5 Things in SEO that Aren’t Important
Hello Sam, do keyword matched or exact
matched domains rank? Please make a video on LSI keywords. Should I give social signals to
a micro niche blog? These are some very popular questions we get
in our YouTube comments and the answer to them all is… it doesn’t matter. Now, the troubling thing isn't
the questions themselves. It's the fact that they're frequently asked. And because they're frequently asked, it means
a lot of blog posts and videos are recommending these things as advice when in fact, these
are not the things that are going to move the needle in your SEO rankings.
So in this video, we'll cover five things in
SEO that probably don't matter and where you should focus your time and efforts instead. Stay tuned. [music] Alright, so before we get started, it's important
to note that this list of "things that don't matter in SEO" aren't exactly SEO myths and
they aren't necessarily bad practices. They're mostly things that people obsess and
worry over when they really don't matter in terms of improving your Google rankings. So throughout this video, I hope to give you
some answers that'll help you to stop worrying about these things so you can focus on techniques
and strategies that'll actually make a positive impact to your organic rankings.
Let's kick things off with the first thing,
which are "LSI keywords." People often refer to "LSI keywords" as related
words, phrases, and entities to a topic. For example, if you were to write a post about
baseball, then keywords like "pitcher," "catcher," "outfield," "short stop," or even "the Boston Redsox"
would be considered quote unquote, "LSI keywords." But LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and
Google doesn't even use this indexing method. In fact, Google's John Mueller said: "There's
no such thing as LSI keywords." So rather than focusing on "sprinkling" so-called
"LSI keywords" into your content X number of times, focus on creating content
that's comprehensive.
We have a full tutorial on content writing
for SEO that gets a little more technical, so I'll leave a link for you in the description. Alright, the second thing you shouldn't worry
about is achieving a content score in a content optimization tool or getting a green light
with Yoast's WordPress plugin. Content optimization tools often give you
a score based on the body of your content. And SEO plugins like Yoast, will show a
green light if you've satisfied their criteria. But these scores don't mean that your
content is optimized for search. It just means that you've met some basic on-page
requirements like including your target keyword in your title and content, sprinkling in some related
keywords, and probably a few other things. And while some of the "green light criteria"
is considered on-page SEO best practice, you shouldn't waste your time obsessing over
scores because these aren't determined by Google. They're created by third-parties. Now, I'm not saying that Yoast or content
optimization tools are bad by any means. They're actually quite helpful when you're
working with freelance writers or if you're new to SEO.
But my main point is that you should focus
on satisfying user intent because no score is going to be 100% accurate and
get you to the top of Google. We have a full video on assessing searcher
intent in our free SEO course for beginners, so I'll link that up in the description. Alright, the next thing you shouldn't
worry about is word count. So back in 2012, serpIQ conducted a study
showing that the average content length of top 10 ranking pages was more
than 2,000 words. Naturally, people started saying that you
have to create long form content that's at least 2,000 words in order to get
a top 10 ranking.
But correlation doesn't imply causation. Take Amazon as an example. Their pages generate thousands and even millions
of visits from Google every single month. And these pages don't have even
close to 2,000 words on them. Aside from the fact that they're the world's
largest ecommerce site, I would argue that it has more to do with search intent, which
represents the reason behind a searcher's query. For example, if we look at the search results
for the query, "usb dongle," you'll see that the majority of top-ranking results are product
and category pages from big box stores. And if we visit the page from Best Buy, you'll
see that the page isn't stuffed with thousands of words about USB dongles. And that's because Google knows that people
searching for this query likely want to buy one. Not read about them. But you'll also see this result from PCMag
called: "Definition of USB dongle." And if you look at the body of the content, you'll
see it's quite short – 117 words to be exact. Now, you might already know a bit about search
intent so you might argue that for informational queries, you need to write long-form content.
That too is false. Let's look at the query, "how to build a deck," which
is clearly a popular and semi-competitive topic. Scrolling down to the SERP, you'll see that this
article from Lowes ranks in the top position. Well, that page is 1,009 words. The article from This Old House
is just under 1,400 words. And this one from Family Handyman is 964 words. So does that mean you should create content
that's the average word count of the top 3 pages, which is 1,120 words? Absolutely not! There is no formula to calculate the exact
word count you should aim for and that's because there is no such thing as
an ideal word count. Instead, focus on matching searcher intent
and creating content with depth. And in cases where you do have a high word
count, that's usually a byproduct of creating in-depth articles.
Now, if you're still not buying it, then take
a look at what John Mueller said on Reddit: "Word count is not a ranking factor.
Save yourself the trouble." Alright, the next thing you shouldn't stress
about are exact match domains. And there's quite a bit of history behind these. So exact match domains are just domain names
that exactly match a target query. For example, if you wanted to rank for best
weight loss pills, then an exact match domain would be something like bestweightlosspills.com.
Now, this obviously looks very spammy, but
people used to do this because it worked. But in 2012, Matt Cutts, former head of webspam
at Google, announced that there would be a change to reduce low-quality "exact match"
domains in the search results. Now, despite the fact that Google publicly
announced this update in 2012, someone followed up with John Mueller in 2017 asking
if EMDs have some sort of "special impact." To which he responded… "There's no magic EMD bonus." Then in August 2021, another person asked
about buying keyword rich domains, to which Mueller said: "In my opinion, not for SEO reasons." Bottomline: they don't work.
So instead of looking for keyword rich domains,
stick with one that's brandable and build your reputation rather than looking for an EMD
bonus — which again, doesn't exist. Alright, next up are social signals. Social signals are engagements on social
media posts like shares, likes, and comments. And people often think that you can get higher
Google rankings by getting lots of engagement to a post that links to your website. This is flat out wrong. But a lot of this theory comes from
confusing messages from Google. In 2010, Danny Sullivan wrote that Google uses
social signals in their organic and news rankings.
And Matt Cutts actually confirmed this
in a video that same year. But in 2014, Cutts said, that to the best of
his knowledge, there are currently no signals in the ranking algorithms that put any weight
on how many Facebook likes or Twitter followers a specific page has. And long story short, they realized that this
was an unreliable way to rank pages because a) they were blocked from crawling social
media websites for about a month and a half and b) they had challenges with identification. Now, if you still think that social signals are
the secret sauce to higher Google rankings, then just use some common sense. Basically, anyone can buy a ton of
social signals for super-cheap. So if Google were to incorporate this into
the way they rank their pages, then it'd be way too easy to game. Now, it's not to say that getting social
engagement is a bad thing. It's great for building your personal brand
and I'll even say that it can indirectly help your SEO efforts.
Because by amplifying your content on social
media, you're getting more eyeballs to your content, some of which can turn into backlinks,
which can definitely move the needle. So what does matter in SEO? A lot of things. But if you're relatively new to the industry, then
I suggest cutting out the noise and focusing on these three things: So, #1. Keep your site in good technical health. #2. Create quality and interesting
and unique content. And #3. Earn backlinks to your pages. And again, we have a free no-fluff SEO course
for beginners that can show you how to do that so I highly recommend watching
that from start to finish. I'll link that up in the description. Now, this list of "things that don't
matter in SEO" isn't exhaustive. So I'd love to hear from you about some ineffective
SEO practices that are still being recommended in our community.
And of course, if you enjoyed this video, make
sure to like, share, and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one..
