The not-so-SEO checklist for 2022

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

It’s no secret that Google’s Core Web Vitals are among the elements you’ll want to optimize your website for in 2022 if you haven’t done so already. As a quick reminder, the Core Web Vitals are at the crossroads between SEO and web dev, and they are the measurements of your website’s largest contentful paint, first input display, and

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

cumulative layout shift. Those are the parts of your website that load first and allow users to start interacting with the site in the first few milliseconds. Logic tells us that the slower your load times are, the worse your site’s user experience will be. First of all, this isn’t exactly

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

new information. We all know about page speed and how it affects SEO. We also know how vital it is that your Core Web Vitals perform well on mobile, which is where around 60 percent of Google searches come from. Google takes its Core Web Vitals so seriously as ranking factors that you can now find a CWV

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

report in Google Search Console and get CWV metrics in PageSpeed Insights results (mobile-only until February of 2022, when the metrics roll out for desktop). Given that, why am I calling it a misconception that Core Web Vitals should be at the top of your SEO-optimization checklist for 2022? It’s because Google itself has explicitly

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

stated that having a top-shelf page experience does not trump publishing killer content.   Content is still king in SEO. Being useful and answering user questions is one of the most crucial ranking factors. So, it’s a misconception that Google will not rank you well unless your Core Web Vitals are all in solid, healthy  places.

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1. Don’t prioritize Core Web Vitals (CWV) above quality content

However, having it all is the ideal situation. If you have great web content and optimized Core Web Vitals, you’ll probably perform better in organic search than would a page without strong Core Web Vitals. In 2022, therefore, work on your Core Web Vitals for sure, but develop a detailed content marketing plan first.

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2. Don’t assume your affiliate product-review site is in trouble

Another misconception that might have followed from a 2021 Google update is that affiliate sites, specifically product-review sites, were in some hot water after the Product Reviews update from April. Google meant for the update to prioritize in-depth and useful product reviews over reviews that are spammy and light on details.

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2. Don’t assume your affiliate product-review site is in trouble

In other words, just as in organic search, higher-quality content is going to win here. If there was ever a point when someone actually made money by running a shady, low-quality affiliate site that featured nonsense product reviews that were then essentially spammed out to thousands of people, Google’s April 2021 product reviews update started to kill that.

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2. Don’t assume your affiliate product-review site is in trouble

The search engine now prioritizes long-form, detailed reviews, the kind that generates trust from users. Those are the types of affiliate content that stand to benefit from Google’s update, while the spammy sites will continue to vanish from top rankings. Therefore, we can forget about the misconception that good, honest, hard-working affiliate

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2. Don’t assume your affiliate product-review site is in trouble

product reviewers would somehow be hurt by the update. As long as you are presenting something relevant and legitimately useful to users, you may have even seen your rankings rise since the April of 2021.

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3. Don’t assume Google will rewrite all your titles

The last misconception is the idea that you don’t need to put effort into your pages’ title tags because Google is going to rewrite them all anyway following its August of 2021 title tag-rewrite initiative. Google does not actually want to rewrite your title tags. It clearly stated this in its September blog post.

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3. Don’t assume Google will rewrite all your titles

What Google wants is for you to write high-quality page titles on your own, ones that are descriptive, truthful, and useful. Give users what they need, and Google will leave your titles alone. However, throw a bunch of keywords in there, or use boilerplate titles all over your site, and you can expect Google

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3. Don’t assume Google will rewrite all your titles

to do some cleaning up on your behalf.  The trouble is, you may not personally like the results. Title tags matter in SEO, big time. Don’t think that your efforts are futile just because of the 2021 change. Focus on creating title tags that matter

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3. Don’t assume Google will rewrite all your titles

for users, and you should be just fine.

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