Hey Everyone,
I'm currently doing a website review for a forum/WA member, but came across something quite interesting.
This is something I will write about this week, but basically it's mainly about
Not Ranking in Google because you haven't satisfied either Searcher Intent or User Intent.
So, what I'm doing is getting a few AI tools to create an outline of an article for me, and then showing whether the AI tool in question has managed to "satisfy searcher intent" in the outline.
So, would someone be willing to create an outline for me using Wealthy Affiliate's AI writer please?
I have used the following prompt in ChatGPT and Google Gemini:
@andy I just want an article outline really!!
If it helps (not really, hahahahaha)
The Featured snippet for that keyword has 3,766 words
And then the next 3 results have
1225
1113
846
words respectively.
So, let's go for 1,200 ish please
@partha I'm not sure where to put this, but it comes from the weekly newsletter from Ahrefs, where I have often found it interesting and/or useful.
They stress this post. If this is right, and I trust this Ahrefs rightly or wrongly (and I am a chess player, so it always need to convince me a little 
) take a look at number 1 and 2.
And the update effect, I was after advice updated reguarly.
The anchor links are the most confusing for me. If I understand it right, it is better to have a lot of them! That's a 360-degree turn!
@noteboom Hey Johann,
Yep, I'm on the same newsletter and have read the exact same article.
One of the main reasons I haven't shared it (apart from actually checking these things for myself first) is because I knew it would cause FEAR.
Basically, a LOT of the SEO practices we have been taught, or have taught to others, SEO practices that many people believed were "must do's", are now being shown to be "punished" by Google.
I'll be honest and say that a lot of what we are seeing doesn't really "prove" anything.
The reason I say this is that most case studies will look at a very small number of websites and then draw conclusions from this.
So, in the above article, Cyrus (who I do respect a lot) has only conducted this study on FIFTY WEBSITES (when you consider there are over 1,000,000,000 websites online, this is obviously a tiny case study, so it's difficult to draw conclusions).
So, when it comes to "anchor text" (the words that make up the clickable part of a link), most SEOs have always taught to vary your anchor text, i.e. don't use the same anchor text all the time when linking internally on your website to other articles, vary your anchor text LOTS.
But NOW, Cyrus is saying that the websites that have suffered most with traffic drops from the Helpful Content Update varied their anchor text A LOT.
Cyrus, originally wrote this article on 21st May 2022 (and updated again on 27th May 2024) https://zyppy.com/seo/internal-links/seo-study/
Where he speaks about "varying your anchor text is good and websites with lots of internal link anchor text variety saw INCREASES IN TRAFFIC"
Two years later, the same author, Cyrus (in the article you've linked to above) has said in his "50 website case study" that websites using lots of internal link variety saw DECREASES IN TRAFFIC following the September 2023 Helpful Content Update.
This in itself shows how much things can change in the space of two years (I'm not havinga go at Cyrus, as I've said, I respect him and his opinions).
To be honest, and this is somethig I've mentioned a LOT in recent months, SEO in 2024 should be to LIMIT YOUR GOOGLE TRAFFIC to around 20% of your overall traffic.
Bascially, if 80% of your website traffic comes from a variety of social media platforms Google will take notice, "This website seems to be really popular on social media, so let me rank the most popular articles higher"
So, in a way, by NOT trying to rank in Google and aiming to get the MAJORITY of your traffic from OTHER SOURCES APART FROM GOOGLE can actually IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE RANKINGS.
This also fits in well with "Don't write articles with the primary purpose of ranking in Google, but rather your primary purpose when writing articles is "people first", you should write to help the end user"
So, realistically, in a few months time you could have someone (Cyrus again, perhaps) saying
"Don't do keyword research, don't have an SEO plugin, don't try to place keywords in your content" (which he has sort of said in the article you've linked to).
It's a catch-22 really.
If you write with SEO in mind there's a possibility that Google will feel that you're "writing for search engines and not for people" and therefore they WON'T rank your content.
BUT
If you DON'T write with SEO in mind there's a possibility that Google will never find your articles, so once more, your content won't rank.
So, it can all be very confusing, especially for those new to the industry.
So, once more, this is why it makes more sense to try to get the majority of your webste traffic OUTSIDE OF GOOGLE (the more "non-Google traffic" your website gets, the HIGHER you will rank in Google EVENTUALLY)
Sorry, I was not going to make a fear! Guess the chess player in me was working as we need to keep a cold brain but a positive realist at the same time
I read it wrong thing about the Achor text. I thought he was saying to let it be more. But I have always used variables, well, except for the first years, so that is no change.
About the SEO, yes, that is my problem. I was reading again and again explaining from Google helpful articles when they started this bullshit.
The worst was that I was doing exactly as they wanted, even so, I always wrote for the users (except having keywords in the title and first 100 words, and net even in the subheading because I use it to get a little more having keywords that were relevant but not the same with the idea to get this extra 1% too).
The only thing I did wrong was that I kept old articles if they were right but old.
Even so, Google knocked me down from 5000 per month to cero! In the last few days, it has started to grow slowly, 3-400, but my work outside Google has still not benefited.
In some year Pinterest was probably the most important traffic for me. But they have the problem that they change regularly their tactic so you never know what they do next.
The latest is that there is a rumor that they will not allow links in the pins. They declined but talked about changing in December. As I understand, it is more about Rich Pins.
And then we have new bowling in all this (I don´t know if you mention them in the course as I am still reading and will finish that this weekend) and that is Amazon.
That was growing and growing, but when this happened in Google, the traffic lost, and the Amazon sale was crushed. I am not allowed to use their photos as I haven´t sold three things in a month!
I know about the opinions about Amazon, and I agree. Even so, it was the key for me, and they surprised me a lot. Suddenly, they invited me to useful things and were for choosing a group, and they kept doing it even though I had problems selling.
Clickbank is the next step, and I am very curious about Medium. I first heard about them three months ago.
So now, reading your course between EM games and betting to keep my money coming is the plan for the next few days The Clickbank is on full power!
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