Google Says Best Practices Can Have Minimal Effect
Google’s John Mueller observed that sometimes best practices have minimal effect on search visibility, he was asked why a site wasn’t ranking despite following SEO best practices.
Google’s John Mueller narrated the question:
“I changed my website a year ago and did a lot of work on SEO. Should this be affecting my website’s traffic by now?”
It’s a hard question to answer when you don’t have the specifics of the webpage in front of you. So Mueller answered in a fairly general manner that ends with him recommending he ask someone else for advice in Google’s help forums.
The first part of Mueller’s response acknowledges the difficulty of answering the question.
He responded:
“It’s tricky to say much here. I don’t know what specifically you did to work on SEO, and I don’t know if that would have resulted in significant changes.”
Why SEO Doesn’t Work
Mueller’s right. Maybe the website has a great layout, fast page speed performance, spot on structured data and a logical site architecture that optimizes internal linking.
What could go wrong with a properly SEO’d website, right?
>>> The content could be incomplete.
>>> The content could be too comprehensive.
>>> The content might be unfocused, lacking a clear comprehension of the topic.
>>> The content might be too focused on keywords and not focused enough on users.
>>> The content might not match the topic suggested by the keywords in the title and the headings.
>>> Maybe the content is aiming too high, trying to rank for a highly competitive search phrase.
No amount of ‘good SEO‘ is going to save a website with the above listed problems… and that’s just a sample of what can go wrong.
Mueller addressed this shortcoming of SEO in situations where it has zero effect.
He continued his answer:
“There are many best practices which have minimal effect on the day-to-day performance of a website. For example, having a clean page structure helps search engines to better understand the content on a page, but it might not necessarily result in immediate search ranking or traffic changes.”
Ranking Criteria is Different Across Topics
Another factor that Mueller touches on is that what’s important for SEO varies according to the topic. Some topics require fresh content, some content requires establishing signals of trustworthiness and authoritativeness, maybe even signals that communicate user brand preference and popularity, signals that indicate that users expect to see a specific brand for certain queries.
There could be a geographic component that prioritizes local signals. It could be an intent thing where a user just wants to read what a person wrote in a forum.
This may be what Mueller is talking about when he says that the best elements of SEO vary across websites.
He answered:
“The most effective elements of SEO will vary across websites, it takes a lot of experience to go from a long checklist of possible items to a short prioritized list of critical items.”
Experience Is Important
The last factor Mueller discussed is the role of experience in making one a better SEO. Here’s an example: I thought I was pretty good at creating content that ranks and then I wrote a couple thousand articles for Search Engine Journal and it opened up a whole new conception of content creation, I discovered levels of understanding that could only come from writing about a couple thousand articles.
Mentorship, is an option that can cut down the amount of time it takes to learn, but experience is still important.
John Mueller recommended experience as an important factor for understanding SEO. He wrote:
“Your experience here will grow over time as you practice.
I recommend getting input from others, and practicing by helping with challenges that others post in help forums. Getting input from others is always good advice.
