Kevin Indig

Keywords still matter. But you need to update your knowledge and think about users’ intentions and topics.

Backlinks still matter. It’s all about references from other sites, even though Google has gotten much better at understanding the context of backlinks.

Three misconceptions/mistakes about SEO:

1. It’s a very stable channel. This is not the case anymore: Google has become very smart and constantly tests things. There is always volatility.
2. Only what happens on the website is important (technical SEO, content). Don’t disregard what happens before you get there: leverage the “SERP features” results (e.g., map integration, image carousel, direct answer, etc.).
3. Creating a lot of content is enough. You need to think about the competitive advantage you can get.

There are two categories of companies when it comes to SEO

• Aggregators - marketplaces_ (e.g., UberEats, Booking.com)_: they don’t create the content themselves and need to make sure that the content is easily findable, but have an advantage.
• Integrators - content platforms (e.g., Peloton): they have to create all the content themselves to leverage SEO.

Sitemaps are still essential for SEO, and you can structure them to benefit you. Create both XML sitemaps (uploaded in the search console and structured by categories, page type, time, etc.) and a large HTML sitemap (an actual page on your website with links to the different categories).

Reverse-engineer what Google tries to achieve by looking at the search results to see the SERP features used. For example: for a search like “tattoos”, you can see that Google shows a lot of visuals, assuming people want inspiration. So for that search term, you want to make sure you show images on your page.

SEO is a company-wide job. You can scale SEO by inspiring people to do things with an SEO mindset: run tailored workshops with writers, engineers, designers, product marketing managers, product managers, etc., so they understand how they can make an impact. When they implement what they do, make sure you show them back the results.