I Suppose I Should Test Deliverability

In the age of DMARC SPF DKIM actually mattering...

Maybe you'll see this, maybe you won't...

I had a bunch of people send me emails with topics to cover.

And while I appreciate the thought, let me tell you what this newsletter is not going to be about.

Basic on-page technical SEO bullshit.

1- That shit is boring. There's literally nothing interesting to say about it.

2 - It really doesn't matter unless you're working on a custom platform coded in React by a team of retarded cracked out monkeys.

BTFO big site technical SEO guys, you know it's true.

Make your site fast.

Remove the cruft.

That's it.

That's the list.

Of course you should optimize you URLs, your site structure, your page titles, meta descriptions, tune your content, blah blah blah.

Basic SEO 101 is not technical SEO.

It's something you should be good at if you're going to be this industry.

You know that if you ended up on this list.

But yes...there's very little interesting subject matter on technical SEO.

And...shot across the bow #2 for teh tech SEO gaiz...

It doesn't move the needle.

And I only care about things that move the needle in the SERPs.

Before I get bombed by the reply guys, here's the disclaimer:

It doesn't move the needle unless you're fixing a site that wasn't done correctly.

And even then it only gets it back to where it should have been originally.

No higher.

That's not a needle mover in my books, that's just doing shit the way it's supposed to be done.

Sorry not sorry.

So Google your basic SEO on page optimizations....

This is not the place for that.

If I have one overarching goal with this newsletter, it's to change the culture of SEO with regards to our thinking about the why of how we do things.

And yes, I realize I'll need a lot more readers to accomplish that.

But you're what I have so here we are...

Unless you unsubscribe.

Always a good option.

I did get two suggestions that I felt interesting enough to comment on, I'll hit them quickly before I do real work.

Do you still use tags? If so how? No index or index?

Back up to the part where I said thinking about the why of the how...

Google is an algorithm.

Algorithms use math.

So we know that ultimately, SEO is a math problem.

Input into vessel, vessel score, input out of vessel.

Those are your three variables you can control (manipulate).

So why in the world would you ever want Google to dilute the value of the input (link weight divided by X pages vs link weight divided by 2X pages) + the vessel score by displaying the same content (and outbound links) under multiple URLs.

Btw, I answered this above.

Remove the cruft.

Simple.

Clean.

Do it.

Are Press Releases still a good move for new websites? If so what anchors?

I swear this gets brought up at like 95% of the consulting calls I do.

I truly wonder who's teaching people this bullshit.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think as a brand new site, it's a good thing for Google to see you get a bunch of links that after a couple weeks it drops from its index because they're all dupe content on obvious content farms?

Even if negative link velocity wasn't a thing...

And it has been for a long time, you can thank me and the other xrumer bros from 2010 for that one...

How could it ever be a positive signal for Google to see that your first 100 links are actually so shitty that the only one it still indexes a month later is on the PressAdvantage site you originally published it on?

I couldn't design a better sandbox recipe if you asked me to.

Again, if you take away anything from reading what I write...shift your thinking.

Start asking why questions, not how questions.

You'll still have to find the answers but you'll be so far ahead when you do.

That's it, that's all I got.

Go build stuff and rank it.

Cheers,

Grind

P.S. Links from people who actually know what they're doing + have a couple consulting slots still available late next week over at https://clients.grindstoneseo.com