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Are the first things you learnt about SEO still true?
Sam Nemzer
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Set up laptop
NBED image
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Title tags should be 50-60 characters
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Title tags should be 50-60 characters
https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
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Titles over 60 characters will be truncated
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Things change over time
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Things change over time
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Titles are getting longer
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Why are titles getting longer?
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The distribution is getting wider
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Why are title lengths varying more?
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Titles are now breaking on whole words
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It’s not about what I found
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It’s about questioning received ideas
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3 SEO “facts” we take for granted
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1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your legwork for you
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1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your legwork for you
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A user is not a user
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A session is not a session
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Your traffic might not actually be from your website
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dis.tl/capper-measure
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https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/
Adblock is killing your analytics data
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Solution:
Corroborate with another data source(Server log-based analytics)
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1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your legwork for you
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Exact agreement 19% of the time
Average difference 5.3 positions
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Exact agreement 21% of the time
Average difference 6.9 positions
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Exact agreement 22% of the time
Average difference 4.5 positions
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Rank Tracking does serve a purpose
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Useful for tracking trends over time and aggregate, top-level data
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Just don’t read too much into the specifics
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Corroborate with multiple sources where possible
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1. GA gives you accurate user data
2. Rank tracking tools will tell you your rankings for given keywords
3. Google is smart enough to do your legwork for you
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We used to think that we need to optimise a page for every possible
keyword
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Now we think that exact keywords don’t matter - Google will work things out…
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I did some research...
dis.tl/keyword-synonyms
10 sets of 10 close synonym keywords
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I did some research...
dis.tl/keyword-synonyms
10 sets of 10 close synonym keywords
On average only 60% of results are shared between top 10 results
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Not the solution:
Stuff your page with every possible variation of a keyword
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The solution:
Understand the subtle differences in intent between variations, and make your
pages satisfy that intent
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Honesty time:
Most of what I found out will be wrong or irrelevant in 6 months
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It’s not about what I learnt.
It’s about encouraging you to do it for yourself.