ok this is great info and you sound like you are expert and have done this but my question then is: what about backlinks? Do they not even matter anymore?
I'm sure backlinks still matter, but the internal search algos have changed so much since the early days of Google that it's hard to know exactly how much weight each part of the equation has.
The main problem with backlinks and keywords is that they are too easy to game so at some point, Google adjusted how they weigh those inputs.
The bigger picture is that SEO matters -- a lot. Backlinks are just one part of they equation. But being optimized against Google's search crawler heuristics is a big picture endeavor.
Having backlinks from NYT, Washington Post and Wikipedia for the term is 1000x more valuable than just hitting all the technical SEO metrics of fast page loading and meta tags.
Backlinks matter so much that many authoritative sites sell them. Of course, they won't admit to that for obvious reasons.
They hit 4 million pageviews/month in less than half a year. Automated ads didn't work, they paid too little and dropped quality too much.
Selling backlinks became one of the core business. They'd actually write full articles for a client and link to their site. The clients were extremely happy with the results. It's not necessarily the ranking, but the article itself would show high on Google.
Also in my own startup experience, I'd buy backlinks from minor bloggers who were blogging on a similar topic. It was something like $10 for a mention. I don't know if it hurt or helped SEO; but it increased credibility in the community and a lot of the people we interviewed mentioned that they bought it because they saw a familiar name.
This is 2016 data though, so take it with a pinch of salt as things could have changed significantly since then.
It's the same. In today's world of hyper SEO optimization and human-like AI content, the only game in town left is authority. And the way to build authority is backlinks.
> Some friends made a sports site for fun. They were a bunch of FB marketers in the early era and just experimented, plus it was a topic they loved ranting on. They did FB ads then funneled the traffic to a WP site. They hit 4 million pageviews/month in less than half a year. Automated ads didn't work, they paid too little and dropped quality too much.
Hah, as it happens, I know quite a bit about that niche. With the legalization of online sports betting around US states in the last few years, there was actually quite a bit of money to be made by high traffic sports blogs working as affiliates. There was also quite a bit of M&A activity, some of these technologically simple blog sites selling for millions to the bigger sports affiliate groups.