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.
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."
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
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
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
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
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