September 16th, 2020
Last month, 250k people visited starterstory.com, mostly from Google search. Here are some things I learned about SEO:
Second-and-third-order consequences
SEO is a mind game of second-and-third-order consequences. The work you do today will not yield results immediately.
Write an article, publish it, and then get no results. This makes you think you "did it wrong". Most people quit here.
Just go in with the expectation that you won't see results for six months after publish.
Just go in with the expectation that you won't see results for six months after publish.
Instead of getting discouraged, just write more and publish more. By the time you published your 20th article, you might start finally seeing the results of your first. The worst thing you can do is restart every 6 months.
SEO industry is mostly bullshit
Try to avoid SEO experts and industry nonsense, they are mostly distractions.
Examples of distractions: Google algorithm updates, schema markup, page speed, meta tags.
Do you think you’re smarter than Google’s algorithm? Maybe today, definitely not tomorrow.
Write and publish compelling content that answers the searcher’s query. That’s it.
There are millions of keywords not picked up by SEO tools
New and/or off-the-radar keywords are where you can easily rank #1, but you probably won’t find these in SEO tools.
How to find these keywords? Just write and publish content. Then check Google Search Console, you’ll be surprised what you find.
Once you identify these keywords, think of all the other similar keywords you could hit, too.
(Note: I’d recommend not using SEO tools at all in the early days. I still rarely use them.)
Consistency & Output > Quality
I will get burned for this, but solely quality doesn’t win the SEO game. Quality should be a prerequisite.
Optimize for content output and consistency. This will help you rank faster, especially if you’re new.
Take it from most trafficked blogs on the internet:
- huffpost.com: 2.2M indexed pages
- TMZ.com: 411K indexed pages
- Hubspot: 258K indexed pages
Think in terms of “content types”, not individual articles
Have a blog post that performs well? Think about how that can be 100 blog posts.
Silly example: 33 Cutest Cat Photos of 2020 can actually be 33 Cutest [INSERT_ANIMAL] Photos of 2020.
With 100 animals, you have 100 potential articles. This is just one “content type”, let’s call it “list_of_cute_animal_photos”.
Add 10 more content types x 100 variations == 1,000 articles. It’s a lot easier to think about scale this way.