What is most important for SEO in 2020... links or content or...?

[errorsamac]

It has been a while since I've followed the day to day Google updates. However, I am noticing something weird with my website and I wanted to run by this forum to see if I misunderstand SEO in 2020.

I run a website whose primary backlinks come from the media (Yahoo, MSN, NBC News, etc). The content on the website is direct and to the point. I do not generate content to increase word count. It's all hand written and useful information (at least useful enough that the media cares to link to it.). Some spammy competitors of this website have little to no backlinks and with the backlinks they do have, none come from "authorities" (if you call Yahoo, MSN, etc an authoritative site). One thing they do have though is lots and lots of computer generated content. If you read it, you will see that it's clearly a bot that put it together with sentences that do not make sense and are not grammatically correct. This is not an exact phrase from a competing site but the content is something like this:

"Chicken noodle soup is good wow. Eat noodles hot today lunch is delicious spectacular chickens noodle."

It's a competitive niche and being at the top of the rankings does not matter to me. What does seem odd to me though is that spam websites with computer generated content are equal in rank to a site that has "authoritative" links. If you look at traffic measurement to both sites (using Amazon's Alexa), the spam website is getting significantly more traffic. Also, if you search "site:www.example.com" on both sites (my site and the spam site), you will see Googlebot shows content updates from the spam site over the past week where my site shows nothing (even though there were updates).

My question is, do backlinks no longer count and instead is it just straight word count that Google values more? It feels as if the more links I get from news articles like NBC News, the worse the site does in traffic from Google. While I would prefer not to add words to a page just for the sake of adding words, maybe that is more highly valued that I thought?

On a side note - I once bought a domain name that had a "hidden" Google penalty. It wouldn't rank no matter what and it took me getting the attention of JohnMu on a Google forum for the penalty to be magically lifted. In the situation I just described, it feels very similar and I swear the domain acts as if Google put a "hidden" penalty on the site which is not reflected in the Manual Actions section of the Search Console. While reading various blogs and based upon my personal experience, this does occur and it looks like the only way to escape is to email a contact at Google, they investigate, and then magically the site ranks where it should. Unfortunately for me, I do not have any contacts at Google to quickly rule that in or out so I wanted to post here and see if maybe I'm misunderstanding SEO in 2020.

Does backlink quality matter? Does Google now value lots of words on a page over everything else?

Any help would be appreciated.

[JesterMagic]

Yes backlinks matter the most to Google followed by content. Remember backlinks are an indication the quality of the content since Google AI cannot determine quality by actually reading it and understanding it as a human would, but must look to other signals which may indicate quality.

I have a feeling those other spammy sites are doing other black hat things to help push up there sites.

I have a few in my niche at well (including those darn useless pinterest pages).

[errorsamac]

Thank you for the response. I am glad backlinks and the quality of backlinks still matter in 2020.

Moving on to content, I have to two more questions. First, how important are having a lot of headings? Using an example, when comparing my site and the various spammy websites within the niche, we both have pages on "widgets". My site has a description of the widget along with the sizes (small, medium, and large). The spam website has a description of the widget, sizes, the history of widgets, where widgets are used, etc. While the sounds useful, only their headings are useful. If you read the body under each of the headings, it's clearly spam with incorrect grammar and sentences that (to the naked eye) are keyword stuffed and just do not make sense. The word count on each section is high too with 200-400 words per section. Also, in this particular niche, no one cares about the history of widgets or how they are used. But does Google see "The history of widgets" and think "Wow no other site talks about that! We need to rank this higher!"?

Expanding on word count a little more, how important it is? Using another example of sizes of widgets, is it enough to say "Small is 1 inch, medium is 2 inches, large is 3 inches". Or do you have to say "Small is 1 inch and that is the perfect fit for putting into your pocket! The medium is 2 inches and if you have big pockets that is a great choice. The large is 3 inches and if you have really big pockets and big hands then you want to get the 3 inch widget". To me, the more verbose sizing description feels unnecessary. The end-user cares about size, they don't care if they have big coat pockets or small coat pockets? Or maybe I am wrong on this though and it is important to talk about not only the factual elements (such as how big a size is) but also why size is important and how different sizes should be used?

[JesterMagic]

But does Google see "The history of widgets" and think "Wow no other site talks about that! We need to rank this higher!"?

You are giving Google's AI to much credit. It doesn't understand what is being talked about. That's why spam with bad grammar or stuff that doesn't make sense gets into the results. Google probably tries to figure out if a sentence is pure keyword stuffing or not and understands maybe how a basic sentence is constructed (what words are most likely to appear) but beyond that it doesn't really understand what is being said.

First, how important are having a lot of headings?

Headers (h tags) are still important but John M says not as much as it use to be. Just write naturally and use a new header for each section of content, if it is a sub-section then use a lower H tag. Usually you don't have more than 1 H1 tag but you can have multiple of the other tags.

Expanding on word count a little more...

That's the problem with product pages. Some don't have enough text content (or the text content is embedded in images). Google then doesn't have much info to index the page on. You also want to have unique content spread across your site (and don't use the same product descriptions as other sites). You will have to figure out a balance of what the user wants to see and what google needs to see to be able to index the page properly. Sometimes allowing users to post comments, questions, reviews is helpful on product pages as it gives Google more content to index (and users like to read this stuff). You just have to keep up with filtering out the spam and obviously provide feedback to any user questions.

[JorgeV]

or...

Luck.

Some can see ranking improvement without any changes from their part , others can see the opposite, still without changes on their site. Again others will see improvement, by tweaking their site, and others can see negative impact of such tweaking. So anything goes.

Successful online businesses, are rarely relying on Search engine organic (free) traffic.

[aristotle]

According to an old theory about how google's algorithm treats backlinks, the effect on rankings of a newly-discovered backlink is initially small, but then steadily increases until it reaches a peak after perhaps a year or so, and then begins a very slow long-term decline .

This is just an old theory, but it has always seemed plausible to me.

[JesterMagic]

Google plans to make Core Web Vitals important in 2021 (or at least they say they will)

[tangor]

Back links count. They are just 1 of 250 (or 3,000) factors involved. The g algo and AI (not necessarily the same thing) change constantly.

Best you can do is YOUR PERSONAL BEST for site layout, rwd, and CONTENT with the latter being the chief consideration. Also, you must exist in a niche where there aren't 1,000,000+ competitors. If Ecommerce don't use STOCK photos and descriptions: BE UNIQUE, and also offer AFTER SITE value to users.

And do your best to whack any robotic or scraper activity to REDUCE copycat thieves who will dilute your site value. File DMCA's as needed. PROTECT your product (rarely said, yet is the second most, if not the most important activity, required to keep your site alive). This is the HARD WORK, not seeking backlinks. There's more to SEO than getting backlinks: PROTECT WHAT YOU HAVE FROM BAD ACTORS and COPYCATS!

Sounds contrary to "SEO", but is part and parcel to site health ... and importance to search engines.