Be More Punk. F**K The Experts
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This document discusses not blindly trusting experts and instead doing your own testing and optimization. It describes on-page SEO tests the author conducted on their website over the past month, including changes to titles, meta descriptions, headings, links, and more. The results seemed positive, with improved rankings and a featured snippet achieved, but the author notes correlation does not equal causation. The lessons learned include that old on-page techniques still work, content can be revived, more value can be extracted from existing content, SEO expertise is not required, and doing one's own testing is important rather than solely following experts.
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Be More Punk. F**K The Experts
- 5. Don’t Listen To Me
- 6. Don’t Listen To Me
- 7. Or Ian
- 9. Or Patrick
- 12. Or Rand
- 14. And Especially Not Neil Patel
- 16. Don’t Listen To Them Or Me
- 17. They’re Experts. We Are “Experts”
- 18. They’re Experts. We Are “Experts” Blindly Listening To Experts Is A Bad Thing
- 19. Sometimes It’s Just Not Quite Right
- 20. Sometimes It’s Just Ridiculous
- 22. You’ve Heard This Somewhere Else Right?
- 25. #POLITICAL
- 26. Dave Trott Taught Me About Experts
- 27. Dave Trott Taught Me About Experts
- 32. He Accidentally Invented The Format For Gaming The LinkedIn Algorithm
- 34. He’s Written Several Times About Experts http://davetrott.co.uk/2015/11/experts-are-pulling-our- legs/ https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/dave-trott- marketing-experts-do/1331473 http://davetrott.co.uk/2009/12/the-experts-v-the-rest-of- us/ http://davetrott.co.uk/2016/04/why-experts-are- precisely-accurately-wrong/ http://davetrott.co.uk/2010/08/dont-trust-experts/
- 35. "People only listen to experts because it saves them having to take responsibility when things go wrong."
- 37. So What Has This Got To Do With Digital?
- 38. Oh. Didn’t You Get The Memo?
- 39. SEO IS DEAD
- 44. Give Us Something Actionable!
- 45. I Want To Talk About Testing On- Page Optimisation
- 46. I Want To Talk About Testing On- Page Optimisation Just Don’t Listen To Me Blindly
- 47. I Want To Talk About Testing On- Page Optimisation Just Don’t Listen To Me Blindly To Make Things More Exciting I Actually Did This Stuff Especially For Tonight
- 48. And Hoped That I Would Have Something To Talk About
- 49. On-Page; Not SEO In General
- 50. On-Page Stuff That Any Of You Can Change Today
- 51. Any Of You Can Change Today
- 52. Any Of You
- 53. And Get More People To Your Website
- 54. Distilled Recently Launched This
- 55. Ranking Studies Say This (More Experts)
- 56. Best Practice Is What Everyone Does https://www.slideshare.net/Branded3/stop-best-practicing-start-doing-stephen-kenwright-at-searchleeds-2016
- 57. So I Ran Some Quick Tests That I Could Share With You Guys
- 58. I Used A Few Tools
- 59. But You Can Punk This Shit
- 60. Just Be Careful When Reading The Data http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/analyzing-position-in-google-search-console
- 63. Can We Bring It Back To Life? https://www.flickr.com/photos/milesgehm/5032424312/
- 64. Can We Bring It Back To Life?
- 65. Can We Bring It Back To Life?
- 66. More Traffic! Better Rankings! Featured Snippets!
- 67. 29/12/2017 • Gathered Data • Ran SEMrush On Page Checker • Took Screenshots • Added A New Meta Description • Keyword Research • Ranking Snapshots • Set up Sanitycheck •
- 68. 03/01/2018 • New Title Tag • Adjusted <H2> Tags • Requested Indexing • 10 Minutes • Bought Some Tartan Trousers
- 69. 04/01/2018 • Added Last Updated Code to Wordpress
- 70. 05/01/2018 • Updated Post With Examples • Added Semantics • Added Video • Submitted To Google • Indexed In 3 Minutes
- 71. 08/01/2018 • Added Jump Links • Went To The Pub • Defaced Picture Of Queen
- 72. 09/01/2018 • Added Questions/Templates • Added Numbered List • Added Extra Resources • Resubmitted To Google • 15 Minutes To Index
- 73. 15/01/2018 • Optimised Using TF*IDF • Resubmitted To Google • Indexed In 4 Minutes • Stuck A Pin Through My Nose
- 74. 16/01/2018 • Added Site-Wide Text Link In Footer • Resubmitted To Google • 1 Minute To Reindex • Pinkified My Mohawk
- 75. 23/01/2018 • Second Page Poaching • Resubmitted • Indexed 2 Minutes Later • Forgot To Change Title Tag • Added “Best” to Title Tag • Resubmitted • Google Removed From Index For An Hour And A Half
- 76. 25/01/2018 • Rejigged The Headers • Resubmitted • Indexed In 2 Minutes • Spat On The Floor
- 77. 29/01/2018 • Added First Anchor Text Link Pointing To Post, Sitewide • Submitted To Google • Indexed 15 Hours Later
- 78. 31/01/2018 • Added Internal Links – Not Exact Match • Resubmitted 10 Pages And Direct Links • Indexed 4 Minutes Later • Smoked A Fag
- 79. 01/02/2018 • Added 35 Word Intro • Added A Table With A Top 10 • Added Horizontal Line Formatting • Resubmitted • Indexed 1 Minute Later
- 80. 02/02/2018 • Added Anchor Text Link To External Sites • Submitted All Those Via Google Search Console • Varying Indexation Times • Stuck Fingers Up At Monarchy
- 81. So, What Where The Results?
- 82. Analytics First?
- 85. Sanitycheck.io?
- 86. Sanitycheck.io?
- 87. Rankings?
- 88. Rankings?
- 89. Rankings?
- 90. Rankings?
- 95. Correlation Is Not Causation…
- 96. …But…
- 97. So, A Decent Success. Easily Replicated.
- 100. What Have We Learnt?
- 101. The Old On-Page Stuff Still Works
- 102. Old Content Is Easily Revived
- 103. You Can Always Make More From What You Have
- 104. You Don’t Have To Be A Professional SEO
- 105. Getting Featured Snippets Isn’t Always As Easy As Experts Will Have You Believe
- 106. Anchor Text Can Work (A Bit)
- 107. Weird Stuff, Like Disappearing Snippets, Can Happen
- 108. I’m A Bit Shit At SEO; Even The Easy Stuff
- 109. But Those Lessons Are For This Type Of On-Page In This Industry
- 110. Soak Up Information But Do Your Own Testing https://www.flickr.com/photos/chummers7/7259144570
- 112. Be More Punk
- 113. Fuck The Experts
- 114. Thank You
- 115. Now Kindly Piss Off And Get Your Food
Editor's Notes
- Why are we here today? Gain knowledge and learn something? Make some industry friends? Get some free food? We all work in digital and we are working towards the same goals or, at least, we should be.. What are those goals?
- Don't trust me.
- Don't trust me.
- Or Ian.
- Or Patrick.
- Or Rand. He hasnt done SEO for years.
- Or Neil Patel. He just plain doesnt have a clue.
- But don't listen to me. Or them.
- I know this guy and this guy haven both said don't listen to experts. So I don't want to align myself with them (Gove and Trump).
- I know this guy and this guy haven both said don't listen to experts. So I don't want to align myself with them (Gove and Trump).
- Anyway, we shouldn't listen to them because of expertise. We shouldn't listen to them cos they are idiots…. #political
- Dave Trott taught me about experts. If you don't know who Dave Trott is he’s an ad guy. A very good one. He came up with this:
- Dave Trott taught me about experts. If you don't know who Dave Trott is hes an ad guy. A very good one. He came up with this:
- Dave Trott taught me about experts. If you don't know who Dave Trott is hes an ad guy. A very good one. He came up with this:
- Pepsi's "Lipsmackinthirstquenchin"
- Toshibas "Hello Tosh Got A New Toshiba?"
- He also likes to remind people that the Ploughman’s lunch was a 1960s marketing campaign for British Cheese.
- He has written a few things on the subject - you can find them here. I'm going to take one line from one of the articles.
- "People only listen to experts because it saves them having to take responsibility when things go wrong." So don't listen ‘cos we don't know what we are talking about. Just don't take what we say at face value.
- Take control of your own work. Don’t hide behind the experts.
- Take control of your own work. Test your own stuff. This is how PPC and CRO work. Hypothesise, test, get results, change and start over again. For those of you that have been before you probably know that I have a bit of a format. Tell some stories, take the piss out of someone. Then share tools or processes of tips for getting shit done quicker, easier or smoother. There’s a problem though…
- I had no idea whether any of this would work – and a lot of the time that’s what marketing is about – not just digital. We don’t know what will work. What worked last time might not work again. What worked in niche x might not work again. I’ve worked on things within certain parts of a site that worked for one section and not another.
- And when I say I want to talk about on page – this is the SEO that anyone can do.
- None of it is rocket science - you don’t have to be afraid of it. You don’t need to learn loads of technical stuff. If you wanna work on that kind of stuff you want to look at this.
- None of it is rocket science - you don’t have to be afraid of it. You don’t need to learn loads of technical stuff. If you wanna work on that kind of stuff you want to look at this.
- None of it is rocket science - you don’t have to be afraid of it. You don’t need to learn loads of technical stuff. If you wanna work on that kind of stuff you want to look at this.
- None of it is rocket science - you don’t have to be afraid of it. You don’t need to learn loads of technical stuff. If you wanna work on that kind of stuff you want to look at this.
- Distilled recently launched this. They are on the road pimping it out at every possible opportunity with very, very similar presentations. They are pretty good. The tool looks good. Buts it is prohibitively expensive. We can't even afford it for our massive multi-billion pound clients.
- And this is where things can get confusing. This first stuff is from SEMrush – they use their data so the results are skewed by that. They set the world alight with direct traffic being the top ranking organic ranking factor. Hmm. The second is from branded3 - they asked their consultant and compared against other studies – a more human approach gave a more human set of results. Moz sell tools and built their toolset on a link tool – oh look that’s the top ranking factor. Searchmetrics pulls together more information.
- Then we have best practice guides. This is what everyone does. The web changes. Sites change. Google changes. Yesterdays best practice could be defunct tomorrow.
- I didn’t reference any article to do it. I went by what I have remembered from articles I’ve read and conferences I had been to. Sure I have knowledge from other campaigns - but don’t forget I’m one of those experts that isn’t doing all day. I might be doing boring managerial shit for half it.
- All experiments are based on things I read (but didn’t re-read) and then trying to work out what was best for this set of searches.
- All experiments are based on things I read (but didn’t re-read) and then trying to work out what was best for this set of searches.
- 29/12/2017 Gathered Google Analytics data Gathered Google Search Console data Ran SEMrush On-Page Checker Took Screenshots Gathered keyword data from several tools Ranking snapshots on SEMrush, tagged Set up test with sanitycheck Added a new Meta Description
- 03/01/2017 Added new Title Tag to focus on some of the higher volume keywords - including bringing meet the team to the start, adding examples, staff and bios Adjusted <h2> Tags's to match the bigger volume Fetched as Google and requested indexing Reindexed 10 minutes later
- 04/01/2018 Added last updated code to Wordpress
- 05/01/2018 Added a dozen new examples Moved the old ones to the bottom Added semantically related headings in Added 2 videos and 14 new images Fetched as Google and requested indexing Re-indexed in 3 minutes
- 08/01/2018 Added jump links
- 09/01/2018 Added questions and templates section Added numbers to the 10 new sites featured Added 2 resources Resubmitted to Google
- 15/01/2018 Optimised using TF*IDF Resubmitted via Google Indexed 4 minutes later
- 16/01/2018 added text link to footer with targeted anchor text resubmitted to google - that page and direct links indexed one minute later
- 23/01/2018 added exact mentions for as many keyword that were ranking between 11 and 20 tagged the ones that made sense up in semrush resubmitted indexed 2 minutes later added "the best" to the start of the Title Tag (as per semrush suggestion) and + to the end (for snippet and then CTR) resubmitted google refused to bow down to my testing then 404'd it indexed hour and half LATER
- 25/01/2018 Rejigged the headers to make sure that they were <h2> Tags like the featured snippet page Resubmitted Indexed within 2 minutes