2 builders who never spoke to each other

Ignore most search news and watch behaviour

If search is not your whole job, being a year behind almost never costs you anything: plenty of successful sites run four or five year old practices. What actually forces new tactics is a change in how people use the web, not an algorithm rollout. Treat the leaked ranking documents as confirmation of things practitioners already believed, and reject the idea that the algorithm is a sealed box.

The method

1. 01

   Accept being a year behind on search news if search is not your whole job, because the lag almost never costs you anything.

2. 02

   Do treat a tactic as dead once the platform actively penalises it, which is the narrow case where the algorithm really does change your work.

3. 03

   Optimise for where the algorithm is clearly heading rather than for where it stands this week.

4. 04

   Watch changes in how people use the web rather than algorithm updates, because that is what actually forces new tactics.

5. 05

   Reject the idea that the ranking algorithm is unknowable. Treating it as a sealed box is an excuse, not a strategy.

What it returned

• Rand Fishkin points to plenty of successful sites still running four or five year old practices, and lists what a small business owner can safely ignore: a phased algorithm rollout, a test where result keywords are not bolded, and a few days of delay in a local listings dashboard.

• Rand Fishkin names keyword stuffing dying out when Google stopped rewarding it, and several link acquisition methods becoming too risky as penalties grew aggressive.

• Rand Fishkin's analogy is a flight from Seattle to Philadelphia, which is off course at every single moment yet arrives via constant tiny corrections, and he argues that what Google counts as trustworthy, relevant and best has barely moved across two decades.

• Rand Fishkin argues social became part of search work once vast numbers of people took up Facebook as a place to discover and share, rather than because Google counted likes, and that responsive design became best practice because mobile use exploded, not because Google rewarded it.

Sources

• Insights from Google's Leaked Search Documents and What They Mean for SEO - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · 2024-05-28
• Heresy: Google and SEO Don't Actually Change that Much - SparkToroRand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · 2014-10-22
• Rethinking SEO in the age of AI | Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author)Eli Schwartz · lennysnewsletter.com · 2024-09-19