Andy CallowayI hate to break it to you, but you’ve probably got Google all wrong. Most people got it wrong and in doing so, they ended up floundering with poor rankings and terrible websites.
SEO companies got it wrong. Marketers got it wrong and businesses got it wrong. Some people are still getting it all wrong.
In fact, some SEO companies are still pushing the fear that technical prowess is the key to great rankings. But they’re wrong, too.
You see, there’s an understanding that if you get to the top of Google, you’ll be rewarded with visitors and sales and all the riches that comes with that. Let’s face it, most people use Google to find stuff, so it makes sense. Doesn’t it?
Well in a way, it probably does. If you’re number one for the search term “red cars” and you sell red cars then you’re probably going to sell quite a few of them. It stands to reason that the closer to the number one spot you are, the more “stuff” you’ll sell. But Google doesn’t want that. Google doesn’t want to make your site popular, it doesn’t want to put websites at the top of the ranking because you’ve got the right type of link. It doesn’t want you to be number one because your page has all the right meta-tags in all the right places. It doesn’t want your site to rank really well because technically it’s awesome.
It wants to rank your site because it’s a great site that a lot of people love.
Lots of people think that a great position in Google means great traffic, but what we should really be thinking is that great traffic means a great position in Google.
Does that change your perception somewhat?
Let me put it this way. If you knew that regardless of what you did, what sneaky tactics you tried or how many ‘link builders’ you hired, your site would not move *at all* in the rankings, how would you handle your SEO? What would you do? Would you give up?
Is Google the *only* reason you do anything on-line? Do you share all that information via Facebook, Google+ and Twitter *purely* to try to gain some Google juice?
Well stop it.
Google doesn’t want that. What Google wants is for you to provide informative, maybe entertaining but definitely popular content that people, including your peers, love. When they love your content they will naturally share it with others those might love it too.
When people love your website and the content it holds, they will keep coming back to it regardless of Google rankings. When they come back, they’ll be voting for it to be a recognised site. No tricks, no tactics, people power will win through.
When that happens, your rankings will improve because Google will recognise that your site is one of the best in the business. If you concentrate on helping people and giving great information, they will reward you with more people you can help.
Not only that, when you concentrate on giving great content and information to people, you can stop worrying about which words to put where. You can stop asking questions about ‘keyword density’ because you know what, it doesn’t matter.
Concentrate instead on publishing great content that people want to read. Tell people all your secrets, explain to them how they can use your products to save money, make money or make life easier.
In a nutshell, simply write about the thing you’re already good at, forget about Google altogether.
There, SEO is simple.
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