Google is lying to you. About content. About links. About their algorithm.

And if you listen to their advice as Gospel truth, I have an ocean front property to sell you in tropical South Dakota.

Google says links might become less impactful sometime in the future. You know, the same statement they’ve repeated for the last 15 years (yawn), in which time links have become more important.

Case in point, authority sites with the best backlinks in the world rank for topics entirely outside their wheelhouse:

Pun intended.

If links didn’t matter, we’d see much smaller websites with better content ranking for tons of searches. And yet, in any reasonably competitive space, we don’t…

Hard truth: NerdWallet will outrank you, even if their content is 10x worse, has 10 ads per square inch, and loads in 20 seconds.

But please, Google, go on about links being something we shouldn’t focus on 🤪

All the while, Google doesn’t even follow their own advice:

What Google says: don’t manipulate keyword density

What Google does:

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Noticing a trend?

There is a polar opposite gap between what Google tells you to do and what actually works.

AI technology is advancing at light-speed. The top 10 results of almost every keyword search are regurgitated and rephrased articles saying essentially the same thing.

Google’s latest Dec 2022 “Link Spam Update” was almost certainly rushed out the door in response to the threat of OpenAI on content commoditization — when anyone can spin up a regurgitated piece of content that is unique enough to bypass plagiarism detection, links matter more as a determing factor for objective quality. Hardly anyone can snap their fingers and get backlinks from the top 100 websites on the internet calling you the expert. Link spam updates occur because links are so vital to the algorithm that Google wants to fine tune and catch bad actors, making it more accurate and powerful over time to those who do it right.

This is the #1 reason as to why links matter so much: the REALLY GOOD links are hard as hell to get.

And they are about to become even more important as AI continues to advance.

This isn’t a proverbial call to SEO arms. This isn’t your excuse to do crappy SEO and game the system.

It's a call to focus on the long-game with a holistic approach & tune out the noise.

Have a strong site that is easy to navigate and use. Create genuine content for your audience. Get better backlinks. Promote your brand and build trust.

Worry less about headlines from Google and more on the above.

Best,

Jeremy