You implement the technical recommendations/requirements and then you test the crap out of everything else and then you remain ready to change everything whenever the algorithm changes.<p>The reason that so much BS persists is because most organizations lack the analytical rigor to test and measure all of their changes.
I wrote this minimal fluff SEO guide and automated checker that's mostly based on SEO tweaks that Google and Mozilla recommend you should make to your pages:
<a href="https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/</a><p>The next big part is to get genuine backlinks from well ranked websites, which you can do by writing and promoting high-quality content that people want to share and are likely to search for. This is generally what Google encourages you to do, and will keep tweaking their algorithm to discourage tricks/fluff outside of this.