As recommendations go, this is a perfect example of bad SEO advice
I’m reasonably sure we’ve all seen, heard or read something to do with our jobs or business that has horrified us. You know the type of thing I mean. Practices that should see people unable to work in their profession or work standards that are unacceptable beyond belief. This morning, I’ve seen an example of bad SEO advice that is one of the worst I’ve ever read.
Stumbling upon bad advice
I have been browsing a few SEO related websites, more out of passing interest than anything else. I ended up looking for a plugin recommendation for a WordPress based site, largely based on a review I read about another product. My Google search revealed a number of spurious results and one of them caught my attention. Initially, I thought there must have been an error in the page description, so I clicked to go through to the company website.
The precise example of bad SEO advice
I’ll get to the point quickly, this is what the recommendation was:
“You don’t need to publish content until you notice rankings slip.”
Who writes misinformation like this?
It was in a longer article posted in 2023 by a brand direct involved in SEO and content production.
I’m not going to name the site or company, you’ll find it easily enough if you want to, but some of the content I read online fills me with dread, particularly if it is seen by anyone with an ulterior motive. If you wanted to argue that you didn’t need to regularly update your website content and to cite what might be seen as an authoritative source, it would be right up your street.
They even repeat and support the advice
Later in the same article, they write this:
“The best approach is to monitor your website performance and only take action when you need to. “
Before anyone tries to defend these statements, I’ll get a few things out of the way. They are talking about website content in full. Not a product, not a specific page, but the entirety of a website and the content of it.
Where is the proactive business understanding?
The first thing I’d like to address is that anyone who recommends you only take action when there is a drop in your website rankings is clearly not a business owner.
On which planet do you wait for there being a drop in performance? The most successful businesses and business owners I have ever met are proactive. They don’t wait for any type of drop in their online performance before taking action.
Proactivity is key to generating success in rankings, combined with effective research and the acknowledgement of the second point I’d like to cover – the latest and previous Google Core Update, and countless others before them.
The value of content to SEO over time
Google has made it patently clear that it values good quality and original content, and it doesn’t mean one piece of content for eternity. You should bear in mind that even the best content will eventually drop in value. It will become less relevant, and the date of published materials, over time, does indeed have an impact on their position in search results.
Many years ago I benefitted from a backlink in an article from The Guardian. As one of the UK’s oldest and most respected news publishers, it had a domain authority of 99 and the page from which the backlink came had a page authority of 78.
It took the reader directly to the homepage of a website I operated at the time and it held huge value for approximately 4 years. However, the value wasn’t in people clicking the link, it was in how Google treated it as a backlink. After 4 years, the value of it, in terms of its impact on my website, became noticeably lower. It was less influential. It had dated.
On that basis alone, you have to consider the life of backlinks and content. You don’t sit waiting for them to be of less value to you. You actively pursue stronger connections with the frequent publication of new content.
Where are the professional standards?
Their advice about not updating content until you notice a problem bothers me – a lot. If you’re paying a company or individual for advice, you expect it to be something you didn’t know or wanted validation of.
You want expert time and opinion that you can trust. Yet, you could Google the publication of content and find thousands of other sites telling you to do the opposite to the advice the site in question gives you.
What about the control of content creation?
That brings me to question who is responsible for authorising such content? Surely, as a brand, they’d have some kind of content control mechanism? The agency in question has approximately 30 employees.
In my case, I am the sole person responsible for content. However, I have owned a digital agency in the past and operated it as the Managing Director. We had an SEO Executive responsible for blog content and they reported to the Head of SEO who in turn reported to me.
If the SEO Executive wrote an article, the Head of SEO would sanction the publication of it. It would not simply hit the internet the moment the SEO Executive finished it. I would also read the article prior to publication, if I had the time. Had this content gone through similar controls, surely not?
When I thought it couldn’t get worse
As if to further enforce their own views to the point of it being astonishing, they say this later down the same article:
“The best way to manage your website is to monitor rankings in Google and take action when you notice you’ve slipped.”
They also say this:
“There is no set rule when it comes to updating your website. You can’t say ‘a website requires regular updates’, because it isn’t true, no matter what other blogs on the subject might tell you.”
Now they’re telling you to ignore other blogs! The level of misinformation is frankly staggering, and worrying. I have said in the past that I completely understand why there is such a high level of distrust over the SEO sector and people that work in it.
This is a perfect example of what shouldn’t be out there and should be ignored, full stop. When you’re an independent SEO consultant like myself, it makes me cringe and it has an indirect affect on my profession.
Clarity on content publication for SEO
Google and other search engines want you to frequently publish new content (good content) and maintain your website.
Do not wait for your rankings to fall and then take action. Keep a frequent flow of quality content coming to your website. Push yourself to do it or make sure you engage the resources or staff to provide it. It an essential part of ensuring you give yourself the possible chance.
Don’t assume a brand blog post is always accurate
We all know that you can’t believe much of what you read on Facebook, X, and other social media channels. Well, just because something is written on a company blog doesn’t mean it is true either.
Please be wary. Finally, if any readers want me to name the source and wonder why I haven’t – my experience tells me it isn’t worth the hassle.
Nothing will change the attitude of some companies, or their opinions.
The view of an independent SEO consultant in the UK certainly won’t, and they’re not alone in their publication of inaccurate information – there are plenty of others out there and I’m not about to go on a mission to take them all down like a latter down Saint, because anyone that has ever tried convincing these types of organisations to act more responsibly will know that you never get anywhere. You might perceive that as a somewhat defeatist attitude. I see it as the reality of the profession, unfortunately.
If you’ve read similarly terrible advice online at any time, let me know in the comments. I’m happy to consider any submissions for future blog content and give you a credit for the source of the story if it can be substantiated/proven.
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