did you know that quote "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication--" commonly attributed to Da Vinci (and slightly less commonly Steve Jobs) was just casually attributed to Da Vinci by some random-ass blog in the early 2000s and people were just like... yeah all right, I can get on board with that, it's canon.

so just FYI, this is a PSA so you don't put that on your sales page or in your email signature with a Da Vinci attribution and look like a total ass. 🍑

hello again!

did you miss me?

cuz it's been a minute or three.

I won't go into what's up here (personal health shit), but I'm getting by, I guess.

what about you?

SMALL TALK ACCOMPLISHED, let's talk about SEO things...

(quick suggestion: enable images for this post. There are A LOT of them in the main part of this email below, you're just gonna scroll back up)

News and Updates

You know it and you love it and it keeps us both from having to deal with "are you even subscribed, still, bro?" emails.

It's the freshest meme page on the internet, so just click here to see this week's toasty memes and stay subscribed to my totally normal SEO newsletter!

In other news, I bought a newsletter! It's called The Slice, and it was expensive, lol. But I'm planning on building it in public and writing about all the shit I'm doing. Public is a relative term, I'm actually only sharing it to a specific email list, so sign up here if you care about such things and want to see what I do with this newsletter I acquired.

PS to this news/update items I got some way cool shit coming up to share about the Impressions.org brand soon. You gotta wait but OMG--exciting stuff coming.

Finally, I revived The Weekly SEO email newsletter that I bought and absorbed into Rank Theory last year in a very stupid way that I learned a lot from.

If you've ever wondered what it might look like if I was slightly less insane and covered a more "traditional SEO newsletter" approach, you can sign up here for free, I still write it and share weird shit--this latest issue saw me talking about vampires, so... yanno...

Sign up and follow along.

(I also write a weekly-ish domain-focused newsletter, but you already knew that probably).

Okay, JFC, shut up about newsletters already, let's get into some SEO!

Featured Snippets

🤦 Google ranking helpful, unbiased content like a CHAMP (opposite!)

❓ What do y'all think of this "link to the homepage with exact-match anchors" plays?

😬 "Things I'll write about soon, for $500" -- what is 'this reverse-branding from Woo .com back to WooCommerce .com?'

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Unclutterer.com - $49k

An absolutely massive DR 70 single word (even if the word kind of sucks) .com, looking F-I-N-E fine.

10/10 Home Decor brand.

Build this shit out with hella content, dropship some home products from your store and build up an email list, KAPOW, you're in business.

And some DOPE backlinks that'd definitely take you $49k and WAY more to build something similar

Interested?

Hit reply, price is fairly firm...

Laying Down Judgements From Atop This High Horse Made From Literal Shit: When Does a Site Not Deserve To Rank?

I've had this one queued up for a while, I think it's a fascinating topic.

The idea sprung fully formed from my mindbrain like the child of Zeus popping out from his forehead (OMG is that where the word OFFSPRING comes from????) when I read this tweet thread:

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Rebekah Edwards @rebekah_creates A short thread on a client whose *DECIMATED* organic search traffic just has me scratching my head. 1/ 11:6 AM • Mar 28, 2024 2 Retweets 45 Likes Read 38 replies

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Here's the site:

​https://denveruppercervical.com/​

Denver chiropractor, got it.

And what kind of decimation is this tweet talking about?

The genital-kicking kind, from a big capital G update:

easy come, easy go, eh?

from the tweet thread:

^ emphasis mine

and elsewhere:

it was doing some legitimately big numbers!

But then the September helpful content update came along and smacked it good.

One more quote from the thread before I start in:

All right, so we have this chiropractor writing a bunch of content like this:

That's medical shit, baby. YMYL.

Now, look. I'm gonna try and keep my PERSONAL bias out of this, and just try and look at it from Google's anthropomorphized POV.

"Are Chiropractors Safe?" <--- a Google search:

4.2k search volume and a bunch of answers trying to be diplomatic but being like mm... yeah, it's not fucking zero...

Compare that with:

"Are Doctors Safe?" <--- a Google search:

0 search volume because people aren't asking that shit because IT'S NOT REALLY A THING...

And that's what Google is telling us directly:

Chiropractors? ehhhhhhh

Doctors? yeah, sure, go nuts. Whatever.

So this Denver chiropractor ranked for a bunch of shit like:

• allergies headache - 2k s/m, 20 KD
• concussion recovery - 2.3k s/m, 56 KD
• how long do concussions last? - 4.9k s/m, 50 KD
• occipital neuralgia treatment - 3.6k s/m, KD 44
• etc.

Buddy, if I've got a concussion I'm not going to a fucking chiropractor. My brain is the only worthwhile thing I've got going for me...

And if I've got occipital neuralgia (an awful condition that impacts the nerves of the eyes), i'm DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO A CHIROPRACTOR--ESPECIALLY SOME RANDOM CHIROPRACTOR IN DENVER, WHERE I DON'T LIVE.

So looking at it from that point of view... did this deserve all those rankings?

Probably not.

Not saying they didn't have good content, or good UI/UX, or that chiropractors aren't absofuckinglutely not the doctor you are probably looking for for treatment, I'm saying Google's algo is saying that ranking some random local chiropractor for these big, heavy YMYL terms is not the right thing.

But for a while it was!

I've said this before, but sometimes when you see a site get the shit kicked out of it in a Google update, it was a site overreaching--whether they got addicted to the traffic and started trying to rank for EVERYthing, or they just got ambitious like the chiropractor site.

The big lessons from this?

I'm not sure if it's something tidy and clear I can wrap up like CARL WINSLOW.

But I guess it's this:

Make sure the site you're building/the thing you're targeting matches your ambitions.

If you're a local business trying to rank for NATIONAL medical terms, that might work... till it doesn't.

If you're an alternative health... something something trying to rank for some mainstream health shit... that MIGHT work... till it absolutely doesn't.

If you get addicted to the traffic and you start writing articles for every possible keyword, you're going to wake up one day in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney... metaphorically speaking.

Stay disciplined, do your keyword research, and build your authority the hard way for a long-term win (unless, you know, you're collateral damage of a future update and you lose everything you were building and it all goes to shit lol why do we do this).

Work With Me (you know you want to)

There's just two:

One, SEO: an in-depth SEO Playbook that'll knock the ass right off of your god damned body. Everything you need to do to rank like the 1992 DREAM TEAM just hit reply and LMK. We'll hop on a call and we'll get that medal (this is a metaphor for rankings).

Two, Newsletters: he knows a thing or two about newsletter writing, ladies and gentlemen, and now it can be your thing AS WELL. This is all not super duper public yet, but I have a DFY newsletter service. One email per week, turn your cold-turnips-in-the-ground subscribers into carolina reapers that'll scorch the tissue from the roof of your mouth and leave your teeth blackened THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR MONEY. 🤙 call me JK i hate getting phone calls hit reply and tell me that you want the fire.

~

well,

we made it through another newsletter, sorry for the long absence.

thx to those of you who missed me and reached out--I love to see it.

please be sure to do all the newslettery things like enable images and click the meme thing and etc. etc.

it is my intention to put this newsletter out every Thursday going forward, so... we'll see how long it lasts until I break my word and let you down.

as always, the only thing I will ask of you (besides pls give me all your SEO and newsletter monies) is to hit reply if you liked this email and tell me that, I just love hearing from people (but not on the phone--we covered that).

until next Thursday, my friends...

sean
sean@ranktheory.com

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