Last October, I reached out to 200+ SEO experts and asked them to share their thoughts on the current state of SEO.
We’re talking about the impact of link building, the future of SEO, how to reclaim lost or broken links, and so on.
Here are a few of my favorite responses:
How much of an impact do you think link building has on your brand authority?
“Building editorial links from relevant sites is one of the most important factors for gaining brand authority. Having a strong brand can help your domain rank better for targeted keywords in your niche and build long-term evergreen organic traffic. Plus, search engines aren’t the only ones noticing your links. As you continue to build links on quality sites and increase your domain authority, it opens doors for new relationships with other brands and experts in your space. This way, you can build an overall brand authority that appeals to your audience and encourages opportunities for mutual collaborations.”
— Farzad Rashidi, Co-founder at Respona
How do you stay updated with and implement Google’s ever-evolving guidelines for on-page SEO?
I think, in general, the core guidelines for on-page SEO haven’t dramatically changed much in recent years, but the way how Google tries to better understand a website’s content has evolved gradually. If you have built a good SEO foundation for your site and have a good set of historic ranking and traffic data to work with, then you can easily test the effectiveness and make appropriate adjustments to your implementation whenever you become aware of incoming Google changes.
— Kevin Cheng, Director of SEO & Content at Trader Interactive
How do you maintain the relevancy of your backlinks, and how often do you monitor this?
Regular auditing is key! We recommend biannual audits to deep-dive into recent backlinks for your brand and core competitors. It helps identify where growth is coming from, and how you compare against the wider market. Backlink relevance should be about the quality of the referring domain, and the topical fit of the site and its content. Links from specialist sites that closely fit your category will be worth a lot more than links from generalist sites that cover loads of topics.
— Emily Wassell, Head of SEO at tmwi
How do you ensure high-quality, engaging content that satisfies both search engines and user intent?
Content is no longer king. Users are. The best way to learn about user intent is to listen. You can ask users questions via social media/customer interactions or your organization likely has data you can mine to help discover insights about user intent. Chat logs, phone call logs, and RFI form fields are great tools for discovering insights about user intent. If it’s in your budget and you want to be more deliberate about it, commissioning user studies, surveys, or focus groups are also great ways of collecting information that you may be able to turn into content.
– Jeff Creech, Director of SEO at Wiley University Services
How have featured snippets and ‘position zero’ strategies impacted your organic traffic numbers?
I have found ‘position zero’ (or featured snippets with an answer box or paragraph answer) – to be something WORTH targeting. Despite there being a correlation with position zero and low CTR, it is much better that your brand, business, or blog appears at the top of the SERPS rather than halfway on page 1 of the traditional listings. Even if you don’t get the click to your site – people might remember your answer, your logo, and your brand name and that still raises brand awareness.
— JC Connington, Head of SEO at Atom
What methods do you use to analyze and improve upon the user intent matching of your content?
We repeat many of the steps that led to the creation of the original content. For example, we analyze the SERPs, and determine if there are additional assets, quotes, links, information, etc. that we need to add to satisfy the query better. We also focus on current page performance, such as rankings and engagement metrics, and consider what on-page optimizations will help align our intent better. Our last step includes another internal assessment from our team members, this time concentrating on evaluating the information through the user’s eyes.
— Wes Silver, Director of SEO at TurboDebt
What’s your process for cleaning up toxic or low-quality backlinks?
Most importantly decide if this is necessary as it can take a lot of time with no guarantee of success. Only do it if you have, or expect a manual action in GSC. Use a reliable link tool (Majestic Ahrefs etc) and focus on precision, targeting only the links that pose a genuine threat to your site’s reputation and search engine rankings. Create a precise disavow file containing only toxic links and submit it through Google Search Console. Skip outreach efforts as they often prove ineffective in toxic link scenarios.
— Nick Tyler, Director of SEO at Headout
What’s your approach to reclaiming lost or broken links?
When writing your email or making a call to the site owner, ask yourself “What would make ME go back and fix a broken link pointing to a site I don’t own?” If you can’t think of a good reason, take your time back and go find another link.
— Wesley Anderson, Director of SEO at CharterUP
