@noteboom Hey Johann,
Yep, I'm on the same newsletter and have read the exact same article.
One of the main reasons I haven't shared it (apart from actually checking these things for myself first) is because I knew it would cause FEAR.
Basically, a LOT of the SEO practices we have been taught, or have taught to others, SEO practices that many people believed were "must do's", are now being shown to be "punished" by Google.
I'll be honest and say that a lot of what we are seeing doesn't really "prove" anything.
The reason I say this is that most case studies will look at a very small number of websites and then draw conclusions from this.
So, in the above article, Cyrus (who I do respect a lot) has only conducted this study on FIFTY WEBSITES (when you consider there are over 1,000,000,000 websites online, this is obviously a tiny case study, so it's difficult to draw conclusions).
So, when it comes to "anchor text" (the words that make up the clickable part of a link), most SEOs have always taught to vary your anchor text, i.e. don't use the same anchor text all the time when linking internally on your website to other articles, vary your anchor text LOTS.
But NOW, Cyrus is saying that the websites that have suffered most with traffic drops from the Helpful Content Update varied their anchor text A LOT.
Cyrus, originally wrote this article on 21st May 2022 (and updated again on 27th May 2024) https://zyppy.com/seo/internal-links/seo-study/
Where he speaks about "varying your anchor text is good and websites with lots of internal link anchor text variety saw INCREASES IN TRAFFIC"
Two years later, the same author, Cyrus (in the article you've linked to above) has said in his "50 website case study" that websites using lots of internal link variety saw DECREASES IN TRAFFIC following the September 2023 Helpful Content Update.
This in itself shows how much things can change in the space of two years (I'm not havinga go at Cyrus, as I've said, I respect him and his opinions).
To be honest, and this is somethig I've mentioned a LOT in recent months, SEO in 2024 should be to LIMIT YOUR GOOGLE TRAFFIC to around 20% of your overall traffic.
Bascially, if 80% of your website traffic comes from a variety of social media platforms Google will take notice, "This website seems to be really popular on social media, so let me rank the most popular articles higher"
So, in a way, by NOT trying to rank in Google and aiming to get the MAJORITY of your traffic from OTHER SOURCES APART FROM GOOGLE can actually IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE RANKINGS.
This also fits in well with "Don't write articles with the primary purpose of ranking in Google, but rather your primary purpose when writing articles is "people first", you should write to help the end user"
So, realistically, in a few months time you could have someone (Cyrus again, perhaps) saying
"Don't do keyword research, don't have an SEO plugin, don't try to place keywords in your content" (which he has sort of said in the article you've linked to).
It's a catch-22 really.
If you write with SEO in mind there's a possibility that Google will feel that you're "writing for search engines and not for people" and therefore they WON'T rank your content.
BUT
If you DON'T write with SEO in mind there's a possibility that Google will never find your articles, so once more, your content won't rank.
So, it can all be very confusing, especially for those new to the industry.
So, once more, this is why it makes more sense to try to get the majority of your webste traffic OUTSIDE OF GOOGLE (the more "non-Google traffic" your website gets, the HIGHER you will rank in Google EVENTUALLY)