Ask HN: Resources to learn state of the art SEO
I'm interested in learning "modern" SEO and other growth hacking related topics as it is relevant in 2023 but want to steer clear of bullshit courses. What are your top 3 favourite resources?
20 comments
I have ranked a lot of websites, short answer: content.
Basically just follow Google's guidelines and have the content and you can rank in highly competitive areas where there are much larger players.
Wrote a lot here: https://respiroc.com/blogs/software/seo-and-ppc-search-ads
I have even succeeded with "blackhat" stuff like brandjacking, ranking first on other brands ;)
Basically just follow Google's guidelines and have the content and you can rank in highly competitive areas where there are much larger players.
Wrote a lot here: https://respiroc.com/blogs/software/seo-and-ppc-search-ads
I have even succeeded with "blackhat" stuff like brandjacking, ranking first on other brands ;)
what if you do not have the right background or expertise or time to write content, do you hire writers? those with the right expertise will be expensive and with the hundreds of pieces you need you need a lot of $$$
You have to have the ideas. Those are pretty easy, though.
You can go look at other company's websites to get ideas from their blog posts. then you must reword things in your own words and thoughts, maybe take out some stuff of theirs if you don't agree, and add your own content that they don't have and you think is needed. If you go onto 20 websites and read their content on a specific topic, you pretty much will learn everything there is to know unless it is hyper-technical, like some PhD level mathematics or physics, then just give up if you want to write content like that. That is unreasonable.
You can go onto reddit subdomain that is in the area of your interest and read through the comments. If someone there asks a question you know the answer to, that can be a great starting point for a blog entry. I tried to think of a random category and the first thing that popped into my head was "roses." I don't know anything about them but went to that subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Roses/
I started scrolling and came across "Roses wilting after planting" and the description of what is happening: "So I did everything you’re supposed to do with planting rose trees I dug enough space added enough soil, put some rose plant food. Is there anything to help combat the shock and any tips would be welcome. I am in Phoenix Arizona so climate is sunny now thanks in advance guys can post pictures if needed"
If you are a rose aficienado and can answer this question, that is a topic right there. If you do NOT know about the topoic, you can search through other rose websites and see if there are answers and then just put together an answer. However, you must make sure that the sites you get the info from are completely and 100% accurate and from reputable sources. Finding reputable websites can take a lot longer than writing the article.
Of course, you must have a great command of the English language. You have to create something readable. Entertaining, not dry. Easy to read, not cryptic. Organized, not disorganized.
If you can't do this yourself and are horrible at grammar, at least correct the obvious mistakes in Word - they underline the mispelingz and all that.
You can maybe also get an editor from fiverr. Even professional writers use editors to catch their mistakes. It's difficult to see your own mistakes.
Also, fucking chatgpt, that fucking shit is awesome. You just need to be able to double-check the shit out of it, as it sure as shit does not get everything right. So you need some expertise to double-check chatgpt.
You can go look at other company's websites to get ideas from their blog posts. then you must reword things in your own words and thoughts, maybe take out some stuff of theirs if you don't agree, and add your own content that they don't have and you think is needed. If you go onto 20 websites and read their content on a specific topic, you pretty much will learn everything there is to know unless it is hyper-technical, like some PhD level mathematics or physics, then just give up if you want to write content like that. That is unreasonable.
You can go onto reddit subdomain that is in the area of your interest and read through the comments. If someone there asks a question you know the answer to, that can be a great starting point for a blog entry. I tried to think of a random category and the first thing that popped into my head was "roses." I don't know anything about them but went to that subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Roses/
I started scrolling and came across "Roses wilting after planting" and the description of what is happening: "So I did everything you’re supposed to do with planting rose trees I dug enough space added enough soil, put some rose plant food. Is there anything to help combat the shock and any tips would be welcome. I am in Phoenix Arizona so climate is sunny now thanks in advance guys can post pictures if needed"
If you are a rose aficienado and can answer this question, that is a topic right there. If you do NOT know about the topoic, you can search through other rose websites and see if there are answers and then just put together an answer. However, you must make sure that the sites you get the info from are completely and 100% accurate and from reputable sources. Finding reputable websites can take a lot longer than writing the article.
Of course, you must have a great command of the English language. You have to create something readable. Entertaining, not dry. Easy to read, not cryptic. Organized, not disorganized.
If you can't do this yourself and are horrible at grammar, at least correct the obvious mistakes in Word - they underline the mispelingz and all that.
You can maybe also get an editor from fiverr. Even professional writers use editors to catch their mistakes. It's difficult to see your own mistakes.
Also, fucking chatgpt, that fucking shit is awesome. You just need to be able to double-check the shit out of it, as it sure as shit does not get everything right. So you need some expertise to double-check chatgpt.
what if other sites rip off your content?
Definitely lots of creativity on BHW, from the black hat side of things. They often try to exploit things quickly in a churn and burn fashion. Most of their advice shouldn't be followed because eventually they get punished for their methods. With that said there is still tons of general marketing wisdom to be gleamed from them. Especially the older threads that go over buyer psychology and such. It's Googles favorite forum anyway, they like to keep up with the baddies.
https://www.blackhatworld.com/
https://www.blackhatworld.com/
Has there been any real development in the industry during the last 10 years? Back then it was basically: optimise your site and ask/buy links. The techniques of keyword stuffing, link wheels and splogs had already passed by then.
That's what I've seen.
1. Write unique content that targets specific keywords. Use something like semrush.
2. Have good semantic markup with fast loading pages.
3. Get backlinked from higher authority domains through partnerships or paid engagements.
That's it.
1. Write unique content that targets specific keywords. Use something like semrush.
2. Have good semantic markup with fast loading pages.
3. Get backlinked from higher authority domains through partnerships or paid engagements.
That's it.
It would be really helpful if you could recommend some of those old posts you liked. Thanks
I would pay attention to ChatGPT et al. Maybe that's killing SEO a little bit, no? You can't quite optimize for queries to a static model that has already been trained. Perhaps long term you can influence the next model release by carefully injecting content on the internet to be crawled by GPT models, but nothing you can do short term.
I like this one. I got it about 5 years ago but honestly it is all the white
hat stuff that should work today too. And I imagine they keep it up to date anyway. https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/
they sell consulting?
Not sure, I believe I linked to the book though - I just checked and you can buy it there.
I'm currently working on ranking my website. As others have said follow googles official SEO. Share your project around the web and write a lot of content. Content is truly king. As soon as I started adding more articles, my search appearance numbers really started to go up.
my favourite reference is google's official seo guides and open graph protocol.
1. they are straightforward and latest, and very fundamental
2. they are not hacky, getting them right gets my website on google's search results very well
1. they are straightforward and latest, and very fundamental
2. they are not hacky, getting them right gets my website on google's search results very well
Could you provide links or are you referring to the docs & case studies at Google Search Central:
https://developers.google.com/search
Most notably, E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness):
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...
https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-work...
https://developers.google.com/search
Most notably, E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness):
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...
https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-work...
Other than ensuring you have basics of on-page SEO right, it’s basically about good content.
There are tons of gimmicky material around, no need to follow that.
Let your content be so good that people want to link back to you.
Other than that, stick with the basics and read Google guidelines (as another commentator pointed out.)
Source - My experience of ranking few of my own websites in last 14-15 years.
Let your content be so good that people want to link back to you.
Other than that, stick with the basics and read Google guidelines (as another commentator pointed out.)
Source - My experience of ranking few of my own websites in last 14-15 years.
I think Neil Patel has the best resource on SEO
https://neilpatel.com/
You may be alone there: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/p4r80g/what_do_you_thi...