Google guideline and Google representatives say valid HTML matters, page speed is a crucial ranking factors, and distracting ads are a sign of low quality sites.
Yet, this page has 20+ errors and 70+ warning in Chrome browser inspection, failed horribly in various speed tests, comes with multiple annoying pop-up / pop-under ads – and they rank in multiple position 0’s and ranked for thousands of highly competitive search terms.
SEO guidelines by Google and gurus are only for your reference. They are basic knowledge that serves, at max, as your foundation and can only carry you to a certain distance.
The best SEO thing you can do FOR YOURSELF is to monitor SERPs closely and run your own experiments.
It always surprises me when big sites like MOZ and CXL have worse GTMetrix speed scores than my own little websites.
But then again, that’s not the secret to good rankings, is it?
My sites lack frequent content updates and that means fewer chances to score rankings for multiple keywords of interest.
You are right about that. The rankings are all that matters (and HTTPS – thankfully Let’s Encrypt made it easy for poor webmasters, too).
Turns out that the only tool I’ve been investing on this year is Wincher (for keyword/rankings tracking, research and comparison tables with competitors) and probably Keywords Everywhere will be the next in line.
Always good stuff on your personal blog, Jerry. :)
– Luana