Grumpy SEO Guy
Two Pieces of Controversial SEO Advice - Episode 63
This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 63, two pieces of controversial SEO advice. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm Grumpy today. I'm Grumpy today because there's some super obvious stuff that people are overlooking. Guess what we're going to talk about it in this episode. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started, everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience. This podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Since this episode is a little shorter than many episodes, I'm going to take this time at the beginning to read a message that I got from a listener. This was an email that I got. Hello Grumpy. Just wanted to reach out and say a huge thanks for your podcast. The more I apply your strategies, the better my rankings get, and the more I realize just how much BS there is in the SEO field. And it's starting to anger me. Nobody mentions keyword difficulty. Nobody mentions authority. Nobody mentions the fact that you could write a 10,000 word article replete with images and infographics. And yet it'll never, ever, ever rank if the keyword is too competitive. They tell you everything except the two or three most important factors for ranking. Keyword difficulty, authority, link building, DIY, or otherwise. And lastly, I'm shocked by how easy it is to build 2.0 sites and a PVP, meaning private blog portfolio. I mean, I'm happy that nobody knows how to do it properly because it is so pathetically easy. But I also feel angry that the charlatans led me down the wrong track for two or three years. Thanks for cutting through the BS. And I request you do an episode summing up the BS that's out there. Thank you for that email. Time for the rest of the episode. Okay. The first thing I want to talk about is you might have heard the saying. Okay. You might have heard this before. It doesn't apply to SEO, but I'm going to apply it to SEO. And what I'm saying is this, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. By the way, for those of you listening that are not native English speakers, probably never use the word ain't because it's not proper English. Just putting that out there. But the saying itself is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, which means if it's not broken, don't fix it. Also, don't refer to something as broke. If it's broken, because broke refers to when you don't have enough in your wallet to actually buy anything. Broke does not mean broken. This is just an expression with bad grammar that is found its way into common English usage. Okay. Grammar lesson over. Listen. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. What does that mean? It basically means don't screw with something if it's working the way it's supposed to. Okay. How does this apply to SEO? I'm going to give some controversial advice right now, but this is just what I think. Look, if you're like in position two or three or four or five or something, don't screw with your website. Okay. Don't screw with your web pages. Like seriously, because I keep finding posts from people that are saying stuff like, oh, yeah, we were in position four, and then we changed our content, and now we're like, now we're like, not even on the first five pages or something. And yes, I always tell you that content doesn't make a big difference. And it usually doesn't. But if you're changing things on your website, it might cost something to get modified somewhere. And now maybe search engines don't think you are supposed to be in position four or whatever I said, I don't remember. But look, if you're in position five or four or three or two, don't make changes to your website with the following condition. If you have to change something because it's factually incorrect, yes, change it. Okay. If you're selling blue widgets, okay, and you're saying the blue widgets are square, you can buy square ones or you can buy circular ones. Okay. But then you realize that the circle was a typo and they're actually triangles or not circles, you should go change that. Okay. Because that is incorrect. But stop making little changes here and there because you think it's going to improve your rank. First of all, if you're in position four, okay, the difference between position four and position one is not the content on your site. Okay. It's probably authority. If you're in position four, build backlinks. Okay. The search engines are not going to say, Oh, look at this person. They wrote better content. Let's boost them up in the rankings. We're already, I hope, have established that that's not what happens. So just stop. Like, yes, it can be annoying. Look, if you're in position four and, okay. So like, this is always what happens whenever I'm actually, I'm actually being like honest with us. It's funny. Like, you'll see why it's funny if I can actually finish telling the story. Okay. Like, sorry, I'll get messages from people. They never say, I want to be in position one because I want to get more customers. They never say that. They always like know the guy who runs the website right above theirs. Like they know, like they actually have met him and they're just like, they just, they just want to outrank that guy who's like right above them. It's, it's, I'm not, look, everybody's got their own reasons. Okay. For like wanting to rank, but I just, I just, I would just expect that people would say, oh, yeah, I would really like to rank because I would like to get more, more viewers to my site. But like, it's like, that's not the answer. It's, it's always, there's, it's always some person who runs a website above them and they just, they just need to outrank that person. And it's just like, all right, like, what, like, whatever your motivation is, right? Like we probably help you, but ultimately, like, that's just, that's just funny to me. So I don't know. But here's the thing, a website that's in position four and wants to be in position three, probably doesn't need to change its content. It probably needs more authority. Okay. If you change your H1 tags because somebody told you that it's going to make you rank better, it's probably not. And what's probably going to happen is the search engines are going to say, oh, this guy's altering his website. We don't know where it should go and you're going to drop off the first page. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So if you're ranking relatively well already, don't make changes to your website. Okay. That's number one. Here's the second piece of smart advice. I don't, I don't know what's call it. I'm going to give you. Number two, people often ask. Actually, I could probably divide this into two, but we'll see how it goes. People often ask, Hey, I did such and such and I got a little ranking improvement. What should I do now? You should keep doing the same thing. I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense. Hey, I'm trying to get, I'm trying to get in shape, you know, and I've been, I've been running like five miles every other, I'm just making this up, guys is like, it's, it's like, this is my disclaimer. Okay. Because when you're in a place like I'm in, you have to be careful sometimes with like what you share. Because if I say, if let's say I'm given a hypothetical example, and I say, okay, guys, so pretend you're in like position eight, right? And then you go out and you get like 80 backlinks and then you're in position six, like some person is going to go grumpy. So you guys said, if I'm in position eight, I need to get exactly 80 backlinks. And then I will be in position six. So no, it's an example. I'm making numbers up. Okay. It's an example. And it's funny because I've literally had people comment to me, they're like, you don't need to, you don't need to put that disclaimer in there so often. No, I do. I do need to put that disclaimer in there because otherwise people are going to misquote me and be like grumpy as you guys said this. And it's like some random example. There's like completely distinct from everything else. Anyway, so here's my example. And this is a hypothetical made up workout example. Okay. Let's say you're running five miles every other day. Okay. Five miles every other day. This is not a recommendation. I don't care how much you run. You should work it out with personal trainer who is smart. Okay. Not, not like, guess what? Talk about the SEO industry being bad. Let's talk about the personal training industry. Anyways. Okay. So. Five miles every other day and then do that for like a month. And maybe you like drop a couple pounds and you're like, yeah, drop and wait. What should I do now? I don't know. Maybe keep doing the same thing because it's working. I'm crazy. I know. Right. And yes, of course, every situation is different. And that's not fitness advice. You should do what makes sense for you based on what your doctor and your personal trainer have told you, but you understand the point. If you're in position eight and you build some backlinks and let's use that example, right? If you're in position eight and you build 80 backlinks and you get to position six, what should I do now? Grumpy SEO guy. Maybe you should build more backlinks. It looks like it's working for you. What else would it be? Okay. And let's relate to the same topic. I said I could split it into two and I'm going to. Okay. Here's another thing. People always say, how do I know if by SEO is working? Well, I hope that you've listened to the episode called if you're not tracking your SERPs, you're not doing SEO. So that's episode 35. If you haven't listened to it, it's a pretty decent episode. You know if SEO is working because you're moving up in the search engine results. What is the purpose of SEO? What is it? What is the purpose of SEO? The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. How do you tell if you're at the top of the search engines? You use a SERP tracking tool. A SERP tracking tool is a tool that makes a SERP chart. All SERP means is search engine results pages. It just means what position are you in? What position is your website in for your keyword? That's all the SERP chart shows you or that's all that SERP means basically. So a SERP chart shows you what position are you in and it shows you your position for every single day. It will check it every single day and place your position on a chart so that over time you can look at it and see if you're increasing or decreasing. The first thing that you need is a SERP tracking tool. After you have a website, that's literally the number one thing you need because that is how you tell if your SEO is effective or not. Go get a SERP tracking tool, there's lots of them. I use one called SERP box. They're pretty cool but there's a lot of them and you can use whatever one you think is best but you should do SERP box because it's great. Anyways, how do you tell if an SEO campaign is working? Because your SERPs, search engine result pages, SERPs, it means what position are you in because your SERPs are increasing. Increasing by the way means getting closer to one, not increasing a number. Huh, that's confusing, isn't it? If I say a number is increasing, that means it's getting bigger. But if your SERPs are getting bigger, it means that you're doing a bad job at SEO. Now that I've just made this completely incomprehensible, let me say this one more time, you want your SERP chart to be showing positive movement. Positive movement means you are getting closer to the top. It means you are getting higher in the ranking. It means your SEO is doing a good job. If you're in position 10 and then in a week you're in position eight, that is proof that you are doing good SEO. Why? Because you are increasing in the rank. It's the only metric that even matters. I have a whole podcast episode on this. It's episode 59. It's called traffic is not an SEO metric and what you should use instead. Anyways, that's how you tell if it works. And then if your other question is, I got some positive movement, what should I do now? The answer is you should probably keep doing the same thing because it's working. Okay. I mean, it's funny, like maybe you're laughing right now because it seems so obvious, but like, guys, I don't know. My job is to answer your questions and I get that question a lot. So I'm answering it. Like, I don't know. You should probably keep doing the things that are working. Like, I just keep doing things that work. Come on. Seriously. Why is this a question? Just kidding. I'm not judging, but for real, guys, guys, build backlinks. That's the answer to your question. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is grumpyseoguy. You can visit the grumpyseoguy subreddit or you can email me at hello@grumpyseoguy.com. If you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder. And it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks. And I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast, because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so at patreon.com/grumpyseoguy. And I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpyseoguy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about 301 redirects and SEO.