The time traveller’s SEO strategy

How have SEO strategies evolved over the last 10 years?

This article was originally featured in Issue 13 of Benchmark Magazine, Titans of Search. 

Myth: SEO as a practice is relatively static. The same methods used 10 years ago still work today
Reality: While many of the same practices still exist (keywords, backlinking, content etc.), the way in which they are implemented has shifted drastically

Imagine the setting: you’re in some sort of Blade Runner style cafe or bar, it’s dingy and lit by neon lights and advertisements. You received a strange letter that told you to be here at 7pm. You weren’t sure whether you should go but something inside you said to do it. The letter mentioned things that nobody is supposed to know, you have to find out who sent it.

You get there early to scope out the place, to make sure this isn’t a trap. You sit, drink, and think, for minutes that seem like hours. As you deliberate who could have arranged this, you hear a familiar voice behind you.

It’s… you?

Alternate you says they’ve come from the past, just to hang out, reminisce, you can’t quite believe your eyes. But as you sit and talk, all becomes clear. In some paradoxical event alternate you found the secret to time travel in 2013, they gave up on SEO and went on to do the more fun and interesting (and arguably slightly narcissistic thing); hang out with themselves, yourselves, in different time periods.

So you sit and talk about how the price of a Freddo is outrageous, how Toblerones did the unspeakable, and how for reasons unbeknownst to both god and man Caramac bars were discontinued. You veer past pre, and post Brexit talk, and they hardly believe you when you tell them about the pandemic (as if it’s any less believable than them visiting ancient Greece?!) – before you inevitably land on the “how’s work?” talk.

“So what’s different in SEO now?” Alternate you asks.

“Well…” you sigh heavily.

Keyword Stuffing, for one.

Remember how we used to be able to just make a webpage relevant by slamming as many tricksy little instances of our keyword as humanly possible into the page?

“Yeah you’d just get a keyword related top-level domain and then smash as many associated instances into your page, using the ol CTR+F on inspect for your keyword to see whether you had more than others on the search?”

We don’t do that here, you say as you realise they won’t understand the Avengers reference.

It’s all holistic now. Google needs to understand that you’re the authority on the service you’re providing, as well as understanding what your users are actually searching for in relation to your service, and writing about that in a more natural and relevant way.

And you can’t just do the same backlinking anymore

“Yeah I’d assumed getting a million links for a couple hundred quid from Turkmenistan wasn’t going to last very long. Oh well at least we still have guest blogging.. Right?… Right?!”

Yeah, not really. Buying links isn’t effective anymore, you can’t just buy a load of links and point them to the page you want to rank. Google just ignores them nowadays, until you do it enough that they get annoyed and give you a manual action.

The links have to be high quality, natural and authoritative, from a relevant and reliable source now. The good thing is if you get one of those it’s equivalent to 1000 of your old links. In addition to this you have locally relevant links that help attract customers within the community, if you’re operating in different areas.

“But people still sneakily pay for them right?”

Yeah people still sneakily pay for them.

“What’s technical like these days?”

Technical is much the same, but not, in a weird way.

So previously if you were doing technical right in 2013, you were focusing on your standard stuff – like the metas and titles, they still exist. But back then you were also looking at your site structure and site speed as well, simply to improve bounce rate.

“Yeah bounce rate was a big bad in 2013”

Oh yeah, they got rid of that.. But while bounce rate is still a thing, it just isn’t really an official metric. I’d argue it still is, now it’s just called eNgAgEmEnT.

“I’m confused”

Just ignore that micro rant. Meta descriptions and titles are still necessary however, Technical SEO has followed the same shift as the rest of SEO which is from ‘as destructively relevant as possible’ to ‘as helpful as possible to the user’.

So you still have site speed, although it’s primarily mobile based now, and they’ve added factors such as structured data to help search engines understand and serve your content. It’d take me all week to go through how it’s expanded but as long as you’re keeping the user journey and experience in mind you’ll do fine.

“Sounds like I made the right choice, this sounds like pure effort now”

Ah but that’s the beauty, most of those terrible charlatan SEO’s have been weeded out at least.

And we haven’t even gotten on to content

“What is there to talk about, you find your keyword, you write an article about it, how could you possibly need to change that?”

Yeah, remember searching for a recipe online?

“Ah.”

So yeah they’ve made content a lot better now. It’s all about E-E-A-T

“E-E-A-T?”

Expertise Experience Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

“So mum was wrong, you should believe things you read on the internet then.”

Well, in a way. Basically to rank now, especially with YMYL….

“Give me a break with the acronyms”

Sorry, it stands for ‘Your Money, Your Life’ and refers to subjects that could impact someone’s life: health, legal, etc. You have to be a trustworthy and competent author with a proven publishing record to rank well for that kind of content now. Obviously, this is less important on non-YMYL searches which are more niche, but the gist of it is you need to be publishing a high authority website, with well outwardly linked and sourced content, that all comes from a place of established authority.

“You keep saying you, as in I have to do it”

Well, yeah, it needs to come from an author now. Gone are the days where you could tell people to do legally dubious things from behind an unattributed article. It has to be from a real person now, and they should really have their own presence elsewhere like social media, for example..

It has improved content massively. Take the recipes for example, aside from the authority the content actually has to be good. Google’s Hummingbird update is really in force now, your content has to be concise and informative, rather than “oh they wrote 1500 words, so I have to write 1800”.

“So I can find out a Baklava recipe without reminiscing for 20 minutes about where it was invented and how it used to be made every Thursday by the author’s grandma?”

Essentially yes.

“Great, let’s talk about something else”