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Everywhere you turn someone is still peddling SEO services, promising to help you rank at the top of Google. However, the truth is these days there is no reason at all where you should be paying a SEO agency to help you rank. In this article we’re going to explore exactly why this is the case and what you could be doing instead.
In particular, we’re going to cover:
The History of SEO
10-15 years ago, SEO was largely technical, however that’s changed significantly in recent years. In the past, Google’s algorithm was immature by today’s standards and doing simple things like adding meta titles, keywords, and backlinks made an enormous impact on SEO Rankings.
From this perspective, SEO companies had it easy back then, generating thousands of visitors on their site easily. We can call this era the SEO Science era because SEO was like a science that easily generated results.
While Google’s value proposition has always been providing users the most valuable results, the algorithm they use has changed considerably and it is far more evolved than that of the past. To gain an understanding of this, let’s take a look at the factors that SEO Experts speak about.
Title Tags
Did you know that in a study shared in a search engine journal in January, it was found that Google re-writes 61% of your title tags? Would you do any work if 61% of the time your boss ignored your work and re-did it for you?
No, you wouldn’t. So, when SEO Agencies preach about title tags, remember this, and think about whether you really need them, let alone anyone, to do these for you.
The fact is having keywords in title tags have ZERO impact on your rankings. Where title tags are important is clickthrough. For the times where Google doesn’t re-write your tags, you want something enticing enough for the user to click through.
Keyword Density & Keyword-based Domains
You might think that the more times you put a keyword on a page the more you’ll rank for that keyword. However, this isn’t the case at all.
According to John Mueller, an SEO expert who works at Google, in a reddit thread he said that this does not impact your SEO ranking. John has even given insight into using keywords in your domain and URL.
From this, we have four key takeaways:
- Keyword domains don’t rank faster.
- Keyword stuffing doesn’t rank you higher.
- Keyword domains lost strong ranking influence years ago.
- Keyword domains are ranked the same as branded domains.
This is very different to the past, where keywords on a page had a massive influence on the rankings.
Backlinks
Backlinks are becoming increasingly less important in the eyes of Google and analysing what Google has been saying about this topic, you get the sense once the algorithm matures further, they will hardly matter at all.
As far back as eight years ago, former Googler Matt Cutts spoke about how ‘Google is looking for ways to rely less on them’. John Mueller weighed in on this in November and even more recently a third Googler, Duy Nguyen had this to say:
“Backlinks as a signal has a lot less significant impact compared to when Google Search first started out many years ago.”
Another fact we know about SEO is the total number of backlinks a website has doesn’t matter at all to Google.
Yes, the quality of the link is still important, but Google doesn’t see backlinks as some SEO experts would have you believe.
“We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much should we weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all. Because you could go off and create millions of links across millions of websites if you wanted to, and we could just ignore them all”
John Mueller
Mueller says a single link from a relevant source can send a stronger signal to Google about how it should treat that page.
Again, this has changed from the past significantly. 10-15 years ago, backlinks played a major role in SEO ranking for a website, which is clearly very different today.
So then, where is SEO today?
Today, SEO is more about how helpful your content is. We recently covered the 2022 Google Algorithm update literally called ‘the helpful content update’. Long story short, the more helpful your content, the higher you’ll rank.
If you want to learn how to write articles that rank and generate leads, then you might want to get familiar with the TAYA framework.
Why You Don’t Need an SEO Agency
Despite the changing history of SEO, agencies still preach technical aspects of SEO as part of their services. The problem is that these agencies charge anywhere from $500 to $5000 to do work that we now know isn’t really going to make an impact on your rankings.
RedPandas CEO Moby Siddique is commonly quoted as saying:
“SEO these days is now an art, not a science, SEO is not something you now pay for like you don’t buy customers from the customer store. SEO is now a by-product of great content marketing and user experience”
Clearly, you should NOT hire an SEO agency, because you’ll simply be wasting money!
What you actually need instead of SEO
Earlier we mentioned that SEO is now an art, not a science. In order to master this art, you’ll need to get familiar with the framework known as TAYA.
What is TAYA?
They Ask You Answer (aka TAYA) is a practical framework and sales and marketing philosophy that assumes one simple truth: if your prospect or customer asks a question, you answer, and in doing so, you will become the most trusted voice in your space and will gain more business than you ever have before.
When you think about it, that’s what Google’s proposition is! People ask, Google answers. In fact, the new Google ‘helpful content algorithm’ update is designed to reward helpful content and penalize unhelpful content.
TAYA involves writing and publishing content every single week that answers these buyer questions, and then using this content in your sales process to shorten the sales cycle and increase close rates.
An Example of TAYA In Action
Bill Ragan’s roofing is a small regional-based roofing company. Before they started TAYA, they had around one hundred website visitors per month.
In 2 years, they had a 2,500% increase in organic traffic, close to 10K organic visitors per month AND they’ve grown sales and customers significantly.
Despite this, guess what their current core web vitals mobile score was? It had a failed grade and score of 34.
Clearly, doing SEO the old school way doesn’t work in today’s day and age is a waste of money, and your resources should be better spent elsewhere.
Technical SEO is like digging a trench with a spoon. Doing really good content marketing with the objective of answering buyer questions in an authentic and honest way is like using an excavator instead and is the best use of your limited marketing budget
How can I implement TAYA?
You can either implement TAYA yourself or you can get someone to coach you to do it. Here’s a step-by-step guide to learn everything you need to know to implement TAYA:
- Read the book ‘They Ask, You Answer’ by Marcus Sheridan.
- Read our comprehensive guide on TAYA.
- Learn about Assignment Selling.
- Learn about what’s involved in TAYA Coaching
- Find out if a TAYA Coach is right for you.
- Review TAYA Coaching Pricing
- Contact a TAYA Coach
So, what’s next?
Next time you decide to hire an SEO agency, remember that more than 75% of the tasks they’re going to do for you will make such a small impact that it’ll feel like your money is going to waste.
Instead, focus on growing your business through TAYA.
