Right from the outset, I've always believed the key to enduring SEO is to focus on what Google is trying to achieve, not a particular method that happens to work well at any particular time.
For so many years I've seen SEO pieces pumping "at the end of the day, the number of inbound links is king". And they've produced study after study that pretty much proved the point. And to be fair once you had reasonably relevant content, focusing on link building from there on has given the best return on your efforts for many, many years.
Obviously, the problem is link counts can be artificially manipulated. But links were also one of the earliest cornerstones of Google's search relevance indexing strategy for very good reason - it is a powerful sign.
It's simplistic to think Google's challenge is separating organic links from artificial ones. If you want "simple", put this in your head above all else:
Google wants to deliver the page with the information the searcher wants in as few clicks as possible.
Everything else pales into insignificance by comparison.
What is SEO then? To my mind it is this:
- Having relevant content - the information the searcher is looking for.
- Displaying that content in a format that Google can interpret - including making sure the content is identifiable from "non-content".
- Building credibility - and that works exactly the same way as it does in "real life."
Do that and you'll have SEO that will stand the test of time.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time.
People aren't stupid.
Neither is Google.
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