Doesn’t it seem like Google keeps changing the rules when it comes to organic ranking? Have you ever felt Google is just trying to make life more difficult for you to reach your target audience?
Here’s what I mean:
- Backlink building – You’re told by SEO gurus and your peers alike to “build backlinks”. But then Google rolls out the Penguin algorithm to combat that strategy. Or worse yet, Google hits you with an Unnatural Links manual action.
- More content – You’re also constantly being told to create tons of content because Google loves content. But then you’re hit by the Panda algorithm or Google applies a Thin/Content or Pure Spam manual action to your site.
The truth is that Google never changed its rules. Google’s rules have always been pretty easy to follow since the beginning.
Then why do you still feel like Google’s rules are a constantly moving target, designed to ensure you can never rank at the top?
It’s because in today’s society of instant gratification, we are only looking out for our own interest and not the user’s interest. Hence the advent of so-called SEO companies which sprang up “guaranteeing” they could rank your business #1 in Google searches, using “black hat” techniques.
They’d build huge amounts of unnatural backlinks to your site to push your site up in the rankings. The equivalent of stuffing a ballot box.
They’d rewrite or “spin” other people’s content. They’d stuff so many keywords into a page, it would sound like gibberish when read out loud. That’s not the quality content Google is looking for. It never was.
Simply put, Google is looking for unique and useful content that people want to link to and share with the world.
My “No-BS” SEO Approach
I base my SEO approach on the Google guidelines. In the guidelines, you will find all sorts of information to help you improve your rankings by making sure Google can “find your pages, understand your pages and help visitors use your pages”.
Google itself recently updated their guidelines page to make the guidelines more clear to the user. And that is an underlying theme running throughout those guidelines and how Google works: focus on the user.
Want more information? Send me an email.
