SEO Myths & Misconceptions

SEO is Dead. Link building is not important. My nephew is good with computers, they can do my SEO.

Yep, this week we’re talking common SEO myths and misconceptions we’ve heard over the years.

Lockdown Update – Due to the Sydney COVID lockdowns we’re not recording in the studio this week (or for the next few weeks at least) – instead, we’re recording from our home set-ups. Apologies the sound quality isn’t what it usually is!

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Transcript

Local Digital 0:04
It’s time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization, so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here’s your host, Michael and Arthur.

Arthur 0:23
Hey, everybody, welcome to the SEO Show. I’m Arthur and I’m here with Michael. And today we’re going to talk about some SEO myths and misconceptions. How are you doing today, Michael?

Michael 0:33
I’m doing very well. feels it feels really weird not to be the one asking that question. I’m like all discombobulated.

Arthur 0:40
feels really weird being the one asking the question.

Michael 0:42
You absolutely nailed it. I think I think our listeners will all be running into say, what a great job you’ve done there.

Arthur 0:48
All 13 of them.

Michael 0:50
According to the stats, so the actually 14? I don’t know, I don’t know how many really listen. But anyway, well done. Well done.

Arthur 0:58
Thank you.

Michael 0:59
And it’s an exciting topic, isn’t it?

Arthur 1:02
Yeah, it’s an interesting topic, because they are, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions around SEO. So I guess we can just start off with the list that we’ve compiled.

Michael 1:12
Yeah. And this is just based on stuff that we’ve heard, you know, throughout the years from people on the sidelines, or people in the industry, or clients or blogs, prospects blogs yeah. So stuff that gets bandied about but may not necessarily be true.

So what are

Arthur 1:32
the main one, the main one, the one that I see pop up every year,

Michael 1:36
every every every month, it feels like there’s a different article on SEO being dead? SEO is officially dead? Seo? Here’s why SEO is dead, SEO dead in 20 2018. Here’s what you need to do instead, so on and so forth.

Arthur 1:53
No, definitely not true. I mean, I’ve been seeing that headline since I started doing SEO in 2013. So, you know, 989 years later?

Michael 2:00
Yeah, pretty much every year, someone will write an article about how SEO is dead, or it’s dying soon, or there’s another thing you’ve got to focus on instead. But every year SEO keeps generating, you know, the bulk of the traffic that we see for our clients that threat?

Arthur 2:14
Yeah, why do you think those articles keep coming out every year?

Michael 2:18
There’s a range of reasons. I would say, first and foremost, a lot of these websites just need content. So they’ll turn junk out. Probably checks a lot of attention. If they can frame it in a way that is a bit different to every other SEO is dead article. That’s it. People are

Arthur 2:35
just clicking really, isn’t it?

Michael 2:37
Yeah, pretty much clickbait. Yep. And, and SEO gets harder every year, I would say in some ways, so maybe people that I’m, you know, having a tough time with it, or maybe lost a site in an algorithm update or something like that sort of bitter and saying SEO is dead because of their own personal experience, rather than, you know, looking at the fact that, you know, websites are getting a lot of traffic from Google via organic SEO. So look, Google do change things, you know that, you know, they are stealing organic presence from the search results pages to give Google Ads a lot more visibility or their own properties or sort of, you know, features like, you know, people also ask or, you know, knowledge graph that sort of stuff, a lot more presence in the search results, which pushes SEO results down, and they are squeezing things? Definitely. That’s true. But traditional SEO definitely does live, right.

Arthur 3:29
Exactly. Look, Google is a search engine. And as long as it’s returning organic results, then SEO lives. And SEO is, you know, super important. Like we’ve got a client that we work with now who has switched off his Google ads, just because his SEO has gotten to the point where he’s selling out of his product, and doesn’t need to run ads anymore. So you know, if this is dead, obviously, he wouldn’t be selling anything.

Michael 3:53
Yeah, keep that under wraps. We don’t want Google discovering who that is. That’s that is their worst nightmare, right there. You know, people’s SEO doing really well. And people not spending money on Google ads. So that’s why they change things. So it is that cat and mouse Mouse game in a way, you know, tactics will work. Seo sort of does really well on there, maybe Google will change something and someone will say our SEO is dead, you know, you should be focusing on Tick Tock or something like that. But really, for the last decade, SEO has consistently been an amazing acquisition channel for, you know, the clients we work with for our own business. For websites we run. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

Arthur 4:32
No, I guess a more accurate headline would be SEO evolves. Like everything in life, SEO evolves.

Michael 4:37
I mean, it has changed.

Arthur 4:41
It has changed and look, the stuff we used to do, you know, eight years ago, wouldn’t fly anymore. You know, you’d probably get you penalized or, like wiped out from the SERPs. But at its core, it’s still the same thing. You know, you’re hitting the three pillars, you’re doing your authority, your content, your technical, you know, if you’re doing those things, right, if you’re doing them right eight years ago for doing the right Today, they still work and you’re still seeing the results. Sir SEOs. Yeah. well and truly alive in my eyes. Yeah.

Michael 5:05
So SEO is dead Long live Seo? Yeah, it’s definitely not that. So that’s the number one myth you see bandied about just ignore it. Don’t focus on Tick Tock if you’re a litigation, commercial litigation where, because your audience isn’t there, but chances are they are searching Google and SEO is going to work well for you. What else? So another one we hear is, you know, SEO being this once and done type thing. You know, clients, novin clients, but like, people might think that, you know, I’m just going to do my SEO in the, you know, one month, and then I’ll be at the top of Google and get all my traffic. And that’ll be great for the next, you know, five years, I’ve done my SEO, but it doesn’t really work that way. Unfortunately, no,

Arthur 5:51
it’s mainly down to the fact that I don’t understand how it works. They feel that they’re paying this lump sum of money, and they should be getting something, I guess, getting something straight away, not realizing that is a it’s a long term strategy that can take months or years, depending on the niche that you’re in.

Michael 6:08
Yes. Okay. It’s just not once and done Mike. No, in any industry, because industries, well, what we just spoke about before, right, Google’s constantly evolving, changing their algorithms, changing what works, favoring certain factors and discounting other factors, and then maybe tweaking that. So if you just sort of build a site and let it gather dust or cobwebs, so to speak, then Google’s going to move on and leave you behind. So yeah, I’ve never once done it is a it’s a, I guess, a living breathing beast? In a way. It’s not dead. It’s a living breathing beast. There you go. That’s the headline.

Arthur 6:43
Okay, it doesn’t help that there’s people out there that will be calling up, you know, website owners and telling them they have SEO booster packages for $300. That will get them to position one. So yes, there’s people out there that will have those or make these promises that they obviously can’t keep.

Michael 6:59
Yeah, I guess, on a similar topic, another one that we hear a bit of, you know, I need you to build me an SEO website, like, I need my website, SEO. You know, so maybe they having a site built and they want SEO done in inverted commas from the start before they actually look at running like a link building campaign or something like that. And, look, most of the time, if you’re choosing a platform like WordPress, a lot of your SEO considerations can be handled easily, you know, you could even have your site built. And then after the fact, a lot of the SEO stuff can be added in like, that’s not ideal. Obviously, you do want to think about SEO when you’re building a site. But don’t get caught up in the belief that you need to have this sort of Warren pace SEO plan in place before you even launch your website. Because, yeah, it can just be done via plugins and extensions. And after the fact, if you need to, and what you really should be focusing on when you’re building a website is the conversion rate, you know, what’s your copywriting? Like, is it really benefit driven? And do you have a good value proposition? And now the call to action is clear? And is your conversion funnel really nice? And is the user experience? Nice? That’s the stuff you should be caring about? Yeah. Look,

Arthur 8:13
there’s nothing wrong with building an SEO friendly website like we we’ve done it in the past where, you know, you have optimized page titles, you know, you get the basics right? When you launch it, but you can’t, you can’t expect to launch a website from scratch and have it rank on page one straight away. So

Michael 8:30
yeah, so where I’m coming from is more people will put off, building out, you know, link, like they might put off doing a link building campaign, they might put off creating, like blog content, or even content for their site, because they’re planning on changing their site. And they want to get all of the SEO perfect before they do that. And it’s sort of a bit, I guess, it’s harmful, because SEO takes time. And if you’re just delaying things, you’re just, you know, delaying how long it takes before it actually starts working for you. So very sure. Don’t get caught up in that. Like with most things, it’s better to sort of ship or build and iterate than it is to sit there planning and sitting on it for ages and trying to perfect every last little thing because SEO right? You are never going to write the perfect title tag and the perfect copy the first time. I beg you beg to differ. I would read. Wow. Gee, Rusty, you must be much better at SEO than I realized. Because SEO is testing though. It’s trial and error in a lot of ways. Like sure we know the things that work most of the time, but there’s a lot of trial and error. You put up a title tag, like listen, pipes first dashes row, read this discussion recently and the team. And what if putting a dash in place as a pipe is some magic skyrocketing element to your SEO and you started off with whichever one I said was wrong. Let’s start off with the dash. And you’ve got to put a pipe there and your rankings have improved. That’s SEO that’s testing things. I’m not making much sense here.

Arthur 10:10
You are making sense you are. It is it is true. And going back to the pipes versus dashes. That’s a very interesting topic as well. But we can talk about that another day.

Michael 10:21
Will Tell me where do you stand on pipe stashes?

Arthur 10:24
Well, I’ve always done the pipes just because that’s how I was basically taught me the dashes. Sorry, yeah. dashes are getting confused now. Yeah. So I’ve always done dashes, just because my mentor did dashes. When I was working back at DGM. We always did dashes. And they’ve worked, you know, all this time. But then, you know, I started reading up and had people kind of critique that we weren’t using dashes. Sorry, we weren’t using pipes, we using dashes. And then I started testing that and saw some weird changes and rankings and started, you know, questioning myself and my existence and everything. And

Michael 10:58
you’re having an existential meltdown.

Arthur 11:01
Look, I I personally believe there’s no difference between a pipe and a dash.

Michael 11:05
Yeah, well, the only difference is the pixels like that, like Google are totally rewriting title tags now.

Arthur 11:12
Yeah, I’ve noticed that

Michael 11:14
you’re worrying too much about the number of pixels in your title tag me.

Arthur 11:20
But they said that the pipe separates the entity so it helps Google understand that the keywords better whether or not that’s true. Yeah. And conclusive at the moment. So some will say this, I will say it isn’t.

Michael 11:33
This is coming back to the point, I guess that originally started this.

Arthur 11:37
We went a bit off topic.

Michael 11:39
But it’s like, if you’re building a building the perfect SEO website from the ground up, and you’ve made the cardinal sin of using pipes instead of dashes or dashes instead of pipes, pipes instead of dashes, right, then you want to test something new in the future, that’s SEO is a bit of trial and error. So it’s always better to ship things, get them live, and with a web website, focus on your users and conversion rates call to actions, design, look and feel, SEO features, you know, of course, you want the copy on the page, you want an h1 tag, all that sort of good stuff. But outside of that, you’re not going to come up with this glorious master plan, you know, a great SEO friendly website. So for most most cases, it definitely agree. on that, on that note, another one that we hear a bit is, you know, we’re we’re on the topic of testing. You know, when an algorithm update happens, people, like, let’s say, from a client’s perspective, their their website takes a little bit of a hit after an algorithm update. They might say you’re an SEO, how do you fix it, you should know how to fix this sort of what you do, like in the day after an algorithm update happens. Yeah, and really any anyone that claims to know how to fix a drop in traffic instantly after a big update doesn’t because you haven’t had time to, they haven’t had time to test and trial and error, look at other websites, look at your site, read articles and guides and jump in different online communities and forums and get a feel for what’s going on and understand the what’s going on with the algorithm update. So Exactly. It takes time, doesn’t it?

Arthur 13:14
It takes time. Look, sometimes Google will let you know what the updates about mobile first, you know, Penguin, Panda, whatever they’re focusing on, you can kind of drill down to what the problem is on the site. But if it’s just a broad core algorithm update, you know, it takes weeks months, sometimes even longer for people to kind of the community, the SEO community to get out there and start figuring out what that update was targeting, basically.

Michael 13:38
Mm hmm. So there’s one just recently a link based one that’s been released. where, you know, the search results are in a state of upheaval, you know, right after that was released. But sometimes the best course of action is, well, a lot of the time, the best course of action, not even changing anything, if nothing, yeah, sit on it, and just see how the dust settles because sometimes you’ll plummet. And then a week later, you bounce back up. And yeah, it does, unfortunately, like with it like, like the old joke in the SEO world, it depends in inverted commas is the answer to everything. Yeah. With algorithm updates, you know, the answer does depend, it depends on all sorts of different factors. And it does take time to figure these things out.

Arthur 14:22
Exactly. And the rollout of an update can take weeks. So you know, even after the updates rolled out, it can still take weeks for Google to reassess all the pages everything. So making, making wholesale changes on the website without letting the dust settle is a horrible idea. And we’ve seen that done in the past, we’ve also seen websites where we’ve had people panic, you know, you know, I’ve dropped from position one to position five quick I need help I need something to change. Whereas you know, you give them a month or two and they’re back in position one without any changes in the site. If we were had gone and changed the copy on the page, the page title is, you know, if we started disavowing links, you know, he might have plummeted even further. So,

Michael 15:04
yeah, think about how much effort goes into acquiring links to begin with an expense. And then you go disavowing them or like in a panic. And then it turns out, they weren’t even doing anything, you know, bad, and you’ve lost those links, and then you have to like, maybe, um, disavow them. And you know, it’s better to sit tight for a little bit after an update like that.

Arthur 15:26
Yep. Definitely

Michael 15:28
the topic of links. Here’s another one link building doesn’t work. We don’t do link building. You know, that’s another idea. In the SEO world, you know, you know,

Arthur 15:38
well, I’ve worked at agencies where they flat out refuse to do any link building. And I’ve worked, obviously, I’ve agencies, which involve a lot of link building. And I guess it comes down to, I guess, the clients that you’re working with. So, you know, the agencies to work out Previously, we worked with big global clients that would acquire links nationally. So you know, there’s no need to go out there and kind of do it yourself. But when you’re working with, you know, smaller clients, where they have no backlink history at all, there’s no way you can compete with, you know, competitors that have been doing SEO for years, might not even have been doing SEO for years, but have just accumulated links over the years naturally. Yeah. So link building is definitely very important when it comes to SEO.

Michael 16:23
Yeah, and if you read any sort of data driven study by like, the Brian Dean’s of the world, or hrs and the like, time and time, again, they just show that links do have a very strong impact on rankings that directly correlate with better rankings, you know, strong links. If you are investing in SEO, maybe with an external party looking after it for you, and they don’t do link building, or they sort of say, you know, look, we’ll just make a good site, and you’ll get the links naturally, because that’s the other thing. Most sites, like you said before big brands will probably get it as a result of, you know, huge brand, building advertising campaigns that they do and publicity, you know, PR campaigns in the like, Don’t pick up links naturally, but a little plumbing website in Perth, I’m not going to be picking up links naturally, just because they built a good site or written some good content,

Arthur 17:17
no way no.

Michael 17:18
So that that is a bit of a myth to that whole, you know, built, you build a good site, and they will come the links will come that doesn’t really work in the real world. You got to be promoting your site, you got to be trying to hustle and hunt down those links.

Arthur 17:31
But that’s still link building, isn’t it? So?

Michael 17:34
Exactly. Yeah, that link really does work. And you need to put effort into doing it doesn’t just sort of fall out of the sky. You know, those those links on occasion, but not in any way that you can set your watch to and count on reliable growth in you, you know, traffic and revenue and leads and all the stuff that you really want from SEO. All right, well, what else? Well, maybe let’s talk about what we’re on the topic of links. quantity over quality? Rep.

Arthur 18:04
Yeah, so quality over quantity. So a lot of people don’t realize that not every link is equal, you know, some some links will help move the needles others weren’t. And there’s a lot of people out that that kind of measure success based on the quantity of links that you build them. So being a transparent agency every month in our monthly report will report on all the backlinks that we will build a client. Sometimes the client might have two links, sometimes they might have 10, it depends. It depends. It varies on the client that varies on the on the spend and the types of links that we’re building. But a lot of people will have this expectation that they should receive, you know, X amount of links per month, not caring where they come from not caring whether or not they’ll actually even work. It’s just having that kind of tangible thing they can measure in the report. Agree?

Michael 18:51
Yeah, look, I do like I guess I understand that because it’s not, if you if you look at what goes into assessing a quality link, and all the metrics we look at, and research and analysis of the website we do and all the sort of time it’s taken, I guess, to develop the skills to do that. Someone that’s paying an agency to do that, on their behalf doesn’t have all that. It’s like when you get a house built or something. And the builder says to you, oh, there’s a drop, you need a drop edge beam here. And like, What the hell’s

Arthur 19:22
no idea what that is?

Michael 19:24
Yeah. But like if they like you get four drop edge beams with this package, I’ll be like mad. Awesome. So it’s kind of the same with link building in a way. If it’s been framed that way by the agency where they’re like, quantity over quality. We’re going to build you all these links. Look how many you get, and that’s sort of what their expectation has been. I’ve steered towards, yeah, I understand. But, you know, if you were working with an agency, and they were getting you 15 links a month, and your traffic went backwards and your site got hurt, and you left them, you know, perhaps, then if another agency saying look, well, it’s not about quantity, it’s about the quality and we might have They get you five, but they’re going to move the needle. Yeah. Then maybe you know, there’s a reason you’re not with that old agency and you’ve moved on. So maybe you want to, I guess, give what they are saying ago and not hold on to that quantity over quality type of perch.

Arthur 20:15
Yeah. Okay, I totally I understand that as well. But it’s, I guess it comes back to educating the client on what a link is, why, why it’s important and what makes a good link. And then hopefully, they’ll understand that, you know, it’s better to get two or three really strong, relevant links than, you know, 20 garbage links, that will probably get them penalised or won’t do anything.

Michael 20:36
Yep. So it’s all about expectation setting, as we always talk about at the start, and then yeah, I guess also, you know, the results overall, like if they’re getting a lot more traffic and sales or leads, yep, they’re not necessarily going to care. You know, they might care about the volume of that. But

Arthur 20:52
you’ll be surprised that there aren’t there are people out there that we care about those things as well. So yeah, you can you can, you know, 10x their results, but they’ll still, you know, run a fine tooth comb over the report and say, Oh, you know, why is there one less link this month over last month? And people are like that, you know, it’s just I guess, some people just like that you

Michael 21:10
can’t do anything about it. I just have tangible and measurable and they’re paying for so they

Arthur 21:16
says revenue and traffic?

Michael 21:17
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I haven’t had that much experience with people being obsessed with the volume of links, when if the results are really good on traffic and revenue in the life? I have. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, look, I guess the point we’re making is, although there are people out there like that, it’s not necessarily the best thing to focus on with them. Maybe the the next point to make on this one would be around all SEO is the same. Because you know, if maybe, if, if you’re wanting 15 links a month, because one agency got it. And that’s what you’re judging an agency on, you probably think that all SEO is the same. But not all, SEO is the same. It’s a bit like landscaping, you know, anyone can say they’re a landscaper and just start digging, you know, just turn up to a house and start clearing your block or leveling it off and do a terrible job because they they don’t know what they’re doing. So you do you do get what you pay for, you know, are you working with someone that is a fresh landscaper that doesn’t know what they’re doing? Are you working with someone that has got some sort of formal training and been in the industry for a long time and a track record of really good work behind them? Yeah, definitely do need to look into the differences between your options and see that not all SEO is the same?

Arthur 22:36
No. And that’s because not all websites are the same. So try to try to rank a large ecommerce website versus, you know, trying to rank a smaller lead generation website is completely different. requires a completely different skill set, you know, one can be a lot more technical, the other one can be a lot more content focused. So

Michael 22:56
yeah, some industries, you might just be doing link building. Others you Yeah, yeah, they might already have a really strong link profile, but terrible, do to turn on 10 issues with internal linking or technical. And that comes back, I guess, to package packages, you know, like, if some agencies, they sell packages, they’re going to shoehorn you into one of them. But really, it should be bespoke, should be targeted and tailored to your goals and your business and where your business is positioned, as opposed to the competition. And I guess, you know, if you look at SEO as as a cost, rather than an investment in growing your business, the temptation is always going to be to go for cheap SEO. And consider all if you have the same you know, like, well, you’re quoting us three grand a month for this, but these guys are doing it for 750 on their, their, you know, their bronze package. That’s like hunting. It’s like hunting for car insurance. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not even that like what would be it would be like, you know, like buying a car. Now when Yeah, trying to say here. I think

Arthur 23:59
it is like hunting for car insurance, because a lot of the people won’t look at the fine print though. Just go with the lowest course.

Michael 24:05
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. And then they discover that they don’t have windscreen protection. Exactly. Yeah. They get angry and blame the insurance company. Yeah. when really they didn’t, you know, look at the different options available. Yeah. Kind of along those lines. I like that one. It’s a new one. Yeah.

Arthur 24:21
The bank? You can use that one. Okay. Thank you.

Michael 24:26
What else was a good one? Yeah. Do you have another myth that you that you’re a fond of that you want to cover off here? Another myth?

Arthur 24:35
What about the my nice friend or cousin read about and they can handle it? Oh, yeah. That’s an interesting one. Having someone that thinks that they can handle their SEO for you.

Michael 24:46
Yeah, sort of along the line of the point we just made in a way like with the United like me, I do a bit landscaping in my backyard. I’m going to get started. I did a bit of landscaping, read an article about it. So I can come do it at your house, but it’s probably not going to look that good. are, you know that

Arthur 25:02
you’ve done a fair bit of landscaping though, so I’d trust you with that.

Michael 25:06
If it’s just mowing the lawn sure, but look like the temptation can be to give you a fee to someone that, you know, that’s good with computers in inverted commas, you know, and they’re never gonna get the same results as someone that specializes it. No. And there’s a bit of a, an old story that I’ve heard a bit with tradies, where, you know, you say you’ve got some problem in your house, and you can’t fix it and you stressing out needs to be fixed. You call a trainee to come and do it, and they turn up, look at the job, hit a couple of nails, and then charge you for it. And you’re like, what the hell that was really easy. But it’s trading knowledge and experience in training that has gone into them knowing which nails to hit, and why they need to hit them that you’re actually paying for and the outcome, right? Not how long it takes them, or sort of how easy it was for them seemingly, so people that have read one or two articles on SEO and, and maybe good with computers, or using Netflix or something. Yeah, don’t necessarily have the knowledge to look at your website and really understand where it’s at and look at your competition, figure out your goals, work backwards from your goals and come up with like, you know, a plan to deliver on them, and you’re just gonna waste time and probably, you know, work on it for a year and then probably have to go and engage proper agency to look after it for you.

Arthur 26:19
I like the the analogy that were like mechanics, but for your website, because when you go and get a car serviced, or when you’re going to get a timing chain or timing belt, replace them a car, the actual timing belt call costs, nothing, you know, it’s a couple 100 bucks, but to get that timing chain replace can cost 1000s, because you’re paying for that mechanics, time is expertise, the years of knowledge that he has, and a lot of people don’t realize like that applies to SEO, you know, we we’ve been doing this for a long time. We know what works, you’re paying for that, you know, the years of our knowledge, two years of the results that we’ve gotten for our clients, not necessarily the, you know, the three backlinks that we’ve built. Hmm.

Michael 26:55
And ultimately the the outcome. Yeah, that’s important thing. Like, if you are getting the goals that you were looking for, and you know, the the sales and the leads and the like, then you probably shouldn’t care what the FDA is up to, or you know, what’s going into it.

Arthur 27:15
Cool. All right, moving on. Another another thing that I come across a fair bit is people wanting blog content, ASAP, or straightaway. So having a content strategy, and I guess a content calendar is great. It’s a great way to drive additional traffic to your website. Agree.

Michael 27:33
I do agree, I do agree.

Arthur 27:35
But a lot of the time, people will obsess over writing blog posts and kind of neglect getting their main site ranking. So I guess for example, if you’re a plumber, you know, you want to rank for some keywords that are going to drive relevant traffic to your site that are going to convert into leads. But you know, you could write blog posts that are relevant to your business, but they might not convert. So I guess kind of steering away and focusing too much on the blog, and maybe focusing about getting your site ranking before you kind of focus on having that content calendar there. Having it ready, having it set is great, but making it your main priority and using it as one as like going back to link building example. You know, I want four blog posts per month. What difference does it make if it’s not driving leads or traffic to the site? Would you rather have four times the traffic to the site? Or would you rather have four blog posts posted? Exactly. And it’s,

Michael 28:27
it’s funny because you can get better results with your SEO from actually pruning content from your site. So if you have all these blog posts on your site that don’t get any traffic. And then you get rid of them and sort of clean it all up and maybe merge posts together or something like that. It can often improve your SEO traffic. So it’s not just a matter of blasting out blog posts on grand keywords.

Arthur 28:49
The worst thing as well as just writing writing blogs for the sake of writing blogs. You go you can go on some of these, like smaller, like, let’s just say like a plumbing website or electrician website and just go through that blog. You can tell that it’s just been written by Yep. Someone overseas just for the sole purpose of having it written, sir.

Michael 29:08
Yeah. Which comes back to the way some SEO companies will fill their services where, you know, in their package, they say you get four 750 word blog posts per month, and nine times out of 10 they’re just going to be nonsense, like plumbing, like, you know. Please back toilets.

Arthur 29:27
Yeah. 21, top five plumbing tips, tips of 2021.

Michael 29:30
Yeah, they’re never going to get traffic. You’re never going to outrank like, proper home focus big no websites. Do you want people getting plumbing tips, because that’s a DIY that’s probably going to try and do it themselves. Rob Exactly. But so really, there needs to be business case behind 100%. And

Arthur 29:51
the other thing I also wanted to point out is a lot of people focus about dry writing blog posts to drive traffic not not for the actual end user. So I always say to Some of my clients again, don’t worry too much about getting the content ranking, right? Something that will be appealing to the people that come to your site that the traffic that you’re getting now, so informative case studies or things like that white papers that will give them value rather than a generic post about the top five, whatever’s that you you can do this year, like it’s

Michael 30:21
the top five washes to put on your taxes. Yeah,

Arthur 30:24
it’s top, top five top trends or

Michael 30:27
Yeah. And we’ve we’ve had clients where they their blog will rank for, you know, like one client had their, their blog ranking for sports in Australia. And they the level of participation in the sports. Yeah, remember, would drive a lot of visitors

Arthur 30:43
to the 1000s 1000s of sessions a month.

Michael 30:45
Yeah. But no doubt, no conversions. So then their conversion rate is artificially low, because they’re getting all this traffic that’s just not interested in what no sold. So do you even want that? Like it’s just using up your servers resources and might be sewing your site down if lots of these people are on there at the same time? Absolutely. So traffic’s not, you know, traffic for traffic fake.

Arthur 31:07
Not all traffic is the same. Yeah,

Michael 31:09
yeah. So yeah. Think about what you’re trying to achieve a plumber, you’re going to need to be focusing on building your link profile a lot, because it’s super competitive, you’re going to need backlinks on the unset, copy around things like you know, emergency plumber, 24, hour plumber, light, all that sort of stuff. And you’re going to need to have you service pages, location pages. That’s the stuff that’s important. Not blog posts, no. horses for courses, as we always like to say, Do we know you know, I feel like I’ve said it once or twice. So that officially means we always like to say,

Arthur 31:46
I don’t think I’ve ever said it in my life. But

Michael 31:48
give it a guy. horses for courses.

Arthur 31:51
There you go rolls, rolls off the tongue.

Michael 31:54
You can use that when you see fit. Thank you. So another thing that we see quite a bit is a bit of an obsessive focus on whatever keyword that we need to be number one for this keyword. We call it a vanity keyword, where business owners or marketing managers don’t obsess over that, but sort of neglect to look at what’s actually going on with the trends of their overall organic traffic and leads and sales and the like. sort of comes back I guess, look, keywords are a good indicator of whether your SEO is working like it’s awesome to push up a high value, you know, often searched keyword into a top spot. Definitely. But I mean, they’re gone yet going.

Arthur 32:40
I was gonna say look, it is like it is one of the main goals. You want to do that. But I guess going back to what you said, it’s not the main goals.

Michael 32:50
It’s one of the main goals, but

Arthur 32:52
I backpedal there. I’ll let you continue. Sorry.

Michael 32:54
Like I know what you’re saying. Because it’s one keyword at any given day can be in different spots for different people. personalization plays into a bouncer. Yeah. Yes, it’s an indicator that things are working. And it’s great. And it’s nice to have it’s good for the ego or that sort of stuff. But obsessing over just one keyword is I guess it’s like competition, an analogy, we’ll have to come back to you on that one. But it’s just it’s short sighted. It’s detrimental to your own results in a way. Because really, you want to be focusing on themes or keywords, you know, definitely think to a category page where it might rank for hundreds of keywords. And you might be an average of position three for them. But that’s better than being in first spot for whatever this vanity keyword is that a business owner is fixated on.

Arthur 33:44
Absolutely. And this is the sort of data we used to get back in the day where we had keyword data and Google Analytics, because we could see which keywords were converting the highest. So although Generally, the more generic keywords will drive the most traffic and can I guess, generate the worst leads? You could there were keywords that we could see that had a higher conversion rate. Yep. So yeah, basically going back to what you said, but don’t just focus on that one keyword, keyword pools, longtail keywords, and try to drive traffic that way.

Michael 34:14
Yeah. And then just looking at where you were when you started where you are now and like where how much more growth is left potentially is the important stuff. So are you getting more traffic? Is that turning into leads and sales? If so, awesome. Sure. You may not be in position one for best marble restoration company, Sydney. But um, if you get if you’re making sales and you’re growing your business because SEO is working, then you know which one do you care more about? It can it can. It can remove a lot of stress to remove that focus on individual keywords.

Arthur 34:51
Yeah, definitely. Look, I

Michael 34:55
think we’ve pretty much covered off most of the main things I had on my little list here was there anything else That is a favorite SEO myth or misconception of yours.

Arthur 35:05
Oh, look. No, not really. I think we’ve covered off the main ones that we kind of see pop up here and there.

Michael 35:11
Yep. Alrighty, well, since you have done the intro today, your training wheels you did a really good job there. I’ll do the outro, or do you want to give the outro a go? Yeah, you can do the outro too this week.

Arthur 35:24
I’m gonna screw it up.

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the SEO show. We’ll be back next week talking about I don’t even know what at the moment but we’ll definitely be back next week. So tune in.

Michael 35:39
See you later.

Arthur 35:40
Bye