4 SEO Questions: Yoast, Backlinks, Keyword Difficulty, & 301 Redirects

[LongPipe]

Here are a few questions;

1.) Should I really drive myself going all green with yoast premium? I have heard and seen in many cases where poor content outranks better content on backlinks. Should I spend countless hours writing HQ content that passes Grammarly, has all the right transition words, reading score, passive voice below whatever % they say etc. Or should I just write some cool content that reads easily do all the other technical stuff and focus on off page?

2.) What is the right way to gauge how many backlinks you need to rank for a keyword? I understand domain authority has a lot to do with keyword positioning also. But, if I am using a domain relatively comparable to the top domains in my keyword? Should I just aim for more backlinks than everyone else competing for the term? Should I focus on only doing high DA niche relevant guest posting etc?

3.) Why is there such a discrepancy between SEO tools when it comes to domain keyword difficulty?

Here is an example of a few keywords I ran through KWfinder, Aherfs, SEMrush, MOZ and keyword planner.

Should I not pay so much attention to these tools? Have you guys found a tool or way of using one of these tools to yield better results when it comes to actual statistics of the KD and search volume?

4.) 301-redirects to matching or similar content. Does this still work to rank "money grab ideas"? I understand this type of ranking may not stick and should only be used for certain situations?


Thanks for taking the time to read my post see you guy's around.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I'll take a stab at these!

Or should I just write some cool content that reads easily do all the other technical stuff and focus on off page?

Yes. There's certain Yoast green lights that are better than others. I wouldn't worry about Grammarly that much, if at all. Maybe just as a spell checker. Worrying about grammar and syntax and all that will slow you way down. You should write simply so that googlebot and all of your users can comprehend it. If you're doing that, you shouldn't need Grammarly.

I'd be worrying more about meeting the intent of the SERP than being technically correct in terms of grammar. Be informative, be entertaining, format in a way that keeps people scrolling.

You have to be careful with Yoast, too. They'll tell you to keyword stuff your content, they don't measure the use of the keyword in some custom blocks or in image alt text, etc. Some of their stuff is quick and easy and it makes for a fast way to check you're ticking off certain boxes. Other stuff can mislead you.

Should I just aim for more backlinks than everyone else competing for the term? Should I focus on only doing high DA niche relevant guest posting etc?

It depends on the SERP and your domain authority and interlinking. The number of links itself doesn't say much without also taking into account the domain authority and page authority of those links, quality of the content, the on-page optimization, site speed, etc. I'll talk more about this below. But yes, contextual links on powerful sites are the best links you can get. Even better if they're directly relevant to your post.

Why is there such a discrepancy between SEO tools when it comes to domain keyword difficulty?

Because they all have access to different data and have written different algorithms to gauge difficulty. It's also hard to take the power of each individual link into account, especially backlinks aimed at backlinks, etc. Then there's age, indexation count, indexation quality, SERP intent, and everything else that goes into this game. More on that below, too.

Should I not pay so much attention to these tools?

All of the above "more on that" is pointing here. The way to use these tools is to pick one (probably Ahrefs or SEMRush) when it comes to backlink data. The point isn't to compare them and find out which is more accurate. None of them are extremely accurate.

The point is that they are consistent among themselves. This allows you to compare pages and SERPs against each other, and even if the metrics aren't perfectly accurate, they're consistently accurate. You can trust that they measure the same things on multiple pages, keywords, whatever.

This allows you to use the data to take shortcuts, especially with bulk work. You might miss 20% of opportunities but you're finding 80% of them and moving a lot faster in bulk. These are enterprise solutions for people working at scale.

If you're using them to get down to the nitty gritty, they should be used in combination with your own eyes, looking at the SERPs themselves and each individual URL's content and backlinks. And even then you're probably pissing into the wind, especially on medium and high competition stuff.

301-redirects to matching or similar content. Does this still work to rank "money grab ideas"? I understand this type of ranking may not stick and should only be used for certain situations?

Google is wise to this method. You should use them the way real businesses use them in mergers and acquisitions if you want it to last. Use it to raise the tide of your domain so all of your boats (pages) benefit, rather than sniping out one single page. That's pretty obvious.