Are Links and Word Counting Still Important in SEO in 2022?
Brand SERPS and How to Boost Them Episode 142 Confident Live Marketing Show by Ian Anderson Gray 7th January 2022
In this clip, Ian Anderson Gray gives a tongue-in-cheek noughties explanation of what is important in search engine optimisation (SEO): the number of links and the keyword count. But is that still applicable and does it matter for Brand SERPs? Jason says no.
00:00 Changing priorities for SEO
00:55 Explanation of Search Engine Optimisation
01:59 Google has revolutionised SEO
Transcript from: Are Links and Word Counting Still Important in SEO in 2022?
Because Google is trying to represent your brand to your audience in an authentic and honest manner. The number of inbound links to your webpage don’t matter so much. The page speed doesn’t matter so much. So it’s a change of priorities in terms of what you would normally expect for normal SEO. Really interesting. We’re talking about Brand SERPs and SEO and all that kind of beautiful stuff.
Now, I’m going to probably embarrass myself here because I’m going to try and define what SEO is. And then I want you to tell me Jason, where I’m wrong because I think SEO has developed a lot over the years. Having said that, I did get phoned up by somebody who said, “Excuse me, do you do that seeoh stuff?” And that kind of make me feel a little bit better.
So SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And I think when you’ve got a website, if you want to be higher up on Google for certain keywords, it used to be at least, (and correct me if I’m wrong, Jason) about the number of links to your website. But the quality of the link is obviously more important. So if the likes of the BBC or like a very highly ranked website was to linked to yours, that would bump your rating up a little bit more, but not only that, it’s also to do with the relevancy (if that’s a word). If I’m a live video expert and my website’s all about that and a plumbing website linked to my website, it might be an amazingly, highly ranked website, but it’s not very relevant. So yeah, it’s a lot to do with the links and obviously to do with the keywords on the page, but is that a good definition?
Where have I gone wrong with that. And how have things changed in recent years? You haven’t gone wrong at all. As you said, Google has traditionally up until about four or five years ago. It’s been about counting links and counting words in the page and that was it.
