Clickbait Title from Ahrefs Blog: On-Page SEO is Dead [But Still a Good Article]

MichelangeSEO said:
Links are better than On-Page, is really the conclusion.

What do all of you think?
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So many variables. Both are key elements. One without the other, in any case, is less than maximum potential.
 
Are you sure the AUTHOR does SEO? Like actually does SEO for a living and is not just blogging about SEO? Cause this screenshot should pretty much discredit him as an SEO in ANY reality:

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I've got to say I've seen age becoming more and more important recently... My niche I've been logging on this forum in my journey thread's up against a top 10 that have a combined age of >80 years.

I've got better content, definitely better 'optimized', links from authority sites such as Wikipedia and I just can't consistently break the top 10 on a lot of these keywords.

It's actually very frustrating, not just on a personal standpoint, but as someone who believes in the power of search...

What search engine honestly thinks age > relevance and quality is beyond me. A lot of what Google in particular is valuing these days is border-line retarded.

Content length:

Valuing lengthier content can actually detract from monotopicness which will result in a lowering of relevancy to the intent of the content itself, as well as the quality of the piece.

Age:

Valuing age as much as they do clearly detracts from the searchers end experience, since a lot of newer sites actually do a better job of answering a question or matching the intent of a search... Let's not even forget the fact they're probably valuing older links and links from older content > new links.

Site Structure:

This article by Ahrefs shows us that Google are possibly devaluing content from deeper in a sites structure. Why they do this is beyond me as it detracts from good information architecture.


Honestly we could go on forever about this...

What possible reasons could they have for cannibalizing their own SERPs? Is it such a stretch to think at this point that they'd rather negatively impact the organic results to push ads more? To return visitors to the SERPs frustrated since the results didn't answer their query remotely well? More pageviews matter, even to Google. It's more ad impressions.

Many game developers leave things broken in their system on purpose, and that's what I think is going on here. Google aren't stupid, despite what their actions suggest.

Google will make small improvements here and there, just enough to keep people coming back. They'll give you a shot at getting the right info, but they're tipping the scales in their favor and that's all there is to it ladies and gents.
 
CCarter said:
Are you sure the AUTHOR does SEO? Like actually does SEO for a living and is not just blogging about SEO? Cause this screenshot should pretty much discredit him as an SEO in ANY reality:

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Good point. I actually just made a change to my main site that was sitting at 12-14... just made on-page changes and within a week it was sitting at 8-9. They did all their testing with ahrefs and it's pretty obvious they're trying to promote their software.

But, I do like ahrefs and use it a lot. They seem to at least make the point that correlation does not equal causation over and over again.
 
"_____ is dead." Ahh yiss, the lazy man's virality. For some odd reason, it works every single time.

I skimmed this post earlier and had the same reaction that I was seeing elsewhere around the internet.

The title has a 100% disconnect from what the content is showing. On-Page SEO clearly correlates with higher rankings. And then they purposefully act dense and pretend to not understand LSI, synonyms, and stop words, etc.

Complete clickbait title that's definitely dropping countless retargeting cookies, as @Goldorak said.

MichelangeSEO said:
Links are better than On-Page, is really the conclusion.
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Trying to determine which of the two is more affective is interesting, but acting on any of the data is going to harm anyone's campaigns. Sure, links might provide more "umph" but only when the on-page is properly performed. When it isn't done well, links don't provide much power.

Without a doubt, On-Page has a primacy over Links.

It's kind of like trying to get a man pregnant. In regards to pregnancy (ranking), Woman (on-page) has primacy over man (links). You might succeed in getting a dude pregnant, fighting against nature (algorithm) by spending all kinds of cash on research and link-acquisition. In the end, you can jump right to the front of the line by performing solid on-page on page first and then applying links.

RomesFall said:
What search engine honestly thinks age > relevance and quality is beyond me.
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Yeah, this is entirely to de-rank spammers. The old aged domain trick seems to have had some of it's power shifted to "age of content in the index" instead. Smart move. In the grand scheme I'd say it does increase the quality of the SERPs. In minor instances for individuals like us, it hurts when we're clearly producing 10x better content.
 
@MichelangeSEO one of the first glaring problems is the Author, Tim Soulo, has all 3 keywords in the title tag of the link he is highlighting, while claiming the keyword is not in the title tag. I mean, "Maybe" he may have gotten away with it if he put the phrased he used in quotes or brackets when doing googling, but since he didn't - either he doesn't do SEO or doesn't understand the basics of using Google.

2nd problem is people are going to walk away from this nonsense article thinking you don't need to put keywords in title tags - which is very irresponsible as an representative of an SEO Tool to put out. People aren't going to think about the "whole sum of parts" - they are going to walk away with pieces of the puzzle like "I don't need title tags".

3rd - Most of the Googled examples are all SEO related. There is very little search volume for SEO related terms from the very beginning. All you have to do is look at the general population and ask yourself what percentage of the population is going to be googling "on page seo"? Less than 1% if that.

If the author used keywords the general population used like "Kim Kardashian" which has a monthly search volume of 3,350,000, meanwhile "on page seo" has a search volume of 720 monthly searches he would have gotten different results. When I do a Google of a serious term like KimK I see this:

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That would mean that the title is probably important on actual terms people are searching for. SEO might seem "big" to us cause we are within the industry or circle it, but in terms of actual volume it's non-existent.

4th - I refuse to believe that SEO is in such a state that people "didn't know you can rank for keywords not in the title". I mean - this can't be reality. If I write a 1,000 word piece of content, do I need to have 1,000 words in my title tag? No. But that's an example of the dangerous ideas people can take away from nonsense like this when they only "take a piece of the puzzle" without them realizing SEO is more than the sum of all parts.

I can go on forever on this article but I'll say that this is just a sad state of affairs when you got people that don't do SEO putting out clickbait nonsense within THIS industry of all industries, and people are going to believe it.

Really think about that for a moment.

Really understand that people are going to walk away from this article thinking you don't need title tags - and when someone opposes them they'll say "Well AHREFS said it so it must be true, they're an SEO tool, they wouldn't dare put out bullshit clickbait articles! They do REAL research on terms that have real world value!"

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Good luck bros...
 
it's either written by a retard or with the purpose of diliberate misdirection + link bait
 
On-Page - as described by the article is the basics.
If your site has a decent amount of authority and you create an article that target an "exact match term", that's not in the serps, you can rank quick and easy.

Googles smart, but its still just at its core a "text engine"
 
Ridiculous reply by them. Seeing as how they created a clickbait title/article and their intentions are clear, I'm betting that "interlinking" reply was a troll response disguised as ignorance. They are going full ham to get people talking. It's working.
 
Postmortis said:
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Trankuility said:
I'm betting that "interlinking" reply was a troll response disguised as ignorance.
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No... He's not that smart. This is the same guy that went full retard in the reddit thread while representing his company (https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/3fprta/im_tim_soulo_from_ahrefs_and_im_looking_for_some/). He came in asked for feedback and then went full retarded when they didn't like the feedback. I talked about this briefly in the Customer Service day of the crash course.

You don't troll by making yourself and the company you represent look stupid within the industry you are servicing. I dunno where he read that but looking incompetent is not a part of any marketing/traffic leaks methods I know. Ask yourself, how likely are you going to trust his blog posts and advice from his company in the future about SEO after these glaring problems? Zero Percent.
 
Lol

You know you went full retard when everyone can't believe you aren't actually trolling.
 
Funnily enough, only after I started implementing the things that "dont matter" I started ranking.

Also I cringe everytime he ":wink:"

and feels like the article was done to reinforce the idea that links are everything and push more sign-ups for ahrefs
 
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I can't comprehend how people operate like this. If I went and got hired for a job blogging about SEO and had never done SEO in my life, I'd sit down for weeks on end reading everything there is to know about the basics of SEO, all aspects, white hat, black hat, gray hat, all theories, every little nuance - so even then I'd know what topics to write and talk about a bit more and what topics to avoid so I don't look like a total clown. But these people get jobs and literally just try to wing it through life.

I see this nonsense all around. People aren't dedicated to their job, their career, or they just aren't serious or focused. I can't tell whether people are missing basic pieces of the puzzle or if my standards are way too high.

Between Tim Soulo from Ahrefs and Clayburn Griffin's "Technical SEO is just make-up" (http://searchengineland.com/technical-seo-makeup-250408) shit piece - these "leaders"/"gurus" are a fucking joke. Patrick went in and took care of Clayburn though (http://searchengineland.com/role-technical-seo-makeup-really-251835).

It's no wonder so many SEOs who read this shit cannot getting results and can't rank - they've got gurus telling them title tags don't matter and don't even bother with SEO cause when they tried it they sucked at it.

Sad state of affairs.

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CCarter said:
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No... He's not that smart. This is the same guy that went full retard in the reddit thread while representing his company (https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/3fprta/im_tim_soulo_from_ahrefs_and_im_looking_for_some/). He came in asked for feedback and they went full retarded when they didn't like the feedback. I talked about this briefly in the Customer Service day of the crash course.

You don't troll by making yourself and the company you represent look stupid within the industry you are servicing. I dunno where he read that but looking incompetent is not a part of any marketing/traffic leaks methods I know. Ask yourself, how likely are you going to trust his blog posts and advice from his company in the future about SEO after these glaring problems? Zero Percent.
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The Ahrefs blog has been consistently laughable for me. They do a good job at getting you to click, but the content is all half-truths, misguided, and generally....laughable.

And, judging from the variety of writers they have on there....you gotta think they're just hiring freelance writers that "claim" to be SEO experts.

It's kinda sad that a company who has stiff competition like Ahrefs will allow some stranger to be their voice.
 
CCarter said:
Less than 1% if that.
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And even at that, I think you're being EXTREMELY generous to them with that. I'd reckon that it's even plausible that 1% of people who work on-line haven't Googled "on-page SEO" once you factor in all of the clueless webmasters, the social media experts/social media burger flippers, and just smart people who don't do / care about SEO, or just found the BuSo on-page SEO guide and never had to search.

Actually, it would probabally be fun to go through the top results for "on-page seo" and see who is practicing what they preach... (If any of you SEO blogger folks need an article idea, I'll translate this one into pictures, numbers, and colors so that you can understand it...) Maybe the 90-100 ranked results for "on-page seo" would be more telling, though.

Anyways, that reddit ahrefs thing was a mess. Really shows how young this industry is, when one of the top dogs probabally ties their shoes by going over, under, around the tree...
 
"UPDATE: Initially this article contained quite a bit of controversy – we’ll freely admit that this was to get a bit of extra attention and spark conversations. But this controversy backfired a little, so we decided to remove all of it from this article and only leave the research data and some takeaways/recommendations where relevant." https://ahrefs.com/blog/on-page-seo/
 
Shimmy said:
"UPDATE: Initially this article contained quite a bit of controversy – we’ll freely admit that this was to get a bit of extra attention and spark conversations. But this controversy backfired a little, so we decided to remove all of it from this article and only leave the research data and some takeaways/recommendations where relevant." https://ahrefs.com/blog/on-page-seo/
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I'm not accusing them of anything but... the url never had 'is dead' in it so... well you get what I'm suggesting 'may' have been the plan here.
 
As predicted, the old, reliable "Pretend it was a Troll" move.

Nobody would ever pretend to misunderstand the basics of their own industry for a few extra links when every bit of their income relies on people trusting the data they are providing. Especially when this "troll" extended to Reddit and Inbound and anywhere else the discussion was occurring.

In the end it doesn't matter. Ahrefs provides decent data. I could jump into an industry I know nothing about and hire people to do the real work, and as long as I don't run around popping off at the mouth, nobody will know I'm not an expert in that industry.

But this guy's track record clearly shows precisely that. An eagerness to be in the spotlight that betrays his own knowledge of the industry.
 
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