I think late '80s, early '90s computer tactic, software tactic for identifying words that are semantically connected to each other. There's no reason you have to use this old-school junk methodology that became like pseudoscience in the SEO world and had a recent revival. But you should be using words and phrases that Google has related to a particular keyword. Related topics is a great thing to do. You can find some via the Moz Bar. We did a Whiteboard Friday on related topics, so you can check that out.
V. The user experience of the writing and content matters more than ever, and that is due to engagement metrics
Essentially, Google is able to see that people who click on a particular result are less likely to click the back button and choose a different result or more likely to stay on that page or site and engage further with that content and solve their whole task. That is a good sign to Google, and they want to rank more of those.
A brief "SEO writing" process for 2018
So, pragmatically, what does this history and evolution mean? Well, I think we can craft a brief sort of SEO writing process for 2018 from this. This is what I recommend. If you can do nothing else, do these five steps when you are writing for SEO, and you will tend to have more success than most of your competition.
Step 1: Assemble all the keywords that a page is targeting
So there should be a list of them. They should all share the same intent. You get all those keywords listed out.
Step 2: You list what the searchers are actually trying to accomplish when they search those queries
So someone searched for blue watches. What do they want? Information about them, they want to see different models, they want to know who makes them, they want to buy them, they want to see what the costs are like, they want to see where they can get them online, probably all of those things. Those are the intents behind those queries.
Step 3: Create a visual layout
Here's going to be our headline. Here's our subheadline. We're going to put this important key concept up at the top in a callout box. We're going to have this crucial visual next up. This is how we're going to address all of those searcher intents on the page visually with content, written or otherwise.
Step 4: Write first and then go add the keywords and the crucial, related terms, phrases, top concepts, topics that you want into the page
The ones that will hopefully help boost your SEO, rather than writing first with the keywords and topics in mind. You can have a little bit of that, but this would be what I suggest.
Step 5: Craft the hook, the hook that will make influential people and publications in this space likely to amplify, likely to link
Because, in 2018, links still do matter, still are an important part of SEO.
If you follow this and learn from this history, I think you'll do a much better job, generally speaking, of writing for SEO than a lot of the common wisdom out there. All right, everyone. Look forward to your thoughts in the comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Hi Rand,
Indeed, websites are made for the users, but in the race for rankings, we keep on denying that basic thing all the time.
Even today, I meet content writers (and SEOs) asking me to give them keywords and their density, instead of any topic, to write a content piece for the website. Those who learned the right way got succeeded, others are still waiting for their sun in the darkness.
Though, everyone has their own way to figure out what to write for their audience, here is what I follow to find the topics for content writing:
Hope these would help someone. I would like to know what other marketers do to figure out what to write for their audience.
Thanks
Ttrue, I agree with you.
Sometimes we get so "hallucinated" with advanced techniques and forget the basics.
I have just spent the Month of January touring Scotland delivering what we call across here Digital Boost Workshops to micro and small medium businesses. What I notice a lot in the forums and in my favourite right here is that we often say like Gil in this thread mentions "the bad part is that 90% of the SEOs could end up penalizing their clients.
But here in Scotland we have a huge number and I mean huge number of people in the micro and small business community where some, have gotten a web developer or small agency to build their site and invested in some - I will say reasonable basic SEO support. But I am also seeing another very large audience of people who are trying to run their business and diving into products that are struggling to get them any business online. From what I am seeing with those who have invested in products like WIX, Weebly, Mr Site, SquareSpace and a few others who are just not getting anywhere. Some of the problem is the advertising of these products where it makes out you could be online in minutes with a website. And Joe Public is buying into this, but forgetting or not being knowledgeable enough in what we are talking about here in this thread - SEO!
These small businesses have no idea about the rules that Rand has greatly brought to the fore here as to what still counts in 2018. Even just to write some copy - the micro/small business owner going down the DIY route is struggling.
I lost count in January how many of these businesses are also running without Analytics or Search Console and you would not believe the amount of hands that went up when I asked - how many of you are NOT doing any form of Keyword Research.
I think what else is going to be interesting as we go through 2018 is just what sort of search results we shall see from what RANKBRAIN is said to produce as part of the ranking algorithm.
Another great WBF post from our trusted Voice of the Industry - I think we need to get you back to Scotland Rand, we need you in the operating theatre to do some brain surgery for people over here.
eCommerce SEO Writing
Hi Rand & everyone. What's your opinion on writing content at the bottom of eCommerce category pages? Worth doing? That stuff is clearly written for SEO/Adwords rather than Users, yet all the major eCommerce sites still engage in it. For example, sites like Crate & Barrell or Wayfair all have this dense 'SEO' content way down the bottom of category pages.
I second this question.
I think the answer to this falls into the gray area of SEO. Answering this question with a simple do it or don't do it would be very short-sighted, right? My thought would be to do the following-
1. A/B test copy. See if one produces better or worse onsite metrics, if it hurts metrics, I'd suggest taking it off your page.
2. Look at your competition. What's the average word count for top 10 pages ranking in your SERP, or similar competitor category pages (use this number as a guidepost as opposed to gospel).
3.Track Keywords. While its not perfect and won't account for seasonality or other variables-- track all the keywords your interested in ranking for with and without the copy, look for fluctuations when you have enough data.
4. Prioritize tasks. Before you start worrying about copy on your product page, look at your site speed, collaborate on how you could reduce the page's bounce rate, go through the buying process yourself, look for obstacles the visitor could be encountering.
All this said, I don't think the copy at the bottom of the page is what's pushing your competitor to that #1 spot. Google is likely more interested in what a copy change does to your visitor's engagement metrics more than the change itself.
Great historical look-back at what it meant to "write for SEO" in past years, Rand. Thinking of searcher task accomplishment and also gathering the few main keywords and all the LSIs Keywords of those keywords before writing are great points! Thank you for writing sir!
Jackpot for the newbies who started their career in SEO in 2018. Though am not the beginner but learned a lot from your blog.
what i love the most is the SEO from 2001 to 2018 in single picture.
Thanks a lot Rand :)
Hi Rand,
There is also the issue of writing for Position #0.
This is something that didn't even exist in 2008!
Placing a summary paragraph near the beginning of the article is one way to grab this favored position.
Tables and lists can also work. I always make sure they are longer than what Google typically shows, so that searchers will click through to the article to see the rest.
In all three cases, you need to write or provide content that addresses the searchers' intent.
Very interesting indeed. I'll try to put summary, tables and lists in the beginning of my articles to test it!
Rand, thanks for this whiteboard. It was good to hear that title and body content are the most important elements. (I'll have to go find that whiteboard Friday on titles.) And that user experience means more than ever. I'd love to hear more on "writing the hook" if you have content about that.
Rand, this is already one of my top 5 WBFs. It's comprehensive, well articulated, and absolutely essential for SEO. Well done!
Thanks for calling out the LSI pseudoscience, too. I think it's survived this long for two big reasons:
If we want to bury "LSI keywords" once and for all, we need to come up with a new, snappy name for "commonly associated keywords." After all, a little branding goes a long way.
Agreed! Writing for SEO in today's semantic search era is absolutely different from even just 2 years ago. With Google's algorythms improvnig by listening (and even watching) they are finally learning the MEANING of queries. Which improves predicability, ease of use and shoot... the end of Google (as we know it at least)?
Either way, I'm excited to see what writing for seo in 2020 will look like.
Thanks Rand,
So the main evolution is that writing process has been shifted from search priority to user. And I think in the future we shouldn't even focus on keyword and other stuffs, and get back to the normal process of writing for the audience in order to ensure a better return. I do particulary like the Step 4 which I think should be the core of every SEO writing process from now.
Solving the searcher's query intent is definitely the best "mindset" to be in for writing for SEO in 2018. I see a lot of people still writing like its 2008 or before and it usually ends up being a great waste of time for them. Thank you for sharing your insight and tips here Rand, definitely agree with the 5 steps you mentioned for SEO Writing in 2018.
Great article, and one that I will share with clients.
Although you don't say it specifically, I'm wondering if we might not be close to a sort of Google "singularity" where all that matters is quality. We're getting pretty close, I think.
I encourage our content writers to create natural, effortless, educational prose...without even bothering about keywords anymore. From both my intuition and from direct experience, I believe that Google's grasp of semantics is far enough along that fun, well-written prose will trump carefully-engineered-SEO-articles every time.
The bad part is that 90% of the SEOs out there risk penalizing their clients by using dated tactics. The good part is that it's becoming much easier to see success without resorting to black hat techniques!
I want natural writing to succeed as the best SEO technique
Hey Rand, I am really impressed reading your articles that means alot in Seo world. I have been thinking what should i write in 2018 that keep me as well as my colleagues focusing on the facts that help them to rank better in search engine and also benefit them for long-term. I will keep reading Whiteboard Friday and every time i got some new things to read and focus on them. I will keep implementing your strategies that you have shared here with the audience and every time i see a new results that really shocked me to believe that as a follower of Rand Fishkin make me to reach the top of the SEO world and also great for my personal growth. I really appreciate you hard-work and your time that you give your followers writing such great articles. I'll like the whole article while reading and also i have already implemented some of the strategies that you have defined in the previous article like longer snippets. I agree that using phrases in the titles, url, image tags and descriptions etc that people looking for will definitely create a relevancy factor and there would be a high chances that people visit our pages or posts. If get to a conclusion i must say that all of the points that you have shared in this article consist a great value in-front of me. Thanks for this awesome sharing with your fans and i am one of them :) .
Hi Rand, great WBF and funky shirt (as always) :)
I do believe that having nice, conversational copy on your website helps a lot to rank today and will help even more in the future (like you've mentioned this in step 4). Search engines are getting more clever and AEO is - at least partly - the future. This means that the copy will have to be more thoughtful and more specific to help search intent(s).
Great points. Just to make one thing clear. "Voice search" and AI are becoming the next thing in search. When you speak a command to Alexa, AI looks for the most "relevant" answer.
So when we create content that we want found, it has to "specifically" address a problem and the answer you provide should be placed at the top of your content.
If you go into Google and learn more about search, they even state it there. The summary of your content should be placed at the top. The details can be placed underneath, but the "meat", must come first.
The content should also be written in conversational tone, like you're speaking to someone.
If you're going to ask "how do I make lasagne?", then the title of your content must include the question and in your content, you should include the question and the answer. Don't forget, there are many types of lasagne, so you need to add varied keywords, or, create separate articles for each keyword, which link back to the standard response for lasagne construction.
temas para escribir en un blog
Hola. Antes que nada, me disculpo porque no escribo muy bien en inglés. Tengo una joyería en línea. Me pregunto si el blog debería hablar sobre temas relacionados con el mundo de la joyería o si debería extenderme a otros temas. También hablo de las fechas de celebración, pero no sé en qué medida los temas de mi blog deben estar relacionados con el producto. Personalmente, tengo más facilidad para escribir sobre otros temas relacionados con mi tienda. ¿Alguna recomendación? Gracias
While the title element and the body content are critical, instead of crafting content specific to the target locale we still see SEO's trying to rank for local by mearly stuffing keywords into URLs ... not gonna happen. Actually had this conversation with a client just days ago.
Regarding content trending ... love BuzzSumo, also ContentGems for aggregate articles with trend rankings.
Finally, saw (actually heard) the GoundUp about you leaving Rand. Your comment on writing a "never remove me as CEO" clause into your next company's AoI is very telling. Once you remove that distraction from the equation you can focus on the things you love instead of constantly fending off CEO-rivals.
Your focus on helping people is on-target man. Thanks much for the work you've put in here and for your irrepressible candor. Best of luck on Whiteboard Friday 2.0.
Best,
Frank
Hey Rand,
Great trips and structure - no more excuses for putting off the first piece of content that I have been dreading to write :o
Interesting and well structured as always, thank you.
Message is consistent, write well for searcher intent.
Would love to hear more about "crafting the hook" for amplification. Do you have any specific examples on that.
Cheers.
I totally agree, enough with keyword stuffing... and start creating valuable content! If you can focus more on the content first, you'll get way better results. Then, you can focus on the SEO aspects. Which will give you genuine content.
This will result in many upsides in terms of SEO and marketing, including:
It's not always easy to create great content, but nothing great comes easy!
It's so true, the search intent it's the most important this year, everything else you need to follow, but you can avoid the engagement of the users on your website, it's must :). Thanks Rand.
Hi,
Good and interesting blog to read.I got the useful information what I
needed.Thanks you so much for sharing such a wonderful information.
Kindly give me updates regarding this topic
hi
As a beginner in digital marketing i have so much to learn about this flied, i love your video and your explanation as well, it was very accurate and to the point. thankyou so much for sharing such an informative blog with us. plz share some more quality information for beginners too, will wait for your next upload......
thanks Rand
It struck me to make another comment because I see a lot of talk about “search intent” counting for a lot (and only getting more important). What are some opinions on whether SEs will soon be able to parse and detect those times where the search is for “how to do x” and the page ranking is in actuality “how to do x better but with product y”? For example, a search for “convert time to seconds excel” and what you get is a mixture of actionable information and pages that are, in essence, “convert time to seconds fast by using super excel plugin.” I see a lot of pages like that ranking quite high. Are those days coming to an end
Grat WBF Rand, I just built a website caramanual.com I have also followed some steps on the Moz site, and in this update I feel a very good impact on my site, now I have a number of visitors who increased by 50% after applying some techniques SEO you write. Thank you for sharing with us.
Hi Rand,
Very useful WBF discussion on reviewing the history of SEO!
We have certainly revised our SEO strategies over the last few years and developed better content in our efforts to provide relevant information to searchers in our niche. However we also realized that our content needs to provide information to a broader audience that publishes information in our industry niche as well. Can you please explain your take on step 5 about crafting the hook in more detail to this audience? Maybe this might be a good topic for a future WBF?
Thanks,
Howard
Hi Rand,
Thank You So much for updating us about SEO. Usually I comment sometimes on blogs but your article is so convincing that I never stop myself to say something about it.
Crazy to see how much writing for SEO has changed in the last few years. I am all for it though, as it keeps the quality standard high for businesses and raises the bar to entry as well. Great topic Rand!
Good stuff!
A long-winded question to come.
But what does this mean for B2B product pages? Should we even be trying to rank with those? A mandate that I often hear is a company that wants their product or service pages to rank for unbranded key words. But the content is arranged in ways that don’t really align with this. Very product oriented as opposed to benefit oriented.
A page structure for “Cwidget module of Bwidgets toolkit” would end up being something like (roughly):
- Headline about benefit/what Cwidget does
- A paragraph of reinforcement of pain Cwidget solves
- Bullet list of things you can do with Cwidget (this is normally a list of disparate features that generally relate in the overall scope of the user’s tasks, but would never be searched for at the same time)
- A Cta
That bullet list makes up a good half of the page’s content. But each individual list point may or may not be searched by searchers of the others. From the product standpoint, they fall under the same umbrella because the product does it all. From a user standpoint only one or two may apply to any given searcher’s intent
Howdy Rand,
Thanks for sharing this wonderful edition of WBF its really informative with easy strategy process of "How to Write for SEO". I do want to ask one thing related to this blog post Is Guest Posting still works in writing for SEO? Keep it up with another fabulous edition!
Hey Rand,
A very important topics covered for SEO 2018
With all steps you recommends I also keep "People Also Ask" and "Related Search" feature to include while writing new content, these features usually help us in including sub sections within the topic making more appropriate and possible to get rank and better traffic.
Cheers!
Hi Rand,
One point which you can probably add here is about Videos.
A lot has been said about Google Search giving more priority to videos especially considering that it owns YouTube.
I think using informative videos from YouTube in our content can also be considered under Writing for SEO in 2018.
May be the embed code of a YouTube video that is related to the content topic give an extra boost to the content in search results.
Hi
Nice information shared and important for all persons related to seo and digital marketing.
As we see lots of updates are coming from Google regarding content in previous years.
We must avoid the factors that can penalize us like keyword stuffing, exact keyword and duplicate content. We must keep in mind that we should write content that is important for user queries as well as search engines.
At this time we must hire the writers who can write seo friendly content whether its blog, article, webpage or any other.
They should write the content that solves the query of person that is searching something instead of using exact keywords.
Really a nice also important points about effective SEO Content writing that can help a lot in SERP. The differences between previous & present techniques are also noticeable for providing SEO Services.
Thanks a lot!
Thanks Moz!
I like the idea to to divide the talk into three decades rather than just explaining whats more important now. I think the whole talk can be concluded to the point
"The optimizer's intent can be both the Searcher and the Search engine but Search Engine's intent only to server searcher's intent only and Search Engines are continuously working to improve that from the beginning till now".
Hey what about "schema" , is it important or not?
Simon i writte using H2, H3, H4, H5 like you, and i think it´s better too.
[Takeaway] for me is know your audience well and be intentional about what you're publishing.
Search Intent is the big focus for my firm in 2018. We are producing content that answers the users query. In a way its like customer service. You are giving the user exactly what they need and in many cases that builds loyalty and they are more likely to do business with your brand.
I am sorry, I somehow can't reply to Janak Bhutani's comment, so write the answer in a separate comment.
"I can't reply Janak Bhutani"We must avoid the factors that can penalize us like keyword stuffing, exact keyword and duplicate content. We must keep in mind that we should write content that is important for user queries as well as search engines. In my opinion, they should write the content that solves the query of person and uses exact keywords. It's more effective, really.
At this time we must hire the writers who can write seo friendly content whether its blog, article, webpage or any other.
They should write the content that solves the query of person that is searching something instead of using exact keywords." - I can't agree. In my opinion, they should write the content that solves the query of person and uses exact keywords. It's more effective, really.
Hi Rand,
I have a question here:
Why this post have no any h1. I can see the the first heading is directly in h2 tag. Is it fine to choose heading 2 directly?
Hello Rand.
I still believe that links play a big role in ranking. A link is a huge positive point that shows that a page is worthy of getting ranked higher than other pages in the same niche.
Btw, all the quality and relevancy signals result in getting more links in case the content is good and gets attention of influencers as you mentioned :)
Great WBF!
Easy to follow and perfectly broken down. The 5 steps at the end are especially helpful. Sometimes it can be easy to make ones SEO writing process harder than it needs to be.
Thanks, Rand!
Nice layout on how SEO has changed over the years!
Great WBF Rand.
I'm interested to hear writing comes first and adding KW comes second. In my experience, adding KWs after you write a piece can compromise the piece's flow and make some sentences feel forced. I also like to use the keywords as a guide for writers so the piece stays on topic.
Is the purpose behind this to really hit on answering the searchers intent?
Typically, I find a high-yield keyword and build out the piece from there. Is this process going the way of the Dodo bird and being replaced with a fully intent-based strategy?
Nice to affirm that I am already leaning in the right direction with the content I am creating. Still, it is nice to get ideas for honing and refining that technique further. I definitely feel like reading Moz on the daily now has started to really sharpen up my focus.
Phenomenal breakdown of the progression from 2001 to 2018. I love the direction SEO is headed (maybe rather, how far search engines have come in serving the user useful results).
Thanks Rand!
HI Rand
Too much good article this is my first comment i ever post on your article but can you please tell me EMD still working or not because i saw lots of domain still ranking like "tesla" tesla.com and entrepreneur and we can see entrepreneur.com these are not out dated yet why ?
Hello Rand..
This is awesome for SEO Beginers like this me.
Its very effective me like i working with Gemstone online sites very helpful with me.
Thanks Rand,
What's your opinion about writing content for design agency website, because according to us we have covered all the important aspects of content and covered all the services which we offer on the homepage, any suggestion from your side would be a great help.
Thanks in advance.
[Link removed by editor.
Hey Rend!!
Thanks for writing about "SEO content of 2018". there are all point are important but some are most impotent point which we have to notice in 2018. like intent content, Visual Layout, Solving the searcher's query matter most.
Thanks again for clarify important points.
Hey Rand....another great share like always....
I have a doubt.....do you think one day google will remove backlinks from its algorithm and give results purely based on content Itself?? will it ever happen?
Hi Rand,
Good video and article. You can not be more right.
I would only add one detail: From my point of view, links are still important for SEO today as you mentioned, and also activity coming from social media have day by day more relevancy.
Thanks!
Nice post Rand! Is really interesting for 2 things:
1º You have driven us in a quick trip to the past of SEO, making us remember and laugh about how funny SEO started and how it evolve. In this trip maybe you have rescued some lost people who stilled stuck in those ancient techniques ;-)
2º The easy guide of how to write for SEO in 2018 at the bottom of the post is really cool and useful.
Thanks so much to keep teaching us!!
It is a nice article, well I liked it.
I find that finally in 2018 search engines see that a faultlessly written text values more that a text full of spelling errors. Unfortunately that process is far from over as the search engines seem to be in denial that when a search-term is competitive, meaning that where a lot of Websites fight for a spot on the first SERP well the rules are different and older school prevails pretty often.
The people who still believe that a "funny, well-written prose will trump carefully-engineered-SEO-articles every time" well they should study SERPs a little just to see that in reality multi-seller pages prevail over the wittily written pages which lack more content and more backlinks, paid backlinks as the free versions forum and blog are becoming less powerful at every search engines algorithm's update.
Hey Rand - Is it a bad thing if the page's URL matches the h1 title? Our CMS is designed to build an article page's URL from the headline given.
Hello Adam_Ross
Keep the important words in URL and write a proper Title. I don't think it is bad if the URL & H1 is same but URLs can be too long so try to customize it.
Another great Whiteboard Friday Rand!
It's kind of funny to think back about the collective seo freakout after algorithms like panda and penguin basically erased the 2008 approach to seo. I think we can agree that the ability to better understand intent ultimately improved the search engine experience for everyone.
Great points, Rand!
I think LSI keywords can help a lot with making sure your content answers the query. If you cover all the LSI keywords, you're able to cover all the sub-topics withing the main topic you're covering.
I use LSI Graph for that (https://lsigraph.com), but you can also use Google's search suggestions and related searches.
Cheers!
Bill
There is nothing special at "LSI Graph" service, it doesn't use LSI at all. You don't need to use it in order to rank. Read this article about LSI in order to get what it really is: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publicati...
A wonderful explanation of SEO writing. You just nailed it Rand. Actually you tell the decades' SEO practices in minutes. Thanks
Muy buen artículo, hay que tomar en cuenta todas esas recomendaciones para aplicarlos en nuestros proyectos con el fin de satisfacer al lector.
Saludos
Thanks for sharing such beautiful information for us. I hope you will share some more info about Seo services for small business. Please keep sharing.
Personally I think SEO is getting very unpredictable in 2018. Therefore, I think the best way forward is to focus on Paid Advertising.
Content now is so important to Google, people are still being very keyword heavy on there pages and not being careful of how clever the Google algorithm is getting.
Great WBF as always. Lots of SEO's including myself have always felt exactly the same way. Searching for many similar terms on Google leads many a time to the same web pages being displayed for most of the search results page.
For example pasta recipe, how to make pasta, how to prepare pasta and how to make pasta in red sauce
In short, can we say like, "Value your Users, Search Engines Values You Back". Written an Answer on Quora 3 months back which includes these in short. Link: https://www.quora.com/What-strategies-should-I-use... .
Thanks Rand for making me clear, I'm on the right path.
Love this post Rand ... BUT ... I tested this out on 3 sites in 1st week of January with the same domain rank and page rank, pertaining to headings. All 3 sites had similar traffic (1800-2000 visitors/month, similar CTR, bounce rates around 55%, 50-55 inbound links from ~avg domain/page authority sites) and the same layout for navigation, same design, just different sub-domains)
Test was for 3 local SEO keywords of similar difficulty and traffic, 2.5% density, same 3 images with alt tags.
H1 and H2 headings are important. But so are H3, H4, H5...
Repeated use of H2 headings, like you're writing this blog, (and for that matter across Moz and across some popular SEO blogs on the web), is not exactly "best practice"
Can you guys test this out?
If you have done a test like this, please share results.
Also interested in results from Moz. Thanks
Well I am pretty sure you would have the other critical SEO elements on these pages as well, but the heading aspect is just one of the many points of a well optimized page. All I am seeing that you optimized the heading tags and the alt for the image. What was the URL structure and also the amount of content that you had on all these pages?
CONFIRMED: I confirmed across two other client websites, repetitive use of the same H2 or H3 tags is indeed a penalty
Hi Rand,
Very useful article, especially for the SEO beginners.
Today search engines are getting smarter day by day. So the SEO strategies also needs to be changed accordingly. SEO mangers must look for the searchers query and try to solve their problem by catering them with the relevant contents. Having the hold of your customers intentions is a key formula for an effective SEO.
Can you please explain the step 5 craft the hook in a much detail?
You know this brief history lesson is great and one that many who do not understand what works and does not work in SEO in the present could really use. I just met with my boss and had to explain some of these points in terms of keyword specific URL's and also the use of keywords everywhere when a more well laid out page with quality content can go so much further.
On that note I have to say my biggest take aways were that to write first then add the needed focus words to the content and also laying out the structure of the optimized page. Thanks as always for this.