[JustARandomGuy]

Note that the article is about optimizing a Gatsby site for SEO; it's not a general SEO tips site, of which there are many.

With that said, it's quite amusing how small SEO changes can dramatically improve search visibility. It's one of the reasons why I point people to using Wordpress + SEO plugins like Yoast, which deal with most if not all of these edge cases automatically.

[riboflavin]

> It's one of the reasons why I point people to using Wordpress + SEO plugins like Yoast, which deal with most if not all of these edge cases automatically.

This is pretty good advice, though what we see more commonly is that Yoast is misconfigured (or not configured at all), which causes more problems than it solves. Another thing that happens is solutions like Yoast will throw lots of errors that actually don't matter because Yoast's goal is to drive interaction with Yoast. It's not always easy to make the distinction.

But yes, for a lot of people "just use Wordpress" is a good solution, and an attentive Yoast install can be super helpful!

[llarsson]

Could you elaborate on what misconfigured means in the context of Yoast?

[michaelbuckbee]

Yoast does things like automatically set up redirects if you change pages, but that may or may not be what you need.

Depending on your setup you may or may not want categories/tags/etc. to be included in your sitemaps but Yoast will put them there.

In general I think Yoast (or really anything) is likely to be a net positive and while it makes some things easier it still requires work and thought.

[richrichardsson]

> general SEO tips site

Are there any of these that are any good? I know next to nothing about SEO and would love to learn a bit more, but I've never found any useful resource that isn't some kind of crappy spam-blog or so old that I'm left doubting if the information is still relevant.

[DeusExMachina]

I often read backlinko.com and ahrefs.com

[cubecul]

+1. These are the only two worth reading for most people.

[seanwilson]

> I know next to nothing about SEO and would love to learn a bit more, but I've never found any useful resource that isn't some kind of crappy spam-blog or so old that I'm left doubting if the information is still relevant.

You could try my on-page SEO guide that's more aimed at developers (https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/) and my Chrome extension that checks these SEO factors for you automatically (https://www.checkbot.io).

I tried to keep the SEO guide concise with everything backed up with links to authoritative sources like Google or Mozilla.

[moneywoes]

I like the look and design of your site, what did you build it with? Also if you were building a performant SEO landing page what tech stack would you use? Great extension.

[seanwilson]

Thanks, it's a minimal custom CSS theme I wrote on top of Jekyll (static site generator) hosted on Netlify. Any static site generator would work though. I'm using SVG for almost all images as well as minimal JavaScript which helps with performance.

[andygcook]

If you're doing content marketing, then this case study from Apollo Digital is very useful: https://apollodigital.io/blog/seo-case-study

[krisroadruck]

Ahrefs blog is pretty solid. Also Backlinko (Brian Dean), or anything by Nick Eubanks.

[mosiuerbarso]

I've been reading SEO-theory for years: https://www.seo-theory.com/ His paid newsletter is a great and is reasonably priced ($30 PM for 5 issues per month). He cuts through a lot of the bullshit which plagues the SEO industry. You’ll learn more from subscribing to his paid newsletter for 6 months than a lifetime of reading blogs like Moz, AHrefs or SEOroundtable etc. If you’d would like to know more about what he's about just read a few of his blog articles.

[sergeykish]

It is like "SEO" content optimized for search engine by people who want to sell.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

If the trick to good SEO is simply adding a plugin, wouldn't everyone do it, then it becomes meaningless for crawlers to differentiate content?

[wallawe]

This is sort of table stakes in the SEO world, not end all be all. First you must get these technical details ironed out, and then from there you have to focus on two things that differentiate you from competitors who also have the bases covered: 1. Backlinks - I cannot overstate how much a quality backlink can do. 2. Good content/utility

That's pretty much it but it's obviously easier said than done.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

So, instead of worrying about installing plugins, time would be better utilized getting backlinks -- which, I'm not sure exactly sure how you do. You can't force people to share your content, but you can create content that's hopefully worth linking to.

[lmkg]

They're not comparable. Plugins is basically a O(1) task: You set them up once and then they're done. If your set isn't set up for technical SEO then crawlers can't read it and you won't rank well. But once you're set up correctly and it's not really possible to put more time into managing plugins and rank better.

By comparison, building backlinks and writing content you can always sink in more time, and derive benefit from that extra time investment. So the plugin stuff is more like foundations. You need it, but it's not what your strategy is.

And "building backlinks" is a lot about outreach. You need the content worth linking to, but there's also things you can do to encourage people to link to content that they already like. Relationships with other sites, encouraging people to tweet/like/reddit/socialwhatever your content, that type of stuff.

[edmundsauto]

I've worked with good content/SEO teams. Generally, they try to make interesting content, then they hire folks offshore to promote it. It's a low hit rate, but it works over time.

Another "technique" is to crawl sites that link out to 404s, or outdated guides. Especially if it's a high value site. Then email them and suggest their users might prefer <insert better widget/site/etc that you own here>.

[brtkdotse]

No, you should install the plugin as it will bring your site up to a good base level of SEO quality - you’ll still need to fill out texts and images but the plugin will tell you where and what you need.

Generating backlinks is a skill you can aquire, but devs tend to sneer at it since a) it looks a lot like sales and b) there A LOT of shady practices

[hombre_fatal]

The point of an SEO plugin would be to help crawlers understand your site, like handle link canonicalization, improve <title> tags like "Hacker News" -> "Foo's profile - Hacker News", and things like that.

It ("on site" SEO) has zero bearing on what other websites are doing. SEO is just an umbrella word that also encompasses "off site" SEO like backlink building.

[snowwrestler]

I wouldn't say it's the trick to "good" SEO, more like the trick to "not bad" SEO.

Managing on-page technical factors (which is what a plugin can help you with) is primarily a matter of successfully missing your foot with hundreds of potential bullets.

Getting SEO to "good" still requires good content and link building.

[IncRnd]

Actually, that is the trick when using Wordpress. Yoast Premium is amazing and worth every penny.