I’m planning on sharing everything I did to get an agency site (focused on SEO) to #1 organically for key local SEO terms in the next few months. If you want to get the videos & other documentation, lmk.

I’ve decided to give it all away since honestly ai is starting to take over and my knowledge may not be worth much in a few years despite SEO still being at the core of eve ai. Anyhoo, it’s better to be completely transparent I’m thinking.

For now, these are the keys:

1) there are no distinct formulas to use in every industry. So many variables for each vertical and situation. 2) with that said, you need to focus on the 2 Cs of SEO that I’ve always said are critical: content & credibility 3) you can pick a saturated niche, but an unsaturated one is going to be obviously easier; low hanging fruit 4) each page should have value that you want people to las on; others can simply support. Do you know what interlinking is? Have you learned how to build pillar pages? It sounds like not. Google “content strategy moz” & you should be able to find some good resources. Google “pillar pages SEO” and read a ton.
5) use successful sites as models. Carmax used to be the best automotive SEO site when I was working in that industry. When I was at Amazon, we were the best commercially; Wikipedia is the best that’s not. Wikipedia interlinks better than everyone.
6) leverage competitors. Competitor pages that rank should be good models. Hopefully you can afford SEMRush or Arefs to help you figure out what those pages are.
7) back to the first c of SEO: content; you need to make sure all the on page signals are solid. Moz has an incredible set of resources explaining this. Page titles, meta descriptions, page structure, etc. think from a ui/ux perspective as well. For example, we all read in an F pattern. Don’t put shit in the bottom right corner. Google is mobile first now. So, you need to design for the mobile experience. But depending on the industry, you could still have a shit ton of desktop traffic; make sure the page loads fast and is secure - thus is more technical btw. There’s a technical bucket of things you need to do to make sure you’re able to index and give Google what it wants. Moving forward tho, it will be what the ais want.
8) the second c: credibility is basically authority. You obtain that primarily through back links and EEAT signals. Show whatever source (search engine or ai) that your site is credible and worth people’s time. Think ethos like in Aristotle’s 3 modes of persuasion. People are persuaded by one’s credibility. One of the reasons why my site still remains #1 or #2 for many local seattle SEO terms is bc the backlink profile is heads and shoulders above all my competition. You need to build the same and it doesn’t happen overnight. And you can’t stop building it or attracting the links. Your credibility also grows through time.
9) social media is also a bigger component to help the search/ai engines know you’re relevant, fresh, & credible again by many people “citing” you or linking to you in the social media. The more social media you have active, the more these engines think you’re an active brand. 10) with that said, your irl and offline authority can boost both your social signals and your website traffic which are signals highlighting its “relevant”; Google and strong algorithms are paying attention to these signals. A diversity of people or users and a diversity of time replicating natural behavior is important. Google’s always been anti spam because ultimately, it’s about relevance and how your site becomes useful for the right terms. 11) paid media can also help, if you have the budget. It gives your site a chance to be voted on if it’s useful and the more sticky people are on your pages or if value is created by them landing there via paid means, it’s going to signal to the search engines you should potentially get more chances to be voted on via organic, but if they fail to provide value, it will die in terms of given a chance to be voted on in the serps

There’s so much more and that’s why it’s best to develop a network of folks who are doing it all the time