Google’s John Mueller answered a question the question of how long it takes for SEO to work and what it means if rankings don’t change after a year. Sometimes best practices doesn’t work and John Mueller explains why this sometimes is the case.
What Is SEO?
There is no single definition of SEO. What constitutes good SEO is subjective and highly dependent on where one learned about SEO.
Some believe that SEO is adding keywords into content and building links.
Others don’t really bother with links and are more concerned with building content.
Some are highly focused on technical aspects like site performance metrics and structured data.
In some corners of the SEO community, there are those who passionately believe that SEO doesn’t matter because Google prioritizes ads, big brands, YouTube videos, more ads, and then leaves the crumbs of what’s left for small businesses.
So when someone asks why their SEO isn’t working, the answer can be a toss-up, and if ten SEOs agree, there’s a chance they haven’t identified the problem—they’ve only agreed on the most obvious reason. This was the situation John Mueller encountered when asked why a site wasn’t ranking despite following SEO best practices.
Hard To Answer Without Specifics
John Mueller narrated the question:
“I changed my website a year ago and did a lot of work on SEO. Should this be affecting my website’s traffic by now?”
It’s a hard question to answer when you don’t have the specifics of the webpage in front of you. So Mueller answered in a fairly general manner that ends with him recommending he ask someone else for advice in Google’s help forums.
The first part of Mueller’s response acknowledges the difficulty of answering the question.
He responded:
“It’s tricky to say much here. I don’t know what specifically you did to work on SEO, and I don’t know if that would have resulted in significant changes.”
Why SEO Doesn’t Work
Mueller’s right. Maybe the website has a great layout, fast page speed performance, spot on structured data and a logical site architecture that optimizes internal linking.
What could go wrong with a properly SEO’d website, right?
Well, the content could be incomplete.
The content could be too comprehensive.
The content might be unfocused, lacking a clear comprehension of the topic.
The content might be too focused on keywords and not focused enough on users.
The content might not match the topic suggested by the keywords in the title and the headings.
Maybe the content is aiming too high, trying to rank for a highly competitive search phrase.
No amount of SEO is going to save a website with the above listed problems… and that’s just a sample of what can go wrong.
Mueller addressed this shortcoming of SEO in situations where it has zero effect.
He continued his answer:
“There are many best practices which have minimal effect on the day-to-day performance of a website. For example, having a clean page structure helps search engines to better understand the content on a page, but it might not necessarily result in immediate search ranking or traffic changes.”
Ranking Criteria Is Different Across Topics
Another factor that Mueller touches on is that what’s important for SEO varies according to the topic. Some topics require fresh content, some content requires establishing signals of trustworthiness and authoritativeness, maybe even signals that communicate user brand preference and popularity, signals that indicate that users expect to see a specific brand for certain queries.
There could be a geographic component that prioritizes local signals. It could be an intent thing where a user just wants to read what a person wrote in a forum.
This may be what Mueller is talking about when he says that the best elements of SEO vary across websites.
He answered:
“The most effective elements of SEO will vary across websites, it takes a lot of experience to go from a long checklist of possible items to a short prioritized list of critical items.”
Experience Is Important
The last factor Mueller discussed is the role of experience in making one a better SEO. Here’s an example: I thought I was pretty good at creating content that ranks and then I wrote a couple thousand articles for Search Engine Journal and it opened up a whole new conception of content creation, I discovered levels of understanding that could only come from writing about a couple thousand articles.
Mentorship, is an option that can cut down the amount of time it takes to learn, but experience is still important.
John Mueller recommended experience as an important factor for understanding SEO.
He wrote:
“Your experience here will grow over time as you practice.
I recommend getting input from others, and practicing by helping with challenges that others post in help forums. Good luck!”
Getting input from others is good advice.
Listen to the podcast at the 17:43 minute mark:
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