Keeping up with new developments in the SEO industry can be daunting.
With increasingly frequent Google algorithm updates, rumored insider leaks, and the latest large language model (LLM) breakthroughs, there’s hardly any time to pause and reflect on what these changes mean for an online business.
This is unfortunate, as many of these updates have little impact on actual search engine optimization.
Meanwhile, following breaking SEO news can easily distract from what truly matters for rankings: consistent SEO signal input.
SEO noise
Confirmed Google updates are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are daily algorithm adjustments that don’t warrant public acknowledgment.
Additionally, Google conducts countless live SERP tests daily on a small portion of its user traffic.
It’s nearly impossible to track and deduce the specifics of these frequent changes, even as a full-time journalistic pursuit.
A more practical approach is to consider these updates as “SEO weather” – constantly shifting, with the occasional storm that will eventually pass.
Alleged document leaks of unverified origin are equally, if not more, distracting.
Without context, a grasp of internal corporate language, or experience with the company’s internal systems, these documents provide no basis for anything beyond speculation.
While they may be useful tools for loud self-promotion, they offer no real value for website optimization.
Large language models, often marketed under the umbrella of “AI,” have significant potential to streamline certain workflows.
They can be valuable tools for speeding up various processes, including software development cycles.
They also frequently provide compelling answers to queries, stirring up an industry that has seen relatively little true innovation over the past two decades.
In short, they are useful tools, like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, or a server log analysis, and can support efforts toward better rankings.
However, they are far from a one-size-fits-all solution for anything related to search.
SEO input
All of the examples above contribute to a confusing overload of SEO information, distracting from what actually matters: signal input.
To clarify, achieving dominant SEO requires more than simply identifying individual signals that Google and Microsoft Bing factor into their calculations.
Only through experience can one understand how an isolated signal, such as canonical tags, interacts with and influences another, like crawl budget distribution.
This, in turn, can affect content quality signals, which impact user satisfaction and drive key SEO metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and bounce rate.
These signals can be influenced by other SEO factors, like legacy PageRank-passing backlinks.
They can also be compromised by issues like:
Faulty sitemaps.
Incorrect hreflang implementation.
Unintentional use of noindex tags.
Outdated robots.txt settings.
These are mere examples of the many technical, content, and off-page signals that ultimately have a cumulative impact on any website’s organic search result rankings.
Both Google and Bing incorporate numerous SEO signals into their algorithms.
While most of these signals are well-known, it’s often forgotten that signal consistency sustains high rankings for relevant user queries.
Rising to the top in SEO isn’t about chasing the latest SEO buzzword.
Instead, it’s far more effective to ensure that Googlebot and Bingbot can:
Crawl a critical mass of a website’s relevant, engaging landing pages.
Clearly understand the site’s unique selling proposition.
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SEO output
Rankings are the result of dozens of critically important, heavily weighted SEO signals.
Unlike Google updates, publishers retain control over those inputs and can regularly measure and improve their websites’ signals.
This is the essence of SEO: it’s an ongoing process based on measurable, verifiable data rather than individual, biased opinions.
This is why collecting a website’s server logs and conducting annual defensive SEO audits are critically important.
Embracing these best practices and integrating them into a comprehensive SEO strategy is what sets consistently successful website operators apart.
SEO signals
Shifting the focus on what actually matters in SEO isn’t difficult.
At the most basic level, it requires tapping into and regularly monitoring the two main sources of verifiable data:
Google Search Console.
Bing Webmaster Tools.
While both these free services provide excellent insights, it is the former that tends to allow for more profound insights.
That’s because, especially when it comes to large websites, Google often allocates more resources for crawling. This results in more in-depth and more frequent re-crawls of a website.
Consequently, the data provided, despite the intended latency between crawls and sample data updates, shows how Google reads and understands a website.
Paired with Bing Webmaster Tools, these two data sources represent the best source of verifiable information about a website’s basic SEO health signals.
Even without any additional analysis, Google Search Console can be used to tap into existing visibility, when high impression low / CTR page representation in SERPs is improved to include a unique selling proposition.
The more advanced step is to verify findings and analyze potential SEO issues or signal inconsistencies. This involves crawling the website in a manner similar to search engine bots.
Several tried-and-tested analysis tools are available for this purpose, with Oncrawl, RYTE, Screaming Frog, and Lumar standing out as particularly reliable.
These tools, along with others, should ideally be used simultaneously as part of an annual defensive SEO audit or when addressing unexpected ranking drops.
Ideally, a comprehensive analysis should include server log data, recorded and stored in perpetuity.
However, this represents an advanced level of big data analysis that few companies can perform regularly in-house.
For large websites with extensive data, partnering with SEO audit experts provides superior insights.
While in-house teams understand their website’s intricacies, external providers bring the advantage of experience across diverse web platforms.
These insights often help address lingering legacy signals and guide SEO efforts toward the most impactful changes for ranking growth.
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