Google told us what doesn't matter in SEO — some agencies haven't caught up

Google publishes and maintains an SEO Starter Guide — their official, plain-language instructions for anyone who runs a website. Near the bottom, there's a section that should be required reading for every small business owner who's ever gotten a sales call about SEO: "Things we believe you shouldn't focus on."

It's Google. Telling you. What doesn't matter.

If you've ever been pitched an SEO package by an agency, there's a decent chance at least one of the items on that list was on the invoice.

The seven things Google says don't matter

1. Meta keywords. The invisible tag at the top of a page that used to let you list your target keywords. Google stopped using it for ranking over a decade ago. Every major SEO publication — Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal — agrees. It's dead. If a proposal mentions "meta keyword optimization," that's a tell.

2. Keyword stuffing. Jamming the same phrase into the page over and over ("If you're looking for a Montreal plumber, our Montreal plumbing services are the best Montreal plumbing in Montreal..."). Google treats this as spam and penalizes it. Semrush added a 2025 wrinkle: the same behaviour now also hurts your visibility in ChatGPT and other AI search tools. Same signal, same problem.

3. Keywords in the domain name. montrealplumbing.com doesn't rank higher than acmeplumbing.com for "Montreal plumbing." Google's John Mueller confirmed it: "You don't get a special bonus from having a keyword in your top-level domain." There's a separate, real benefit — a clear, memorable domain can lift click-through when people see you in the results. But no direct ranking bump.

4. Minimum word count. There is no magic number. 500 words, 2,000 words, 300 words — Google has no length threshold. You'll see agency proposals demand "blog posts of at least 1,500 words." That's not from Google. Long content does correlate with higher rankings in industry studies, but the cause is that long content tends to cover topics more comprehensively, not length itself. Padding a 500-word idea to 2,000 words makes it worse, not better.

5. Subdomains vs subdirectories. Whether your blog lives at yoursite.com/blog or blog.yoursite.com has no direct SEO impact. Ahrefs said it in the title of their article: "Subdirectories are not better than subdomains for SEO." One practical caveat: if a subdomain isn't well-linked to your main site, Google may treat it as a separate property, which can fragment your visibility. But the choice itself isn't a ranking factor.

6. PageRank (the public metric). The old green bar showing your "PageRank score" was retired in 2016. The underlying idea — that links from trusted sites pass authority to yours — is still real, but a 2024 Google data leak revealed there are multiple internal versions of it now, not one simple number. More importantly, Google's Gary Illyes said in April 2024: "We need very few links to rank pages." Links matter less than they used to. If an agency is selling you "500 backlinks per month," walk.

7. Number and order of headings. Having five H2s instead of three doesn't rank you higher. Having your H2 before your H3 is good for accessibility, not for Google. One practical caveat: a well-structured heading hierarchy can improve your chances of being picked for a featured snippet or an AI-generated answer. Structure for the reader, not the crawler.

What actually matters, per the same Google doc

The rest of the guide is short and specific:

• A site Google can crawl and index. No accidental noindex tags, no JavaScript walls, a working sitemap.
• Content that answers a real question. Written for a person, not a keyword.
• Clear titles and descriptions. They're what convinces someone to click from the results page.
• Links to relevant stuff — both outgoing links to credible sources and internal links between your own pages.
• Promotion. Being talked about in the places your customers already hang out — community pages, local directories, relevant blogs.

That's it. The actual list of what Google rewards is shorter than most agency invoices.

How to vet an agency with this list

Before you sign anything, ask for the deliverables in writing. Then cross-reference the don't-focus list. If more than one item from it shows up, you're paying for theater. If the answer to "what will this actually change about my site" boils down to meta tags, keyword density, domain-matching URLs, or 2,000-word blog posts on a schedule, that's the cue to walk.

Good SEO for a local business is mostly boring. A fast, honest, useful site. Clear descriptions of what you do and where. Enough real citations and links that Google trusts you exist. That's most of the game — and almost none of it appears on the seven-item don't-focus list.

If you want a straight read on what your current site needs (and what it doesn't), that's the kind of thing we're good at.